Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!rice!hsdndev!spdcc!dirtydog.ima.isc.com!ism.isc.com!b1!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: file attributes
Summary: precisely the WRONG approach
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.205716.20067@ico.isc.com>
Date: 24 Jun 91 20:57:16 GMT
References: <1780@sranha.sra.co.jp>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 31

I'd been following the "file attributes" discussion from a safe distance...
until this came by...

erik@srava.sra.co.jp (Erik M. van der Poel), who is advocating the general
idea of "file attributes", writes:

> ...I have no hidden agendas here, so let me spell it out. One of
> my aims is to get something like this into POSIX. This way, many
> vendors will feel obliged to support it.

Hasn't this game of politics-before-technology been played out enough
times--failing every time--for us to reject it?  Sure, you're not the first
person to try to use a standards effort to advance a personal agenda, but
it's still nothing to be proud of.

Look:  FIRST figure out what you're trying to do.  NEXT figure out how to
do it.  THEN implement it.  It won't be right the first time, so go through
some cycles of refinement.  Get other people to try it out, or to try their
own approaches.  See what works best.  Only AFTER you've got it pretty
much right is it time to think about standardization.  This business of
pouring the concrete, then trying to lay the forms before it sets up, has
got to stop.

Anyway, making vendors "feel obliged to support it" because of a standard
is a sure sign you've done a bad job.  If you get it right technically,
they'll support it because it benefits their product to do so.  We get
enough gratuitous baggage loaded into commercial systems as it is, without
trying to force more.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Simpler is better.