Re: Bug#34956: ps formatting problem (fwd)
On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 03:19:09PM -0500, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
>> You have shown that the proposed change does not violate either
>> standard. Therefore it is legal to make the change.
Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org> responded:
> Not every change that does not violate a standard is a good idea.
Zack Weiberg writes:
>>> There is a legitimate argument for this change: compatibility with
>>> Solaris and IRIX, possibly all System V-derived systems.
>> Make that: Solaris, IRIX, Digital UNIX, and AIX. (basically every
>> UNIX) Considering the above, portable UNIX apps may indeed expect a
>> useful return value.
> No, apps written for those systems may expect a useful return
> value. The point of having cross-platform standards like POSIX
> and Unix98 is to establish just what can be expected.
>> Are we a UNIX clone or a BSD clone?
Hmm, I think most people would consider BSD to be a UNIX flavor, and
certainly more so than Linux.
> Neither.
Just so.
Here is my understanding of the situation:
- UNIX is now officially a registered trademark of The Open Group, and
a list of officially registered UNIXes is available through their
web site.
- Not all "official" UNIXes implement the "extended" behavior wanted.
- I believe the current behavior is compatible with SVID2 and SVID3.
I believe it is also comptabile with AES, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4,
FIPS 151-2, POSIX.1, ANSI/ISO C, and UNIX 98.
- Specifically, glibc attempts to comply to XPG 4.2 and ISO C.
- Linux is intended to comply with POSIX standards but not necessarily
with UNIX 98 standards (and is thus, in this legal sense, not a UNIX
at all).
- Finally, Debian is a member of the Linux Standard Base and so will
presumably conform to that standard, which will include
specifications for standard I/O functions.
(Please correct me if any of the above are incorrect.)
If the folks who want the change feel it is so great, they can lobby
the appropriate bodies to have it incorporated into future standards
(e.g., C9X or LSB), and glibc would probably eventually incorporate
the change.
-ccwf
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