[svlug] Linux Standards Association [was: WTF?]

[Paul Cubbage]

What is the purpose of standards?  Some sort of interoperability or
compatibility.  Some guarantee that things will operate in an expected
manner.
Formal standards bodies only get in the way and produce little of benefit.
De facto standards enforced by users voting with their feet have been the
only effective standards.  Vendor enforcement is also effective e.g. GNU.
UNIX standards gave us nothing and that is all we will get from a Linux
standard.
Where can you buy two different "standard" versions of UNIX that actually
are compatible?  As near as I can tell, the only UNIX compatibility is at
the source code level.  Try moving binaries from Sun to SGI to HP or even
between X86 versions of Linux e.g. freeBSD to RedHat or SuSE.
Can anyone give me an example of concrete benefits from the UNIX standards'
efforts?
Can anyone give me concrete examples of how UNIX standards have had a direct
positive impact on their own work or business?
I'm willing to be wrong because the theory behind standards has great
promise (but then, so did Marxism and relational theory both of which are
hell in real life).
Paul Cubbage
PC Innovations
23450 Old Santa Cruz Hwy
Los Gatos, CA 95032
408-353-2164 408-353-8181FAX
pcubbage at ix.netcom.com


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