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

[arnold at skeeve.com]

There was an article about this in ;login: in 2015 if I recall
correctly. Worth trying to find.  The issue is a real one.

HTH,

Arnold

Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> 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