I don't really see the connection between cgi and http basic auth. These seem orthogonal issues. (And fwiw the usecase I have does not have any authentication

I don't really see the connection between cgi and http basic auth. These seem orthogonal issues. (And fwiw the usecase I have does not have any authentication and doesn't need any. It's taking a POST var and doing things with it, but there are no secrets involved.)