On Aug 8, 2005, at 11:26 AM, John Plocher wrote:
As a result, Sun has developed a "binary model" (and here I do not
mean "proprietary") that puts a premium on allowing things to maintain
compatibility - at a binary interface/API level - over time and over
release cycles.
Er, no offense, but every production library group I know of,
both in open source and closed source, has an ABI model. The only
difference between them and Sun is that other groups produce major
versions. Occasionally some fool package manager for a distro
will add a patch that breaks compatibility, but the original
developers do not assume a source-based environment exists.
What they do require, however, is the ability to build from source
when that is desirable. Many of the folks I work with will, out of
common sense, build the entire system from scratch before installation
so that they know the build system works. If your goal is to install
a system that can be tweaked or fixed when bugs are found, then you
don't want to find out that you can't rebuild the system after the
bugs are discovered. Also, many SIs are required by contract to
install an open source system and the way to demonstrate that
is to let the customer build from source.
In other words, whether or not an ABI exists makes no difference.
We still need a system that can be built from its source code, and
the best way to get there is a package management system because
that makes the build extensible to third parties.
....Roy
p.s. Don't use FOSS or FLOSS (those acronyms are only used by
outside people studying both free software and open source
projects). OpenSolaris is simply an open source project.
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