Subject: Re: Why do I keep hearing 4.3 BSD these days? (was: Re: The unbearable
To: Paul A Vixie <vixie@mfnx.net>
From: Johnny Billquist <bqt@update.uu.se>
List: port-vax
Date: 05/26/2001 08:28:35
On Fri, 25 May 2001, Paul A Vixie wrote:

> > 1, it predates POSIX by a year. so, theres none of the POSIX bloat in it. 
> > 2, it has not systemV compatibility.
> 
> which means a lot of recently written open source utilities won't compile
> on it.  (which probably makes sense since recently written software tends
> to be written with large-memory assumptions that don't hold true for vaxen.)

While this is partially true, not all software today is a total bloat, and
it is a shame to have problems compiling everything.

> > also, there are no shared libraries (which i think is a good thind, i 
> > think shared libraries are an abomination, a security and reliability 
> > disaster, and an administration pain in the ass, as well as plain ugly) 
> 
> if you mean the sunos-style shlibs which now dominate the industry, i agree.
> if you mean shared libraries in general, i DISagree.  look at VMS or MPE
> for examples of how to do this in a secure and non-"plain ugly" way.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Shared libraries are *the right
thing*. Problem was just that Unix never had them, and when SUN got around
to it, they made a real kludge.
Security in Unix in general is pretty much a joke, so why do people
complain?

Unix hackers seems to have forgotten that they are sometimes using as much
of a joke for a system compared to real systems, as Windows is a joke
compared to Unix.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol