From: pmacdona@sanjuan (Peter MacDonald) Subject: Re: Linux Standards (was: Stabilizing Linux) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 23:49:35 GMT
In article <1992Aug16.221736.9732@athena.mit.edu> tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) writes:
>
> From: danielce@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Daniel AMP Carosone)
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 00:47:18 GMT
>
> Even ignoring the factions and parties building releases, it is an
> excellent idea to have a standards document to which releases must
> conform rather than a release to which the standard must conform.
>
>I disagree. Most usuable standards in the world come about by adopting
>an already working implementation and declaring it to be a standard.
>Most unworkable standards in the world happen because they were designed
>by a committee, which typically consist of pompous people who just sit
>around a table, and who are not, generally, the people who would
>actually be doing the implementation.
>
>If you want an example of this, just look at the Internet --- the
>Internet "standards" were first done by having working implementations,
>which were then annointed as the standard. In contrast, you have the
>OSI standards --- which were designed by committee without having any
>implementation experience --- and what you end up with is a disaster.
Oh yes, and don't forget X400.
...
>
>However, without this, you have to face the fact that you will have a
>non-trivial amount of people with relatively little Unix system
>experience that will be constantly spouting off and you either have to
>outright ignore them --- which doesn't tend to go over well if you want
>to at least have the pretense of democracy --- or you have to spend a
>lot of time and energy teaching them why they are broken.
I've got a great idea. Lets develop a modified mailing list that is split
into 10 subgroups: linux-activists0 through linux-activists9. Each person
could subscribe to any *one* of them that they like, but here is the catch.
Each subscriber would be graded, between 0 and 9, after subscription, based
upon the amount they have contributed to the Linux effort. And (Oh, I love
this part), we could have a committee that would decide and revise that grade,
ya. Linus, I assume, would get an automatic 9. But maybe the committee
would decide that that was inappropriate. ;-)
Now, whatever level a user subscribed to, he would only receive postings from
users >= that grade. ie. subscribing to linux-activists1, would automatically
filter out all the zero's (and are there ever a chestfull of them out there
to filter).
>
> - Ted
Peter.