default root crontab sets HOME=/var/log

[Jeff Rizzo <riz%tastylime.net@localhost>]

It recently came to my attention that the default root crontab sets 
HOME=/var/log, and has done since rev 1.2 in April of 1993 (!)

I discovered this because I added a backup command to my root crontab 
which didn't work, even though it had been working from the command 
line, because it could no longer find its default configuration (which 
was stored in root's home dir, by default).

1) Does anyone know why we would _want_ HOME set to /var/log?  I confess 
I never gave it any thought in over 20 years of seeing that there.

2) might we want to consider, you know, changing it?  POLA and all that...

Thoughts?