linux-kernel - Re: UNIX Compatibility

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Message-ID: <20110525173846.GG8476@thunk.org>
Date:	Wed, 25 May 2011 18:51:55 +0000
From:	Michael Witten <mfwitten@...il.com>
To:	Ted Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
Cc:	Mike Galbraith <efault@....de>, Richard Yao <ryao@...sunysb.edu>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: UNIX Compatibility

On Wed, 25 May 2011 13:38:46 -0400, Ted Ts'o wrote:

> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 03:17:35PM +0000, Michael Witten wrote:
> 
>> The winner is not the one who smashes the competition; the winner is the
>> one who best eases the lives of as many people as possible.
>> 
>> The point of such a specification is to provide a single, relatively stable
>> source of documentation for how a complex system works.
> 
> I've been to ISO standards meetings, and it is filled with people who
> use standards for the purposes of gaining a competitive advantage.
> Most of them were paid to do standards work by companies who funded it
> precisely because it would net them a competitive advantage.

That's great. Nobody is defending them; they certainly aren't the eggheads,
and they clearly aren't inhabitants of any ivory tower.

Essentially, your wrath is misdirected.

>>> This idea that Linux needs to care about being "Unix compatible" keeps
>>> coming back from the grave, like some Buffy-the-vampire-slayer
>>> monster.  It's time to slay it.
>>
>> What needs to die is the tyranny of the hackers.
>>
>> Humans are capable of organizing themselves better than just acquiscing to
>> whomever is capable of imposing himself fastest.
>
> Oh, you wanted the new features that's in Linux?  The new hardware
> support?  That's all brought to you by the hackers that you seem to
> hate so much.

I don't hate the hack[er]s. I also don't hate the eggheads.

A new feature is outside of the purview of an existing standard (and if it
existed in the standard first, then it is simply newly implemented).

Standards are only useless because non-eggheads make them so.

A user should be able to request (possibly dynamically) as many
standards-compliant interfaces as possible from Linux (even if that
precludes new features or optimizations).

Sincerely,
Michael Witten
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