Leopard’s Get Info Permissions Flaw

Executive Summary:

There is a serious design flaw in Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard ‘Get Info’ GUI for permissions changing

• Provides very ambiguous and misleading metaphors for the standard OWNER GROUP OTHER permission modes which cause the user not to understand exactly which permission is being changed.
• Incorrectly applies the user to be sole owner and group member of any file or directory when they only asked for “read and write” permission to the file.
• Incorrectly assigns READ WRITE EXECUTE status to the files/dirs being changed when the user clicks for only “read write” permission even when the “make executable” box is not ticked.
• Incorrectly assigns ACL permissions to lock the file/dir in question to be only accessible to the user who added themselves to the “list” of people with access no matter who else is on the list and no matter what you change the permissions to with chmod from the command line. Note that the GUI does not tell you it is doing this and does not allow you to tell it not to.
• In conclusion, this GUI does things it is not asked to do and furthermore does things a responsible user would never do from the command line and is therefore a potential risk to the operating system and should not be used. To change permissions or ownership, always use the command line.
• Amendment: If this happens to you, do what I did and disconnect your computer from the internet until you are able to repair permissions.