Re: Microsoft/Marimba/W3C Open Software Description (OSD)
On Fri, 22 Aug 1997, Jim Pick wrote:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-OSD.html
This one is especially funny:
I directly jumped at the end to see the list of the supported operating
systems (Appendix B) :
<CUT&PASTE>
OS values:
AIX
BSDi
DECAlpha
DOS
HPBLS
HPUX
IRIX
Lunix
MacOS
OS/2
SCO CMW
SCO ODT
Solaris
SunOS
UnixWare
Win95
WinNT
</CUT&PASTE>
As you can see from this list, Linux is not supported by this 'standard'.
Strangely enough, Lunix is... _(;
Other major OSes are missing (QNX just to name one).
As for the CPU:
<CUT&PASTE>
CPU values:
x86
mips
alpha
ppc
sparc
680x0
</CUT&PASTE>
ARM is missing. (Among the procs supported by Linux)
> It looks like Marimba and Microsoft are working on developing
> a standardized format based on XML for describing software (and
> dependencies) for use in electronic software distribution
> (aka "push") products.
Well, it mostly looks like an HTML wrapping for software&dependancies
that all package management system already implement, nothing much
else. Isn't the following cute: _(;
<DEPENDENCY>
<CODEBASE HREF="http://www.foobar.org/cards.osd"; />
</DEPENDENCY>
Another funny one: the example URLs they give point to www.acme.com, but
all end up by a 404 error. _(;
> We could easily generate a bunch of .osd files derived from the
> Packages file used by dpkg. Then perhaps dpkg could be used as
> a "push" client back-end system. That would certainly blow
> away what Microsoft, Marimba, InstallShield, etc. have in mind...
What's wrong with dselect/dpkg-ftp ? _(;
Seriously through: we may implement this, but I doubt it'll be a great
leap forward for us, however we'd be able to say "Debian is one of the
first Unix to implement this". (But I really can't think of any other
benefit)
Cordialement,
--
- ** Linux ** +-------------------+ ** WAW ** -
- vincent@debian.org | RENARDIAS Vincent | vincent@waw.com -
- Debian/GNU Linux +-------------------+ http://www.waw.com/ -
- http://www.debian.org/ | WAW (33) 4 91 81 21 45 -
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: