<story><title>Torvalds: Standards are paper. I use paper to wipe my butt every day.</title><url>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477#c129</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>javert</author><text>A spec is a contract between programmers and &lt;i&gt;in the long run&lt;/i&gt;, it&apos;s better (for users and programmers) to follow specs and expect others to follow them, rather than to let others break them willy-nilly and just bend over backwards to accomodate.&lt;p&gt;Oh, but I guess since this point requires actual thinking to understand, it&apos;s not in the realm of reality...</text></item><item><author>fleaflicker</author><text>That&apos;s a deceptive title. The real point is more important (but less sensational):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Reality is what matters. When glibc changed memcpy, it created problems. Saying &quot;not my problem&quot; is irresponsible when it hurts users. &lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrcharles</author><text>I understand your point and the purist programmer in me agrees but maintaining compatibility in the face of horribly broken software is how Microsoft managed to get on top with windows. If you&apos;ve ever spent time reading The Old New Thing ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/&lt;/a&gt; ) you&apos;d realize the lengths MS went to to make sure that even when they improved things, they didn&apos;t break bad software, and how much that meant for people adopting the platform.&lt;p&gt;Seems to me kind of an important thing to recognize in this kind of discussion.</text></comment>
<story><title>Torvalds: Standards are paper. I use paper to wipe my butt every day.</title><url>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477#c129</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>javert</author><text>A spec is a contract between programmers and &lt;i&gt;in the long run&lt;/i&gt;, it&apos;s better (for users and programmers) to follow specs and expect others to follow them, rather than to let others break them willy-nilly and just bend over backwards to accomodate.&lt;p&gt;Oh, but I guess since this point requires actual thinking to understand, it&apos;s not in the realm of reality...</text></item><item><author>fleaflicker</author><text>That&apos;s a deceptive title. The real point is more important (but less sensational):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Reality is what matters. When glibc changed memcpy, it created problems. Saying &quot;not my problem&quot; is irresponsible when it hurts users. &lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fauigerzigerk</author><text>Seeing this purely as a spec v pragmatism issue isn&apos;t going to get us anywhere. There is just no way around looking at each case individually. There are specs that are pie in the sky, outdated, flawed compromises or reflections of vested interests. But there is also a huge amount of lock-in and lost productivity resulting from lack or disregard of specs (e.g IE6). I see no way to be principled on that one.</text></comment>