[gentoo-user] A non-root user can delete files belonging to root. What's going on?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Gentoo.

I'm clearing out dross from my home directory, as me (not as root) and
I've just deleted this file:

    -rw-r--r--  1 root    root           0 Apr 11  2011 grep

, simply by typing $ rm grep.  I was prompted with:

    rm: remove write-protected regular empty file ■grep■?

, to which I responded 'y'.  The file is now gone.

So, as a non root user, I've managed to delete a file belonging to root,
to which I have no write access.  This is crazy!  I'm not happy about
this.  What's going on?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).