Option --numeric-ids not the default?

[Tony Abernethy]

Darryl Dixon wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I've browsed the history of the list, but can't seem to find 
> an answer to something that I find quite surprising - why 
> isn't --numeric-ids the default when rsync is told to 
> preserve permissions? It seems to me that the current 
> behaviour runs against the grain of more than a quarter 
> century of unix tradition, and certainly caught me by 
> surprise the first time I encountered it. Can anyone enlighten me?
> 
> regards,
> Darryl Dixon
> Winterhouse Consulting Ltd
> http://www.winterhouseconsulting.com

If you have (mostly) the same set of users (names)
 on two different systems,
 what are the odds that the numeric ids are identical?