From: Niall O Broin (niall at domain linux.ie)
Date: Thu 06 Sep 2001 - 15:00:39 IST
On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 02:01:08PM +0100, kevin lyda wrote:
> this is my theory: it started out life at the saved text bit. no real
> meaning for directories. then, as security started to be considered
> for unix systems, this secondary meaning for directories came about.
> so the phrase "sticky bit" came about to combine the newly overloaded
> meaning.
WELL my guess, and fsck it, I'm as entitled to one as any of ye, is that
sticky describes the original idea nicely i.e. the code stuck to RAM. Of
course it could be moved, you just had to pull hard (run out of RAM). And
sticky came into use because it's more whimsical than saved text, and we
know how fond Unix people are of whimsy.
Niall
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