David Maxwell wrote:
> You've done such a twisted job of ignoring the facts that I will be
> shocked if Jim thinks it's worth replying to that, so I will :-/
> 
> Sure, each of those apps may use exec chain authentication - _but they
> each have their own implementation of it_. You use the word 'portable',
> but you ignore the fact that none of those apps share authentication
> code with each other, and there's no standard for doing so.

And PAM implementations are compatible? And they do share interfaces to
an extent. Checkpassword-compatible tools share the checkpassword
interface. CVM tools share the CVM interface, and so on.