RE: is KERNEL developement finished, yet ???

From: Joseph D. Wagner (wagnerjd@prodigy.net)
Date: Thu Dec 05 2002 - 07:54:17 EST


> if you're implying that we can start once
> again from bottom, and come up with something
> better that unix (which has been opensource,
> around for long while, tested and developed
> by many as well) I _HIGHLY_ doubt, and disagree.

Yes and no.

Unix (and Linux) developers are far too concerned with clinging to the
30-year-old outdated POSIX standard, which creates numerous problems when
trying to advance new features. For example, the POSIX standard is the
reason we have the three-by-three secure permissions on files (three users:
owner, group, everyone; three permissions: read, write, execute) instead of
Access Control Lists (ACL's).

This is not a design flaw per say, but let's face it: Unix would be a lot
more secure (and more flexible in it's security) with ACL's.

Microsoft Windows has had ACL's since 1991 (Windows NT 3.5?); that was 11
years ago. Linux is just now developing ACL's in some of the beta kernels.
(By "Linux" I mean the official Linux kernel as distributed by
www.kernel.org not these stupid add-on's and patches released by
third-parties)

> I doubt there be any such errors (mistakes) if ANY

I don't know of any mistakes per say, but if I had to do it over again,
there's about a thousands things I'd do differently (preference in design
choices, not mistakes) especially not to cling so religiously to POSIX
compliance.

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