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Suggestion: The Ad-hoc Linux Standard Initiative




Well, I sent three members of the mailing list a memo regarding an idea I
had about a "LinuxStandard Initiative". Eli Marmor repsonded, and claimed
something about the fact that standards in the UNIX world turned to have
had an harmful effect. AFAIK the POSIX standard had a somewhat stabilizing
effect but since Eli is more experienced that I am in the UNIX world, I'd
take his word for it.

In any case, after changing the name to the "Ad-hoc Linux Standard
Initiative", I still believe it's a good idea. What I'm trying to do is to
release a standard with the specs of Linux as being brought by current
distribution. It will not deal with the implementation (i.e. kernel) and
will focus on directory structure, utilities and how exactly they 
should behave, available libc functions and system calls, commonly used
DLLs (libdl) etc.

The ad-hoc signifies two points:

1. If we (the Linux community) find that the ALS (Ad-hoc ...) is
inadequate for our growing needs (we are still in the OS developement 
stages), we can break it. However, we will make sure that for 5 years or
so, maintainance releases of the kernel and utilities of the defunct ALS
will be available.

Basically, individuals, companies and organizations will be encouraged to
sign a statement in which they promise just that. The statement will have
little or no legal value, but will be a statement of honour.

2. The first release of the ALS will not necessarily or thoroughly cover
how Linux will behave in 64-bit; how the network utilities will behave 
in IPv6; graphics, sound and animation integration; kernel driver
programming, etc. - things we still have to see how they
develop.


The mission of the ALSI is to make it safe for vendors of large commercial
software, such as Oracle, Informix etc. to port their software and APIs to
Linux. Of course they should realize, that as an OS under
constant developement in the computer world which itself still in constant
developement, we can only guarantee that we will maintain the old releases
long enough for the vendors to upgrade their software to the new one..

I posted this message here to see what a broader set of Linux users
things about it before I actually raise it up. I volunteer to be at
least the webmaster of this initiative, and Shachar Tal said I could use
vipe.technion.ac.il as its host.

Please post your opinions to the list.

	Shlomi Fish


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@t2.technion.ac.il 
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@ibm.net

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