Re: [ldapext] DBIS commentary

[Simo Sorce <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 2015-12-01 at 10:13 +0000, Bannister, Mark wrote:
> <rant>
> 
> Wait.  NIS permitted this.  If folk have done what NIS allowed them to
> do, and it fitted their working practice, then you can't blame them
> for that.  If you don't like it and want to label it "a mess", that's
> fine you can do that, but I do not want to leave people behind.  If
> you wish to call it a mess, then Sun Microsystems created the mess,
> but it's infrastructure and we're stuck with it.

Bugs happen, even in specifications.

> Imagine if the electronics industry in America
> 
> started selling devices with only English three-pin
> plugs<https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiQzfjRs7rJAhUCKiYKHY6eCZoQFggiMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fastcodesign.com%2F3032807%2Fwhy-england-has-the-best-wall-sockets-on-earth&usg=AFQjCNEP4sremkvI56BoTb7D7rJhFaRbgg>, citing that the original was a “bad design” and anyone who has found themselves in such a mess as to have incompatible wall sockets, well very sorry for them but that’s just tough luck.

Funny you bring up this example, because these kind of changes happened
quite a few times in history, just on power plugs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Obsolete_types

I've used converters from one type to another for many years in Italy
given there we are still supposedly at the end of a multi-decades long
transition from this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Italy_.28Type_L.29
to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#CEE_7.2F17_unearthed_plug
or this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#CEE_7.2F3_and_CEE_7.2F4_.28German_.22Schuko.22.3B_Type_F.29
by way of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#CEE_7.2F16_.22Europlug.22_.28Type_C.29

> Right.  You’d cause an outcry.

If enough people thought it was the end of the world, yeah, but it
didn't happen, and in most cases it isn't happening in the Unix/Linux
world. Most people are just happy to use case-preserving names (ie
case-insensitive names were the name is preserved in the form entered in
most cases).

>   Same thing applies here.  With NIS a particular working practice was
> absolutely fine.  Now it isn’t.  And people are left to fix it
> themselves.  I think that’s very bad.  (And for those who say “NIS is
> dead”, that’s absolutely not true, there are large organisations still
> using NIS and who haven’t yet migrated to LDAP, perhaps because the
> migration to LDAP is too hard for them in the present climate).

There is always some holdout with every technology, that's not a reason
to stop the evolution of standards in the direction everyone else is
going.

> </rant>


-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York