Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 2 May 1997 09:04:45 -0500 (CDT) | From | Michael Brennen <> | Subject | Re: Dropping a.out support |
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How much quantifiable time does it take to support a stable legacy application like a.out?
I understand that many do this for fun or a sense of accomplishment. I haven't run my business on linux for over two years just for fun (I do enjoy what I do :). If linux is to be defined by the definition of what the developers call "fun", then it will forever remain a hobby OS without serious support in the commercial market, and I need to bail to BSDI or some such. I don't want to do that for many reasons; I like linux and have found it to work very well for my business. However, if linux is to be taken seriously commercially, the developers must treat it as such, with a consideration of what is needed. Yes, that may take the "fun" out of it; after 21+ years in software development, I know that tension and I understand that is part of the price of success.
-- Michael
On Fri, 2 May 1997, Peter Mutsaers wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2 May 1997 08:33:30 -0500 (CDT), Michael Brennen > >> <mbrennen@fni.com> said: > > MB> After all this time one does not gain stability by removing > MB> a.out. The one "efficiency" I can think of to dump the a.out > MB> format is kernel size because it doesn't need the a.out loader > MB> any more. How much does that take? If you don't want it, > MB> just don't compile it in your kernels. > > How about effeciency w.r.t one of the most important resources: The > valuable time of Linux developers. I assume there is a reason that > support for a.out is being dropped from ld.so: Some new feature that > would require extra time to not only do it for ELF but also for a.out. > > Also they do it for free and thus for fun; you cannot expect them to > support old stuff forever and waste a lot of their time on this.
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