GURU responsibility

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards]

>From jcp.bmd70 at BRL Thu Sep 10 00:30:01 1981
I take it the question about how to find responsible gurus is directed from
an educational (ie. University type) user, as this generally isn't a problem
in industry.

The algorithm that was used at Johns Hopkins, (the school I attended) for
years with at least above average success, was to find the people who were
most interested in UNIX and/or computers in general, (this included some
of the local "hacker" community), and bring them "on the inside" gradually,
by giving them responsibility in stages.  In most cases this resulted in
even previously destructive individuals turning around and becoming valuable
system resources, (particularly for finding security bugs).  On our UNIX,
we had an "operations" staff of undergraduates, who were responsible for
day-to-day things such as disk backup, etc., but in general did not have
full SU privledges, which served as a training ground for future gurus.

We did have some problems, but, for the most part this worked out OK.  One
should NOT attempt to do this thru a general, open to the public, student
organization however, as this gets political, which is what eventually happened
to JHU.

To some extent, this works off the priniciple that to a real hacker type,
it isn't nearly as much fun to destroy the system if you have inside info.
This seems to be true of most hacker types I know.  (Watch out for the
occasional oddball, though).

						-JCP-