On Thu, 4 Apr 1996, Bill Bogstad wrote:
> You are looking at this from the perspective of a software hacker
> trying to maintain the purity of the system. An end-user doesn't care why
> the package they just bought for too much money won't work at the same time
> as the other package they just bought for even more money. They'll just give
> up on Linux and go to some other OS which is willing to 'bloat up' in order
> to please them. There are those who will say this is a 'good thing'. There
> are others who might say it will be the death of Linux. I don't know. But
> we should at least be aware of what we are doing. This is why if we make it
> configurable we need to make it on a per-process basis. Otherwise, we make
> the problem worse then it is now.
this looks like the beginning of a huge flamewar :) but lets flame away:
Linux got famous partly because of it's purity. So if it goes down for the
same reason (which i doubt) ... no problem for me. Personally i'm making
such "lets bloat this big bad thing because our costumer wants it" type of
systems, and every other day i take a refreshing look at the newest
patches, which try to do the Right Thing again and again ... kudos to
Linus and all the others.
> As for no one sending 'put it back now' mails, this is as bogus as
> polling the board of directors for Microsoft Inc. to determine the best
> operating system in the world. The Linux kernel mailing list doesn't reach
> all developers of Unix applications. At a minimum, if anyone is out there
> with a program to encourage Unix developers to port their applications to
> Linux, they should make a note of this difference. Despite Sun's work to
> kill it, SunOS is still one of the most popular flavors of Unix in the world
> and we should be trying to encourage developers for that system to port to
> Linux. Not setting up hidden traps for the unwary...
i agree, this is a minor issue. But try asking the linux community to
"change ext2fs to 8+3 naming conventions, it's a well accepted industry
standard in a mainstream OS" ... :))
-- mingo