On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote: > On 04/02/2015 11:27 AM, Les Mikesell wrote: >> >> Why does something this simple [as figuring out what OS and version you're >> on] have to waste so much time? > > Sorry for the editorial brackets there, Les, but that is, I think, an > accurate distillation of the previous paragraphs. > > It's not simple because of the Perl mantra and the very nature of free and > open source development. It is the beast we have; and as long as consensus > between disparate distributions of just Linux is not found on this topic it > will remain less simple than it could be. Distributions have vested > interests - competitive, egotistic, and other - to do things differently, > and that's not likely to change, as much as I wish it would. And that's > just within the Linux ecosystem. I understand the reason that distributions want to add exclusive extensions that, if you use them, make it impossible to ever use anything else. But, I'm not interested in making that kind of commitment. Seems worse than being married. So, please - stick to standards... -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com