Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!eagle!icdoc!dcw
From: dcw@doc.ic.ac.uk (Duncan C White)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: AT&T/Sun merged UNIX
Message-ID: <196@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Feb 88 21:19:41 GMT
References: <11558@brl-adm.ARPA> <262@csed-47.csed-1.UUCP> <632@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: dcw@doc.ic.ac.uk (Duncan C White)
Organization: Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK.
Lines: 32

In article <632@kuling.UUCP> martin@kuling.UUCP (Per-Erik Martin) writes:
*In article <262@csed-47.csed-1.UUCP> roskos@csed-1.UUCP (Eric Roskos) writes:
*>
*>One thing to realize is that a standard that is too large and complex is
*>not likely to be accepted.  If standards are to tell people how to build
*>something (rather than just telling them to accept some existing product
*>as the standard), they have to be simple enough for people to be able
*>to build things to meet the standard.
*>
*
*On the other hand, too small a standard is not accepted as is.
*People start to ship standard products with non-standard extensions
*so we end up with a multitude of almost compatible implementations.
*A standard must be *large* enough to be accepted as it is.
*

I am reminded of Albert Einstein's famous suggestion:

	Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler...

>-- 
>((Per-Erik Martin, Computing Science Dept., Uppsala University,    )
> (Box 520, S-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden                                )
> (UUCP: martin@kuling.UUCP  (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!martin)))

	Duncan

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Duncan White,           |       Flying is the art of aiming oneself
Dept. Of Computing,     |       at the ground and missing.
Imperial College,       |               -- Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks
London SW7, England     |                  for all the fish.