
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy [pdf] (2001) - spenczar5
http://herpolhode.com/rob/ugly.pdf
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9fb29947
> Division [in the UNIX community] leads to wasted effort and political
> infighting, limiting the success.

Very true. Why do we need to have so many divisions, when we're all more or
less wanting to make the same thing?

~~~
pdkl95
> wanting to make the same thing

That's not accurate. We want _similar_ things, but there is a large amount of
minor variation in the type of problems they are using their computers to
solve. Fortunately, the focus on portability and simple, well-defined
interface allowed multiple goals to coexist. It's not perfect, but even when
variations between UNIX flavors breaks something, it is far easier to track
down file-location bugs and text interfaces.

The toxic type of political infighting often (but not always) involves cases
where someone decides to skip these traditions; conflict happens when someone
tries to "remove old cruft" or "unify the various old methods" without first
considering who it will impact. Unfortunately, this has become a common
problem in recent years when JWZ's "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers"[1]
started to take over some projects.

[1] [https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html)

