[Bf-committers] "Security" gets in the way

[Matt Ebb]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Benjamin Tolputt
<btolputt at internode.on.net> wrote:
> Matt Ebb wrote:
>> This stuff is unnecessary in a studio environment,
>
> Agreed. The primary target user-base for the security issue are new &
> inexperienced users who *will* download material online and install it
> without thinking about the consequences because they are simply unaware
> of them.
> I fully accept that there should be an option to turn this thing off
> completely and have that stick. I have similar "ignore this warning from
> now on" options in most the applications I put together.

This is the problem though really - it's not always enough to say
'change the defaults and save the preferences' because inevitably
problems still occur. For example some situations in which this caused
issues included:

* An animator taking some work home to do over the weekend to meet a deadline
* Sending files to another studio who was helping us out with rendering
* Bringing in and adding in borrowed machines to the render farm (like
artists laptops) to help with last-minute rendering power

In these situations, it was a matter of quickly installing blender and
getting it going, often not by blender experts. It's not as if it was
a strictly controlled 'software roll-out' environment - indeed most
studios that use Blender (small ones) probably don't have that kind of
organised IT infrastructure like you might have in a large
corporation.

Sure, one can say "oh it's your fault for not enabling the options"
but that brings me back to the original point - regardless of whether
you want to blame the user or not, the existence of this 'security'
does cause real practical problems. Especially in cases like I
described above where you're tired and stressed meeting a deadline and
the last thing on your mind is going to disable some stupid security
preference and saving default preferences.

Matt