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It's concerning that a huge open source ecosystem like Linux depends on a closed specification. That is, I read it as that the spec cannot be continued, develop

It's concerning that a huge open source ecosystem like Linux depends on a closed specification. That is, I read it as that the spec cannot be continued, developed, and evolved or republished without full redefinition and respecification. Has anyone looked at creating a new object format for Linux? A non-open spec seems a minor issue, really, in an era when we put binary blobs in the kernel (hi Nvidia.) But the more decades I work in closed source, the more I value open source, and believe keeping _everything_ open.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
I wouldn't think you'd need to create a new format, just write up a spec of what all available FOSS implementations are actually doing and agree that that's the standard going forward. Between Linux/*BSD/illumos you should be able to pretty completely describe all currently-active uses of ELF. (Of course this assumes that doing this is sufficient to make it legally not derived from the original spec as far as copyright law cares about, which is beyond my non-lawyer ability to be that confident in.)
- skissane 2y ago
  > Between Linux/*BSD/illumos you should be able to pretty completely describe all currently-active uses of ELF. OpenVMS uses ELF too. Rather niche proprietary OS but still maintained and in production use. (Not a new thing with x86-64 port, ELF was adopted during the Alpha to Iranian transition.) As do many RTOS (both open source and proprietary)
  - Iwan-Zotow 2y ago
    To WHAT transition?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      Lol. Although, Itanium does have an entertaining history of having caused a lot of positive changes even though it crashed and burned itself - it's where we got UEFI, and apparently a good time for some OSs to pick up ELF.
    - skissane 2y ago
      I typed Itanium and my phone very helpfully “corrected” it to Iranian and unfortunately I didn’t notice it had done so
aseipp 2y ago
> Has anyone looked at creating a new object format for Linux? No, because that's overkill for this problem, because the de facto standard is "What do modern free Unicies do", where those are basically Linux/BSD/Illumos. Besides, it's not unheard of in Unix history to have free implementations of proprietary standards, where those implementations became de facto standards anyway. Even if it was a seriously pressing issue, writing a new specification that covers ELF as it exists today is going to be many, many, many times easier than introducing a new executable format across the ecosystem, they're not even in the same league or sport in terms of effort. If you were going to introduce a whole new object file format it would be much better to do it and justify it on the basis of fundamental technical/architectural changes.
avar 2y ago
> It's concerning that a huge open source ecosystem like Linux depends on a closed specification. Linux is written in C, whose spec is proprietary. The larger stack has countless ISO standard references etc., all of which refer to proprietary standards you need to buy.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

I wouldn't think you'd need to create a new format, just write up a spec of what all available FOSS implementations are actually doing and agree that that's the standard going forward. Between Linux/*BSD/illumos you should be able to pretty completely describe all currently-active uses of ELF. (Of course this assumes that doing this is sufficient to make it legally not derived from the original spec as far as copyright law cares about, which is beyond my non-lawyer ability to be that confident in.)

skissane 2y ago
> Between Linux/*BSD/illumos you should be able to pretty completely describe all currently-active uses of ELF. OpenVMS uses ELF too. Rather niche proprietary OS but still maintained and in production use. (Not a new thing with x86-64 port, ELF was adopted during the Alpha to Iranian transition.) As do many RTOS (both open source and proprietary)
- Iwan-Zotow 2y ago
  To WHAT transition?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Lol. Although, Itanium does have an entertaining history of having caused a lot of positive changes even though it crashed and burned itself - it's where we got UEFI, and apparently a good time for some OSs to pick up ELF.
  - skissane 2y ago
    I typed Itanium and my phone very helpfully “corrected” it to Iranian and unfortunately I didn’t notice it had done so

aseipp 2y ago

> Has anyone looked at creating a new object format for Linux? No, because that's overkill for this problem, because the de facto standard is "What do modern free Unicies do", where those are basically Linux/BSD/Illumos. Besides, it's not unheard of in Unix history to have free implementations of proprietary standards, where those implementations became de facto standards anyway. Even if it was a seriously pressing issue, writing a new specification that covers ELF as it exists today is going to be many, many, many times easier than introducing a new executable format across the ecosystem, they're not even in the same league or sport in terms of effort. If you were going to introduce a whole new object file format it would be much better to do it and justify it on the basis of fundamental technical/architectural changes.

avar 2y ago

> It's concerning that a huge open source ecosystem like Linux depends on a closed specification. Linux is written in C, whose spec is proprietary. The larger stack has countless ISO standard references etc., all of which refer to proprietary standards you need to buy.