Re: [forward] FHS pre-2.1 draft #3 on web site

[Chris Waters <xtifr@dsp.net>]

Raul Miller <raul@usatoday.com> writes:

> You don't get to call the FHS wrong without providing a rationale

Sure I do -- it's one of the benefits of living in the US of A.  :-)

But in any case, I'm not calling the FHS wrong, I'm calling the actual
*use* of /opt wrong.  FHS doesn't require that use (or I *would* be
calling the FHS wrong), it merely allows it.

And in any case, I meant wrong in the moral sense, not the legal
sense.

The rationale in the FHS says it's a well-established practice --
that doesn't prevent it from being wrong.  In many parts of the world,
wife-beating is still a well-established practice.  :-)

> Sure, well, if you can come up with something more convincing than the
> FHS I'm willing to listen.

Again, the FHS does not require these directories to exist, it merely
allows it.

In fact, looking more closely, while the FHS explicitly says that
distributions may create /usr/local/bin and a handful of other dirs
under /usr/local, it does *not* grant the same permission for /opt/bin
and friends.  All it says is that these directories are reserved for
the local sysadmin and that packages may not depend on them.  It
*could* be argued that creating these dirs actually *violates* the
FHS.  I don't know if I'd go that far, but it *is* a possible
interpretation, and might bear some consideration.

cheers
-- 
Chris Waters   xtifr@dsp.net | I have a truly elegant proof of the
      or    xtifr@debian.org | above, but it is too long to fit into
http://www.dsp.net/xtifr     | this .signature file.