Ralph,

Again, thanks for the input.  Here's how I handled the single authority vs. 
open source stability/compatibility issue:

============

...blah, blah about replacing existing libraries, which breaks application 
compatibility...blah

This approach also brings to Linux a level of backward compatibility that is 
often lacking in legacy proprietary operating systems under the control of a 
single commercial authority.  Whether intentional or accidental, proprietary 
operating system vendors may keep competitors off-balance by replacing core 
libraries with new versions or incremental updates.   Unfortunately, customers 
cannot avoid the unpredictable behavior that results by confining the changes 
to their operating sytems to official OS updates or service packs. These 
proprietary systems are often updated (or even downgraded) automatically when 
customers install commercial applications.  

Fortunately, the Open Source nature of Linux already makes it nearly impossible 
for any single Linux provider to make standards a moving target in this manner, 
because the latest versions of core Linux libraries are freely available by all 
regardless of the Linux distribution you use.  But LSB adds one more level of 
insurance. Regardless of how updates to an LSB compliant Linux offering occur, 
they will not break LSB compliant applications since the LSB libraries will 
remain untouched.  

=============

Shucks, nobody noticed the order of my command examples...

cat, sleep, more, man, sed, nice, tail


;-)

-Nick

-- 
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Nicholas Petreley                   LinuxWorld - InfoWorld
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.petreley.com - Eph 6:12
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