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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!qns3.qns.com!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!news.iij.ad.jp!news.CET.CO.JP!usenet From: Michael Hancock <michaelh@cet.co.jp> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 14:16:26 -0700 Organization: CET Lines: 28 Message-ID: <3176B12A.5299@cet.co.jp> References: <NELSON.96Apr15010553@ns.crynwr.com> <yfgbuktfn1w.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <3172AF35.15A9D29E@wolfenet.com> <31734160.1332595A@lambert.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: box01.cet.co.jp Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Win16; I) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:21810 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:704 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3341 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3183 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:17713 comp.os.linux.advocacy:46337 Terry Lambert wrote: ---------------- One big win would be a written ABI specification, a *publically available* test suite to make sure a system implements the ABI from revision to revision, and a mode switch for each compliant system to place it in "ABI ONLY mode" to determine application conformance to the ABI. The system vendors would have to encourage the use of this mode when running testing on commercial products by offering both self-ceritification (branding: "Free UNIX Friendly"?) and by only guaranteeing the interfaces exported by the ABI from revision to revision. If a commercial vendor wants to avoid another port for the next OS release, they need to certify. ---------------- This is a great idea. Walnut Creek and Redhat would be able to distribute the "Free Unix Friendly ABI95 and Compliant Suite95 CD-ROM". It would also be nice if the infrastructure types "FreeBSD/WinNT" and the desktop types "Linux/Win95" had some incentive to not only certify their apps with the ABI but also under the API mode of both platforms. This would be a cooperative ironning out of the API. But is it fun enough for the representative communities to implement? -- Michael Hancock michaelh@cet.co.jp