I think, maybe, both of these responses are missing the fact that make is not a program, but rather, a number of programs with the same invocation name. A fork

I think, maybe, both of these responses are missing the fact that make is not a program, but rather, a number of programs with the same invocation name. A fork of one of these makes, which did not have the two glaring flaws I refer to, but was otherwise make, would still be, well, make.