Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753965Ab1EYRiw (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 May 2011 13:38:52 -0400 Received: from li9-11.members.linode.com ([67.18.176.11]:51477 "EHLO test.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752154Ab1EYRiv (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 May 2011 13:38:51 -0400 Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 13:38:46 -0400 From: "Ted Ts'o" To: Michael Witten Cc: Mike Galbraith , Richard Yao , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: UNIX Compatibility Message-ID: <20110525173846.GG8476@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Ted Ts'o , Michael Witten , Mike Galbraith , Richard Yao , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References:

<20110524181619.GC26055@thunk.org> <1306297108.4819.28.camel@marge.simson.net> <64e4614dda6f4558a68a314d7b5979b5-mfwitten@gmail.com> <20110525143602.GE8476@thunk.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@thunk.org X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on test.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2228 Lines: 51 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. I've represented the United States at official ISO meetings, and I saw a lot more personality issues, corporate politics (i.e., a representative from Sun who trying to torpedo ISO/IEC 23360-1:2006 because it would help Solaris and hurt Linux), than you would expect. In fact, all of the technical work was done outside of the ISO standards process; what we did inside ISO was all paper pushing, because there were still so misguided government types in Europe who cared about ISO at that time. (As another example, I point you to the fireworks of OOXML and ISO/IEC 29500, and the blatent influcing of national standards bodies by Microsoft.) So if you want a specification of how **Linux** works, I don't think going through ISO and national standards bodies is the most efficient way to work. > > 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. You know, biologists have a term for a static, stable system. It's called "dead". If you want something that doesn't change, feel free to use AT&T System V Release 4. It doesn't change. And it's well documented. 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. - Ted -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/