Re: Resolutions to comments on LSB-FHS-TS_SPEC_V1.0

[Ben Collins <bmc@it.larc.nasa.gov>]

On Tue, Jan 26, 1999 at 01:27:13PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > I'll give you one solid reason, uniformity across unix platforms is a
> > must have if unix, especially free unices, are going to succesfully
> 
> If we are in marketing mode let me point out we are not Unix in the first
> place and that C:\> is the standard 

s/Unix/Unix-Like/ for clarification.

> > I don't see a connection between /var/spool/mail or /var/mail and
> > home directories or priviliedges. IOW, how does one lend itself better
> > to the task at hand?
> 
> Modern mail systems dont use a mail spool in general. Or when they do they
> use a format different to "tradition"

Obviously every admin and 'modern' mail system is going to want to do
things their way. Our goal is hopefully to put standard on where it
_should_ be and where the default system should have it. What the admin or
third party mail systems do after that is completely beyond the scope of
the distributions. If our contention is that we cannot forsee what will
become of future mailing systems then maybe we should be arguing whether
or not we should have a "standard" or should we have a scope of acceptible
implementations.

> > well as far as the system is concerned. What we need to decide is, do
> > we want to go with the standard, or make a new standard simply because
> > we don't want to change?
> 
> Is the purpose of the FHS to make Linux run after and blindly copy things
> from Unix platforms or to provide a best Linux platform ?

The same could be argued for both sides of this double-edged sword. Not
everyone is going to be pleased with the outcome, right now I'd say the
opinions are split even. We can either stick with what we have to suit our
definiton of a mail spool, or to please the cross-platform admins, go with
the old tradition to have a uniform setup. Where is the compromise here
that we need?

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Ben Collins <b.m.collins@larc.nasa.gov>                  Debian GNU/Linux
UnixGroup Admin - Jordan Systems Inc.                 bcollins@debian.org
------ -- ----- - - -------   ------- -- The Choice of the GNU Generation