On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 04:15, Andrew Josey wrote:
> hi Chris
> I'd certainly be open to suggestions on where/how to better reach
> the Linux development community (which mailing lists or newsgroups).
> (I once did manage to get copies of the Single UNIX Specification Version
> 2 onto the LinuxWorld Conference CDs a couple of times:-)
<small rant>
To my mind, step one is not to drive them away when they come to you. I
came to this group by my own choice as a linux developer trying to learn
about POSIX so I could write to the standard. Granted I am very small
potatoes in this world, but it seems every 3 months or so when a thread
comes up on Linux and POSIX, it immediately gets cast as Linux versus
POSIX. Then all sorts of stuff gets slung around about how Linux
developers are arrogant and are going to lead to the downfall of Unix
and of all civilization as we know it.
Formally the Austin Group does not do this. Formally the Austin Group
has been very productive in its relation to the LSB, IMO. But I also
think that some people on this list could help by remembering that there
are Linux developers and advocates reading this list, and they are your
allies. So you would help them better by avoiding sweeping
generalizations about the Linux Community.
<end rant>
As a more productive answer to your question, it seems the biggest place
where POSIX is not yet reaching the mass of linux developers is in the
myriad applications being written by small groups. The glibc, kernel,
and GCC efforts are already aware of POSIX, and (generally) moving
toward it, or at least trying to be clear about what is an extension,
and if they feel anything should conflict with POSIX, documenting why.
For these core groups, I see as solid progress.
But the small project developers are left out in the cold, probably
because it's hard to reach a bunch of small groups. But today, a big
portion of that development is hosted on SourceForge. So my thought is
to work with SourceForge to make relevant POSIX conformance testing
highly visible and readily available. Not only could this increase the
body of work written to POSIX, but by increasing mindshare in those
small development groups, their positive feedback would strengthen the
hand of the people working toward POSIX in the GCC, glibc, and kernel
efforts.
(Clearly, this does not refer to just dropping the entire conformance
suite on the site, but rather things like scanners that read shell
scripts and point out non-conforming switches that are being used,
non-compliant makefiles, things like that).
Tying this back to my original rant, it should be pretty clear that an
approach to those communities that comes across like "you stupid
amateurs, you have been doing it all wrong, you must do it our way,"
could do more harm than good.
Also, more frequent releases to outlets like Linux Weekly News and the
Linux Journal. Particularly of tools that will make a transition to
POSIX easier. How-To articles, whatever. (I would stay away from /.
because in my eyes that type of forum tends to bring out the zealots in
each group, which usually does not further the cause of unity).
Hopefully, you'll find a germ of a useful idea somewhere in there.
--
Karl
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