Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: POSIX bashing
Message-ID: <BZS.91Mar29171508@world.std.com>
Date: 29 Mar 91 22:15:08 GMT
References: <3419@unisoft.UUCP> <5980071@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <3446@unisoft.UUCP>
	<15621@smoke.brl.mil>
Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: The World
Lines: 65
In-Reply-To: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil's message of 29 Mar 91 09: 42:30 GMT


From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
>People who were not involved should not presume to know what the
>arguments were.  In fact, the 4.2BSD job control hack was a horrible
>abomination with a large number of technical problems.  POSIX.1 had
>to reengineer it just to address most of the security and other
>substantive issues.  It is still widely felt that the job control
>hack is one of the most inelegant parts of any UNIX variant that
>has it.  Certainly there have been much better designs for facilities
>that render the BSD-style hack unnecessary.

Unfortunately, this is where standards activities go right off the
deep-end. The very thought that "POSIX.1" had to "reengineer" job
control gives me the willies (whatever they are, but I'm sure I have
them now!)

Has anyone implemented this design-by-committee? Does it actually work
(other than in theory)? Is it performant? Is it useful?

I sincerely believe that when some facility is found lacking the
standards committees should either (although these aren't mutually
exclusive, necessarily):

	1. Table that part of the standard, publish their reasons,
	and hope something comes along.

	2. Standardize the industry practice with some sort of
	caveat that they have serious reservations and will likely
	change this in the future (being as many vendors already have
	the "industry practice" implemented this is hardly a major headache).

	3. Solicit proposals for implementations, already in use (or
	wait for them to become in use), which meet the committees'
	criteria, and then standardize the result of that experience.

But the idea of "anyone with budget to show up at a standards
committee meeting" reengineering anything is a horrid thought.

Sort of like arithmetic by majority vote.

Is there anything more to getting a vote on or a say in these
reengineerings than merely being able to show up at the door and
(perhaps) fog a mirror???

I was at a 1201 meeting and almost everyone was eager to redesign X
from scratch. Unfortunately, near as I could tell less than a third of
the people in the room had ever even written a program in their life,
let alone had any credentials to do such work.

(I realize Doug Gwyn is probably quite capable of doing most any of
these things, so what?  I was in the room at 1201, so was Scheifler,
that was TWO votes out of 40, and at least half the room was filled
with drooling human-factors zomboids with masters degrees in advanced
rat-mazing techniques and SCIENTIFIC PROOF that red was a better color
for buttons than blue or some such nonsense and wanted all of X
reengineered based on their occult knowledge, and had never heard of
either of us. I never went back, feh! arithmetic by majority vote.)

This sort of behavior is what dooms all these standards efforts. They
should be outlawed, the whole thing is sincerely idiotic.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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