Re: Debian + POSIX

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

From: gith@quicklink.net (Gith)

> Is the Debian distribution going to push for POSIX conformity?

Yes, because it just got easy and cheap.

> I may be missing something here, ( I'm still a relative newbie
> to Linux ) but what is the importance of it? After viewing the
> Linux-FT web pages, the only good thing I can see about a Posix
> certification is the right to go around patting yourself on the
> back for having one. ( Just the feeling I got from the site. )

Actually, until recently you could only be POSIX compliant by paying
a lot of money. You paid for copies of the standard, you paid for
validation software, and you paid for a POSIX compliance lab to certify
you. So it was a way for the well-funded commercial Linux projects to
differentiate themselves from high-quality but underfunded efforts like
Debian. Now, they will have to use the still-costly X/Open standards
to differentiate themselves.

NIST developed a compliance test suite for the U.S. Federal Information
Processing Standard. This is a superset of POSIX. They recently decided
to make it free, so that more people would implement POSIX. We think
that's a great idea, and we got right to work.

And now, the POSIX standard can be used for what it was intended for:
insuring source-level compatibility across multiple software platforms.

	Thanks

	Bruce Perens
	Debian Project Leader
--
Bruce Perens, Pixar Animation Studios
*** "Toy Story" video tape in U.S. stores October 30 ***
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