>BTW, if NetBSD does go for ELF, maybe we should go for a modified ELF
>with a different magic number and OS identifiers?

NetBSD's pmax and alpha ports _are_ using ELF as the native NetBSD format.

The Linux exec strategy seems to be to usurp whatever the "native"
ABI is on any given machine.   Linux now uses ELF on i386, ECOFF on
Alphas;  I don't know about linux/sparc, but I'd guess it uses the
same format as Solaris.   

I'd guess this means adding a Linux-compatible sys_personality()
syscall to the "vendor native" emul for each NetBSD platform that
supports linux emulation, and having this call hot-swap the emul.  Ick.

To coin a phrase, ``"Linux software engineering" is an oxymoron''.

>BTW, if NetBSD does go for ELF, maybe we should go for a modified ELF
>with a different magic number and OS identifiers?

But there _are_ no OS identifiers in ELF.  (in the minds of ELF'S
designers, there is presumably only one unix: SVR4.)  

Perhaps someone should invet one, but the hard part to extending or
modifying ELF to include such a tag is getting everyone in the
free-unix community, and Cygnus/FSF, to agree on how to do it.