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To: Irish Linux Users Group <ilug@linux.ie>
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Subject: Re: [ILUG] How to copy some files
In-Reply-To: Message from
    "John P. Looney"
    <valen@tuatha.org> of
    "Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:09:41 BST."
    <20020722080941.GI3234@jinny.ie>
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Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 12:32:08 +0100
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  | Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:09:41 +0100
  | From: "John P. Looney" <valen@tuatha.org>
  |[ ... ]
  | That's something that POSIX would do - make every platform as
  | equally broken, rather than standing up and saying "how about
  | we try & make everyone better".

 eh?  POSIX doesn't "do" anything.  POSIX is a de jour
 specification for a voluntary minimal implementation to
 encourage software transportability.  no-one, absolutely
 no-one, has or ever had to implement POSIX or be restricted
 to POSIX.  commercial considerations et.al. may encourage
 some "POSIX-compatibility", but that's a freely-made choice.

 IMHO, the process's weakness is a general rule --- which
 has been ignored on occasion --- to only consider "formal"
 submissions of "proven" technologies.  that translates into
 specifying more-or-less common parts of the existing *ix
 implementations which actively contribute to the process.
 most of the committees are loath to blue-sky, solicit
 proposals/research, or pick an uncommon or unsponsored
 implementation, even when manifestly superior.  (IMHO,
 this is why POSIX is *ix and not, e.g., Plan9 or Inferno.)

 OTOH, considering the motivating force behind the process,
 it can be argued the above "weakness" is a strength ....

  | (why? Because in the real world, you can't. Somethings just suck)

 yep.  which is not to say POSIX "sucks" per se.  but the old
 pre-POSIX *ix world arguably did, at least in terms of ease
 of software porting.  one of *ix's claims to fame is it is
 perhaps the first system where one could seriously consider
 porting, more or less intact and with relative ease, software
 from one architecture+platform+vendor to a radically utterly
 different triple.

 however, as people discovered, there's a lot of difference
 between "consider porting" and "actually porting" --- and
 some problems were silly.  some were self-inflicted (e.g.,
 assuming byte-orientation or a particular endianness); but
 others were Frustrating "system" incompatibilities --- the
 motivating force that lead to /usr/group, XPG (X/Open), POSIX,
 Spec1170, Unix98, Common Unix, &tc.

     «The nice thing about standards is there's so many to
      choose from.»   -- commonly attributed to bwk.

cheers!
	-blf-
--
 Innovative, very experienced, Unix and      | Brian Foster    Dublin, Ireland
 Chorus (embedded RTOS) kernel internals     | e-mail: blf@utvinternet.ie
 expert looking for a new position ...       | mobile: (+353 or 0)86 854 9268
  For a résumé, contact me, or see my website  http://www.blf.utvinternet.ie

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