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Re: Managing Innovation

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Managing Innovation
• From: David Megginson <dmeggin@a...>
• Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 08:33:11 -0400
• In-reply-to: <200310010238.h912cXG11631@d...>
• References: <3F7A25ED.4030203@t...><830178CE7378FC40BC6F1DDADCFDD1D1C6FFF8@R...><200310010238.h912cXG11631@d...>
• Sender: David Megginson <dmeggin@a...>

Joe English writes:

 > I thought the proposition that Unix is "the simplest thing that
 > will possibly work" was the funny part.  Let's face it, any OS that
 > ships with sendmail(8) as the default MTA cannot by any stretch of
 > the imagination be considered the "simplest thing possible".  Or a
 > "secure system", for that matter.

You've been dazzled by Unix's simplicity.  Sendmail is not part of
Unix, though it may be part of many distributions (mine actually uses
exim).

One of the most beautifully simple parts of Unix and other Posix OS's
(like Linux) is that the OS is usually a small kernel with lots of
low-level device drivers and a compact set of well-defined services.
That's why catastrophic crashes in production-grade Linux/BSD/Unix
systems are so rare -- almost everything happens in user space, while
Windows and other OS's do a lot more (like GUI work) in kernel space,
where the risk of a system crash or security breach is much higher.

It's a lot like XML: XML 1.0/1.1 are very simple, just like the
Unix/Linux kernel.  All of the specs that depend on XML are not
simple, of course, just like all of the apps that run on Posix systems
are not simple.


All the best,


David

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