On 12/30/2012 03:22 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
On 12/30/2012 02:03 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
I suppose I could find Josh Gay and Bradley Kuhn on IRC, ask them for
their opinion, and then do a HBR cure. :)
I do read this list, but, I'm not sure I can be of help, since in 1991 I
was a 10 year old kid who knew nothing about GNU or UNIX :-) Here is
some conjecture, though ...
My guess is that system interface definition files were mentioned
explicitly because it was a real problem and a good way of reminding
people to be conscientious about portability (without using the term
'portable'). People were developing GNU on top of all sorts of different
UNIX systems, POSIX was still in flux and controversial[1][2]. So, we
probably couldn't use a definition of "Standard Interface" like we have
in GPLv3 to cover this stuff -- after all, what was a "standard" and
really, what does "widely adopted" mean in 1991?
[1]: <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX#Controversies>
[2]: funny stuff
<
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/gnu.announce/-RaFFh67Fd...