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Re: Wish for 2002 ...
- From: Markus Friedl <markus at openbsd dot org>
- To: Felix von Leitner <leitner at convergence dot de>
- Cc: "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <tb at becket dot net>, Felix von Leitner <felix-secaudit at fefe dot de>, Security Audit <security-audit at ferret dot lmh dot ox dot ac dot uk>, Andrew Josey <a dot josey at opengroup dot org>, Tiemann <tiemann at redhat dot com>, libc-alpha at sources dot redhat dot com, Robust Open Source <open-source at csl dot sri dot com>
- Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 21:53:54 +0100
- Subject: Re: Wish for 2002 ...
- References: <87u1tsiwk1.fsf@becket.becket.net> <20020111192021.B12852@convergence.de>
On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 07:20:21PM +0100, Felix von Leitner wrote:
> How can someone who doesn't understand the value of standardized APIs
> even begin to argue about our implementation of a standardized API?
Oh, it was you who contributed to glibc and not Thomas.
> > Now you've raised another, which is that somehow adding a function
> > that many people already use will actually *decrease* portability.
> > That's a new one, but it's also false.
>
> See what adding the function to openssh did for the OpenBSD people.
> A separate project had to be forked off that makes the sources portable.
Well, that's not true. Again, your don't know your history.
> This kind of software hell is something everyone else tries hard to
> avoid. That's why people use autoconf (heard of it?) and libtool (you
> should try it!).
>
> If your BSD software does not work on Linux, that's too bad, but
> frankly, I don't care. Software that is not portable should be
> discarded. Investing the time to make it more portable is a waste of
> time for most projects. If there would have been a choice for openssh,
> people would have spent their time better.
Well, that's not true. Zero time is spent on OpenSSH's portability
because of strlcpy -- just think of the hundred ways to handle utmp
across systems. I guess that Damien would probably have used strlcpy
even if had to rewrite everything from the scratch.