Comment 13 for bug 920749

As said by comment #7, the question is whether a user-set variable can override an admin-set default value. /etc/environment is there for default value. Currently, every setting there overrides SendEnv/AcceptEnv passed value. This is what I think is the bug. In non-English speaking countries, all computers are set to have a default value for locale (the local language, be it French or Spanish or Japanese). This value is useful for display login managers, and even some tools that are daemonized. It is also useful for tty login (you do not want each and every of your users to have to set their .somethingshrc to the correct value). So there is (almost always) a default value read (often through pam).

Passing SendEnv/AcceptEnv in priority to environment is important, because of the great split between UTF-8 graphical environments and ISO-8859-1 environments. Most environments are capable to cope with both now, but this requires the locale to be set to the correct value for the terminal of the viewer. And this can only be found by passing prioritarily the value of LANG (and overriding the default local value).

The importance of this bug is probably not seeable for people living in English-speaking countries, or people where all default values use the same encoding.

The usual logic in administration of computer systems is that user can override the admin "default" settings (or the settings are made in "mandatory" mode). Locale setting is not something that should be considered mandatory, but really default.