Re: posible bug in daemontools

On 19 March 2010 11:19, Sabahattin Gucukoglu
<[email protected]> wrote:
> It's been a bad week, and I'm not going to make any friends.  So ...

You have my ( our ) sympathy. ;o)

> In your fanboy rant, this part needs the most attention:
>
> On 19 Mar 2010, at 08:34, Laurent Bercot wrote:
> Sure, but existing standards fail to address a problem that slashpackage
>> does address. Part of the DJB philosophy is: if the existing standards
>> don't meet your technical requirements, don't follow them. Do not settle
>> for mediocrity, but design the APIs you need, for a technically better
>> product. And that very philosophy gave you dns_tranmit_start() over
>> gethostbyname().
>
> It also gave us qmail.
> http://www.dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html
>
> Whatever you may say about his software's "Technical excellence", it is marked by an
> unbelievable and frank disrespect of others, and in several clear cases is WRONG.

'We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found
ourselves than by those which have occurred to others. [Blaise Pascal]

>Demanding respect of others under such circumstances is therefore somewhat dangerous >in the presence of flammable liquids.  Any more questions?

Yes. Xylene anyone? ;o)

For my part, I meant don't decry what has come before, even if it
erred slighly.  It gives you the steps upon which to build further.

>> Now do you understand how going ahead and forking djbware (and I
>> mean *distributing* software, I don't care what people do at home, of
>> course) without the utmost prudence can be seen as disrespectful?
>
> No.  He can do whatever he damn well pleases, and for whomever it may so benefit.  He >does not need to first gain the appeal, love and personal favours of DJB or his minion of >faithful followers.

As long as what is done consolidates, improves, or amplifies ( bugs
excepted ) what came before, then fine.  If not, why bother?  Wasted
effort.  As to the 'faithful followers', well, just maybe they
appreciate the starting blocks that Dr Bernstein put in place, and
wish to push the envelope a little further?   They have as miuch right
to that as you do to decry it.

> But Dan is not special, a god, somewhat for whom respect is given but not taken.

I'm not sure that anyone has taken that stance, have they?

>  If you had any doubts, check out some of the mechanisms used by Apple, Courier, >Postfix, Dovecot or numerous others.

.. most of which have their own set of quirks.  I've yet to see a
perfect piece of software.
Even God makes mistakes, look at us!

> All the good bits without the obsolete rubbish and seniority complexes that prevent the
> software from gaining any kind of useful deployment in the 21st century.

Sweeping statement which could open a whole new can of worms.  I'm not
even going there,
Go ahead... Take a weekend chill pill. Enjoy. ;o)

Regards,



Chris.