Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: realloc
Message-ID: <9963@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 31 Mar 89 17:54:27 GMT
References: <10170@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <DAVIDL.89Mar29091834@intelob.intel.com> <740@jhereg.Jhereg.MN.ORG>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 20

In article <740@jhereg.Jhereg.MN.ORG> mark@jhereg.MN.ORG (Mark H. Colburn) writes:
>One of the SVID's biggest flaws is that it is NOT a standard: it was never 
>balloted and approved by anyone.

That's not a necessary criterion for a standard.

>It is an interface specification for a particular implementation of Unix.

That argument was rejected by Federal courts during the AFCAC-251 appeals.
The SVID is a useful specification for waht constitutes "UNIX
functionality", much more so than any available alternative.
It certainly is not logically tied to a particular implementation,
although for economic reasons most would license AT&T's product rather
than start from scratch.

>If the SVID were a standard, there would have been no need for P1003.
>Unfortunately, there were a couple of hole in the SVID which you could
>drive trucks through, hence P1003.

Nah, IEEE P1003's formation had little to do with the SVID.