What's a developer to do?

[Bruce Dawson]

Bill Sconce wrote:
>>"I'm starting to lose the battle with Linux - the dynamic builds will
>>not work on all Linux systems, and the static builds are doing such
>>nasty things in libc nowadays that they too probably won't work  without
>>specific libc.so's on your system.  Apparently the world is  moving
>>towards a state where only Linux distro builders can produce  proper
>>binaries, 
> 
> Ah. Some weasel words to be aware of: "Apparently", "the world is moving." 

Ah. I saw the weasel words. The original author, Jean-Claude Wippler
(jcw) is meritous for noticing a barely perceptible slippage that's
happening in Linux, and to be applauded for pointing it out so
succinctly. That is: Linux is diverging into the old Unix Wars mentality.

As maddog pointed out, LSB should solve this. Jcw was lamenting that the
problem still exists, regardless of LSB. I think maddog will be
determining if starpacks/TCL/... are following LSB conventions or not.

>>and where a binary no longer works across Linux releases,
> Ah, he IS trying to spin us up.  (Binaries NEVER "worked across releases".
> (At one point we broke ALL of them, on purpose ... remember ELF?)

Of course I'm/he is trying to "spin us up" ... the original posting
points out a failure in the Linux culture - its in serious danger of
regressing from its "shiny city on the hill" back to the dank hallways
of the cathedral. The original author was lamenting that Linux appeared
to be moving away from the problems of incompatibility, but now no one
appears to care anymore. The move to ELF was something the community
*wanted* to happen - it solved *a lot* of architecture compatibility
problems.

And I have to admit that I've been seeing a lot of the "I just want
software, I don't care if it works or not" attitude creep out of the
consumer marketplace and into the Linux space. This is part of what made
Microsoft the bumbling, yet profitable giant it is today. Do we want
Linux to be just like Microsoft? I believe some of us do, but I think
those people can be coaxed to think twice: do we really want Linux to be
like Microsoft? (i.e. do we want Linux to be a business?)

>>(what a total cop-out compared to Windows!).
> 
> Disconnect.
> Power off.
> Bye.

Ah Ha! Now who is doing the cop-out?

--Bruce
PS: I'm using "fanatic rhetoric" because people on this list seem to
respond to it; seems to be part of being a "social club for geeks". (And
I'm missing my geeky friends lately - umbrella-laced rum only goes so
far). There is a real, but subtle, problem here, and I thank maddog for
seeing it and looking into it more.

I shall stick to technical details on future postings to this thread.