> I think there are two things that we will gain.
> 
> 1. uniformity of executable format across platforms.

Last i saw, there was no working Alpha ELF support in the GNU tools.
I certainly won't be the person to write it...  so, unless you plan
to, you can't really claim this point...  8-)


> I've been trying to lobby the use of the note field, but noone seems to
> care or listen.

"piffle."

The point of magic numbers is so that various systems can distinguish
each others' binaries.

What would happen if you took a NetBSD/i386 ELF binary, complete with
special 'note,' and tried to run it on an SVR4 system?  Nobody has
said "it will not run" yet to me, which is the only 'correct' answer
if the executable format is reasonable.

If NetBSD is going to switch executable formats, it might as well at
least pick one that's not easily confused with another system's.


chris