On Jul 28, 2005, at 2:46 PM, Bryan Cantrill wrote:
For an operating system, the constraints of existing interfaces are a
_technical_ problem, _not_ just a business problem.
That is absolute rubbish. A technical problem is something for which
a technical solution can be created to resolve the problem. An
interface constraint is simply a decision not to change some aspect
of the interface. It is no more of a technical problem than deciding
whether you want to develop a word processor or a web browser.
Discovering if an interface would be changed by an integration is
a technical problem. An ARC review should certainly be looking for
such changes. It is fine for incompatible changes to require a major
revision number to change, but the decisions on whether or not to
develop such a change and when to release new major revisions
are *business decisions*. Those are Sun-internal Solaris decisions,
not OpenSolaris-wide decisions. Therefore, OpenSolaris can let new
development happen on an unstable "next major release" branch and
only worry about the interface constraints when those changes are
proposed for back-porting to a stable branch.
New interfaces
obviously don't have these constraints, which is precisely why they
must
be developed so carefully -- today's new interface is tomorrow's
constraint.
They have to be released carefully. We can have 100 monkeys
typing away at the interface and that is fine -- it costs nothing
until someone asks "can I release this as version x.y.z?", at
which point the new interface is going to have to satisfy whatever
constraints the community wants to place on it.
....Roy
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