[scripts-announce] Certain Files Will Become Web-Server-Readable

[Jeff Arnold]

(We do not normally like to send e-mails that are this technical to 
scripts-announce; if you think that you might be affected by this change, 
and you would like us to help you examine your situation to determine how 
you are affected, feel free to send us an e-mail at scripts at mit.edu.)

Summary:

scripts.mit.edu will start serving images, html files, and some other 
non-executable content using different Athena filesystem privileges than 
it currently does.

If you have private, non-executable content with one of the extensions 
mentioned below [1] stored in your web_scripts directory, please be sure 
that the content is protected by a .htaccess file if you do not want it to 
be served directly to the web.

Details:

Certain types of files are almost always intended to be web-accessible 
when they are underneath a web_scripts directory and not protected by a 
.htaccess file (phrased another way, images and html files in your 
web_scripts directory are probably intended to be web-accessible unless 
they are protected by a .htaccess file).

scripts.mit.edu will start serving certain kinds of non-executable content 
[1] to the web even if the content is not explicitly marked as 
world-readable.  Files may be protected from being served to the web using 
a .htaccess file.  We are making this change in order to improve 
scripts.mit.edu's support for various pieces of open-source software.

[1] See http://scripts.mit.edu/extensions for a list of the 
extensions affected by this change.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us 
at scripts at mit.edu.

Jeff Arnold
jbarnold at mit.edu