It's ironic that GNU is using POSIX as a justification for a decision. From RMS: Following a standard is important to the extent it serves users. We do not tr

It's ironic that GNU is using POSIX as a justification for a decision. From RMS: Following a standard is important to the extent it serves users. We do not treat a standard as an authority, but rather as a guide that may be useful to follow. Thus, we talk about following standards rather than "complying" with them. See the section Non-GNU Standards in the GNU Coding Standards. We strive to be compatible with standards on most issues because, on most issues, that serves users best. But there are occasional exceptions. For instance, POSIX specifies that some utilities measure disk space in units of 512 bytes. I asked the committee to change this to 1K, but it refused, saying that a bureaucratic rule compelled the choice of 512. I don't recall much attempt to argue that users would be pleased with that decision. Since GNU's second priority, after users' freedom, is users' convenience, we made GNU programs measure disk space in blocks of 1K by default. https://opensource.com/article/19/7/what-posix-richard-stallman-explains https://opensource.com/article/19/7/what-posix-richard-stall...