Re: POSIX compliance [RE: Another package ported]

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

"Jim Franklin" <cykick@home.com> writes:

> Is there a reason we follow the standard at all times? If the hurd is
> cutting edge technology wouldn't it seem that the standard should to some
> extent conform to the hurd's requirements? 

We have very little power in the standards process.  We used to have
more, but we stopped bothering.

> Is there a particular benefit to
> being completely POSIX compliant? Are there ways to petition the POSIX
> standards committee to modify their standard in certain instances? 

The answer to both questions is Yes.

But the real point is that we want to be able to run arbitrary
programs on our system.  It's not like we must have approval from some
agency, and there might come a point where we have to say "this sucks,
it's a no-go".

The particular case of MAXHOSTNAMLEN is not such a case: the Posix
standards committee (and its friends) is not the problem.  The DNS
imposes host name limitations in various ways, and so do other parts
of internet architecture.  So it sucks that we have to have the
limitation repeated in the Hurd (it would be better to have no Hurd
limit, making it easier to adapt to a future Internet without those
host name length limitations), but we can live with it.