FOSS and Interface Taxonomy levels

[James Carlson]

John Plocher writes:
> Volatile libraries that can be installed by the end user
> that have an architecture that allows the user to build
> self-contained silos of stuff?
> 	Probably extremely valuable

That's precisely the part that I'm disputing.

It's no better than an attractive nuisance.  We're telling customers
that we've got a pretty toy that they can look at, but if they are
foolish enough to touch it, it'll just come apart in their hands.  A
patch or just a stiff breeze may well make it fall over.

Where's the value (extreme or otherwise) in delivering misery?

Worse still, we're telling customers that some things are
"untouchable" where it's fairly clear that this is nonsense: that the
rest of the world depends on them, they haven't changed in ages, and
we've attached the pejorative "Volatile" term to them as a poor
substitute for simply saying "not written by an SMI-employed engineer,
so we can't just fire 'em if they do something stupid."

That's not architecture.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive        71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
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