[TUHS] Do Interface specifications such POSIX or the LSB Still Matter

[Clem Cole]

I've send a couple of you private messages with some more details of why I
ask this, but I'll bring the large question to debate here:


​Have POSIX and​
LSB lost
​their
 usefulness/relevance?  If so, we know ISV’s like Ansys are not going to go
‘FOSS’ and make their sources available (ignore religious beliefs, it just
is not their business model); how to we get that level of precision to
allow
​the part of the
 market
​ that will be 'binary only' continue to
 create applications?

Seriously, please try to stay away from religion on this
​ question.   Clearly, there are a large number of ISVs have traditionally
used interface specifications.  To me it started with things like the old
Cobol and Fortran standards for the languages.   That was not good enough
since the systems diverge, and /usr/group then IEEE/ANSI/ISO did Posix.


Clearly, Posix enabled Unix implementations such a Linux to shine, although
Linux does not doggedly follow it.  Apple was once Posix conformant, but
I'd not think they worry to much about it.   Linux created LSB, but I see
fewer and fewer references to it.

I worry that without a real binary definition, it's darned hard (at least
in the higher end of the business that I live day-to-day) to get ISV's to
care.

What do you folks think?

Clem
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