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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
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: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 19:41:26 -0700
Organization: Me
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Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:
[ ... ABI+ ... ]
] Hmm. Not sure about that. Here's what their own blurb says on OS
] conformance:
]
] "Self-verification will be used to assure conformance to the ABI+
] specification. The ABI+ group does not wish to officially certify
] either systems or applications. However, the ABI+ group will be
] making available a family of verification tests that can be used
] by software developers[...]"
Applications software developers.
The difference is, without knowing the results of a conformance
test or being able to say "download and run this test and tell
me what it says", there is no way to verify that the OS will,
in fact, run the binaries.
As a commercial company, that leads to me say:
"We are ported to XXX, and have been reported to run
on YYY using XXX emulation mode. If you are running
YYY, do not call our support staff; they will not be
able to help you".
Try to get technical support from Sybase on their IBCS2 server
running on FreeBSD or Linux.
] The specs are public. So it seems to me that FreeOSs are in the
] same boat as the commercial ones: Satisfy the specs or suffer
] the consequences of having applications fail. You only have to
] "buy in" if you want to actually have influence or early
] information on the specifications.
The problem here is that you can't believably say to an
application vendor:
"flip this switch on your XXX system and fix the
way your application is coded if you get any
console messages. If you do this, then your
application will run on YYY and ZZZ as well,
guaranteed".
So you can't believably say:
"UNIX doesn't take 10 times the porting effort as DOS"
] I'm not all that familiar with the X Consortiums way of doing things,
] but this seems quite similar to that, doesn't it?
They provide a reference implementation, and all the commercial
houses use their code (just like the commercial TCP/IP houses
use the 4.3 BSD networking code).
If you have a reverence implementation for an ABI+ compliant
system, and system compliance testing software, then I'd love
to hear about it.
The reason I pointed at SVR4 EABI is that it is a publically
available standard, and there is some hope that commercial
OS's can be certified as well.
Then you can say:
"If you develop your application on FreeBSD/Linux/XXX,
and you flip the 'ABI mode' switch to run your normal
regrassion tests, your program is *guaranteed* to
run on FreeBSD, Linux, XXX, YYY, ZZZ, ..."
Then we all get more apps and we all get more commercial support
(as in someone to call when the program explodes who won't say
"sorry, we don't support FreeBSD/Linux/XXX").
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.