[fhs-discuss] Merge FHS with BSD filesystem standard?

[Ingo Schwarze]

Richard Hartmann wrote on Tue, May 17, 2011 at 05:39:54PM +0200:
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 17:16, Martin Baehr
> <mbaehr at email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

>> it is likely that the interest in participating in the FHS effort from
>> the *BSD camp is low simply because they may not be interested in
>> prescribing any structure, but only documenting their reality.

Well, both hier(7) and additional documents, for example porting
guides, *are* used to prescribe structure; however, hierarchy rules
are rather static, and documentation *is* considered very important.
Also, some rules differ among different *BSD operating systems.

That said, your statement still comes close to the truth; i don't
see much enthusiasm for reshuffling existing directory hierarchies
round here.  Taking OpenBSD as an example, there is no general
reluctance to change, not even regarding larger, backward-incompatible
changes - *if* they make the system better, and the improvement is
worth the effort that needs to be spent on upgrading production
machines.  On the other hand, large churn by gratuitiously renaming
stuff is not likely to happen, even if that would make nomenclature
more similar to other operating systems.

> Only one way to find out.
> Does anyone happen to know a BSD core person?

There is no such thing as "BSD core"; decision making processes
are independent (and vastly different) in all *BSD projects.
FreeBSD and NetBSD have formal core teams, OpenBSD and DragonFly
do not.  That said, i know a few NetBSD and FreeBSD developers
and most of the OpenBSD developers.

Yours,
  Ingo