[brussels-dev] [networking-discuss] dladm(1M) man page

[Peter Memishian]

 > Yes, I agree it's entirely possible that people will in fact do stupid
 > things with "private" variables.  History has shown that's true.  The
 > only thing I can ask here is that all the available technical
 > documentation for the private variable interfaces explains _clearly_
 > why creating a private variable, though it looks "easy," is in fact a
 > Very Bad Thing, and suggesting strongly that well-defined public ones
 > are better.

So suppose they need to add a way to configure new feature X, where X is
likely to become commonplace.  Suppose there's no framework-level (aka
public) support for feature X yet.  Of course, it would be ideal if they
worked with the OpenSolaris community to add framework-level support for
feature X, but I think that's quite unlikely.  I'd rather see them use a
private property than invent some other hacky one-off mechanism.

-- 
meem