Even if you have su privileges you aren't using them all the time. You may have scripts launched by an unprivileged user that in turn run as root. There are similar things that may happen on a shared system like a cluster. This is a regression in functionality for dubious benefits.
The purpose of `/usr/sbin` does not seem to be understood here. It is (as far as I know) for statically linked binaries. If you use dynamically-linked libraries, those can potentially be manipulated via LD_PRELOAD or something. So admin software is probably something that should be in this category. There might be other reasons I'm not aware of for having a category for statically linked stuff. This means little if nobody is checking on the distro side to make sure that sbin is filled with statically linked stuff.
I don't want to attribute this change to malice because it is a rather arcane detail, but let's just say that I don't approve of IBM's recent activities related to Linux and FOSS.
The path made sense when a system was run by people distinct from the ones using it. The death knell was workstations and giving us all su privileges.
In that world view, the death knell was sounded in the 1980s.
Even if you have su privileges you aren't using them all the time. You may have scripts launched by an unprivileged user that in turn run as root. There are similar things that may happen on a shared system like a cluster. This is a regression in functionality for dubious benefits.
The purpose of `/usr/sbin` does not seem to be understood here. It is (as far as I know) for statically linked binaries. If you use dynamically-linked libraries, those can potentially be manipulated via LD_PRELOAD or something. So admin software is probably something that should be in this category. There might be other reasons I'm not aware of for having a category for statically linked stuff. This means little if nobody is checking on the distro side to make sure that sbin is filled with statically linked stuff.
I don't want to attribute this change to malice because it is a rather arcane detail, but let's just say that I don't approve of IBM's recent activities related to Linux and FOSS.