Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 22:32:31 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: louis@signalpath.on.ca Cc: advocacy@openbsd.org, netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux Message-ID: <199811272232.PAA20989@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.03.9811261320510.11270-100000@tronix.signalpath.on.ca> from "Louis Bertrand" at Nov 26, 98 02:11:04 pm
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> In my experience in the hardware domain, standards favour widespread > adoption but stifle innovation. You mean like FTP, SMTP, HTTP, HTMP, and MIME "stifle innovation"? Or do you mean like ELF, DWARF, NROFF, and SGML "stifle innovation"? Or perhaps ANSI, POSIX, and XPG/4? I'd agree if you wanted to say "Bad standards, like ISA, stifle innovation", though... I think that software standards tend to codify interfaces, and that hardware standards tend to codify implementations. Very different spaces. Not that I would mind rewriting all of libc to get rid off all static or per thread allocated buffers, and to make all functions return only status codes, forcing data returns to be implemented by passing a return area by reference, mind you. I would *love* to see: int ftell( FILE *stream, off_t*result) typedef u_int64_t off_t; (one example whre return values are overloaded to return error information, to the detriment of the long term utility of the interfaces). I would also *love* to see a method whereby the argument sizes are passed as part of the information so that system call interfaces can be easily and safely versioned without proliferating entry points. But of course, that would constitute a "calling _standard_". Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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