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.
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...
Bill Bogstad
bogstad@cs.jhu.edu