O.K. so apparently my understanding of sane file/directory permissions seems to quite divergent from rpmlint's. So I went to both the Fedora Packaging Guildelines and FHS in a attempt to resolve the discrepancy and discovered both the Guildlines and FHS offer virtually no information.
* Is there a reference which states what file/directory permissions should be and a rationale?
* Should rpmlint really be emitting warnings and errors for items not in the guidelines? (not just about file/directory but a number of other issues which frankly seems dubious). If rpmlint and the guidelines are divergent then should rpmlint be a recommended tool during package review?