On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 02:14:50PM -0700, Philip Brown wrote: > In my opinion; yes, you SHOULD abandon the idea of Private interfaces. > In the "new world order" of supposedly "open" solaris, the lowest case > should be something like "unstable".
As has been pointed out many times, "Private" does not mean, and has never been intended to mean, "Secret". It simply means that the interface is an implementation detail -private- to a particular collection of software. The privacy belongs to the software, not the people who wrote it, so I don't see how OpenSolaris changes this. After all, it was possible for years to discover and consume all kinds of Private interfaces despite lack of universal access to the source. And people did this. And they suffered for it. What's changed? > Someone mentioned "Volatile" later in this email thread; however, there > appears to be some kind of additional implications about declaring an > interface "volatile", in sun terminology, so that's why I didnt just suggest > using "volatile" instead of "unstable". Unstable is gone, replaced by Uncommitted. But Uncommitted (and Volatile) convey an intent that consumers outside the containing consolidation will and perhaps should consume the interface. Consolidation Private explicitly denies that intent, and Project Private further denies the intent that other projects within the consolidation should consume it - or that the original project team will fix them up if they do and the interface is later changed. I think this is exactly what Jim Carlson and John Plocher have explained quite well in this thread so far. Making any level of commitment whatsoever to something explicitly intended as nothing more than an implementation detail will make it impossible for innovation to occur in existing projects while discouraging future project teams from forming at all. What are you expecting to gain that would justify that cost? -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" Fishworks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
