It has come up in the past that this distinction is a historical artifact rather than a necessity. Linus tried to get Ulrich to change this in glibc, but it was

It has come up in the past that this distinction is a historical artifact rather than a necessity. Linus tried to get Ulrich to change this in glibc, but it was not changed. http://www.sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12518 http://www.sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12518