On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 16:58 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > Timothy Murphy wrote: > > Rick Stevens wrote: > > > >> Note that I have the 1.4.0.99-fc5.i586 version of Skype installed (yes, > >> an i586 package on 64-bit machines running 64-bit Fedora). > > > > Why on earth does skype update their rpm for an obsolete version of Fedora, > > and then give this as the version for Fedora-7 ? > > Strange. > > I'm not at all surprised that people don't want to rebuild and > redistribute things at the pace fedora changes. The unix spec was > pretty much complete circa 1989 when AT&T published version 3 of SVID. > If something works once, why should you have to repackage it all the time? Generally, if you keep with the baseline stuff or tried-and-true features, they remain backwards compatible and you don't have to rebuild. I write ANSI POSIX-compliant C code (not C++ or C#) because I am not dependent on any class libraries that may or may not be installed on any given machine. The startup scripts that bring your machine up are Bourne shell scripts because that's the only shell you were guaranteed to have on your machine. Csh, tsh, ksh and the rest were optional. If, however, you keep changing your application to use new features of the underlying OS, optional add-ons or ones that are "bleeding edge" and may change in the future, it's in your best interest to keep up with those features. From a marketing standpoint, it also shows that you are watching the world and not just "sliding by". Going back to SVID V3, how many "a.out"-binary applications still exist for *nix? Not too many, and those that are have an extremely small market penetration. The world went to COFF and ELF because they're better, and savvy people went with those changes. Taking it to the other extreme, heck, Microsoft isn't even compatible with themselves--and they control the ENTIRE farking environment! How many time has a new version of the VB libraries been necessary because the new version of VB that some application was built under wasn't backwards compatible? I can think of about 50 apps where that occurred. Sheesh! Ok, I feel a flame war coming on this one. Feel free to assault me. Don't expect responses. I'm simply stating my position and I don't mean to insult anyone or cast aspersions on their ancestry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer rstevens@xxxxxxxxxxxx - - CDN Systems, Internap, Inc. http://www.internap.com - - - - I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on tape somewhere, but - - probably not recoverable. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
