Thanks for the great explanation! Seems like because logging in as root is never necessary and indeed never done; people confuse sudoer for root login.

Yes, I tried both before going self hosted; and both try very hard to make your life difficult if you don’t subscribe. Actually I got hooked on RSS with Google Reader, which was a perfect, simple, free reader. It got shut down, because I guess it doesn’t make sense to provide that service for free.