Ident seems to be compiled into wu-ftpd. We're running a server outside of our firewall, and couldn't get into it from inside the firewall. Turns out the firewall is eating the ident packets and not sending a "icmp unreachable" response back to the server. This causes the server to hang there and never (seemingly) deliver a login prompt. Adding -I0 to the in.ftpd command line in /etc/inetd.conf fixes this. I don't know if our firewall configuration is "normal" or not, but we probably can't get to any 6.1 redhat ftp servers out there on the net either. Others may or may not have the same problem. (FYI: We've had ident problems with sendmail before too...) P.S. It's annoying not to be able to search the mailing lists any longer.
I take it back. This problem is happening on a RedHat 6.0 system, not 6.1.
A final policy decision is up to the system administrator - the RH default works for most people, and the mechanism for selecting policy does work.