Principles for API sources

[Joseph Myers]

I should clarify a couple of points in my proposed principles:

* Sometimes we may wish to consider APIs that come from ISO C and POSIX 
standard drafts rather than an approved standard.  We should be willing to 
add such APIs if it seems likely they will not be removed or change 
incompatibly (in a way requiring new symbol versions) before approval.  
When implementing such APIs and reviewing the implementations, we should 
be alert for deficiencies in the design and specification of the 
interfaces, raising any such issues found with the standards committees 
and deferring inclusion in glibc as necessary to allow for issues to be 
resolved.

* I didn't mention reasons for preferring Linux syscalls over BSD systems 
over other Unix-like systems as sources of APIs.  That preference is 
because the interface design traditions followed for Linux syscalls are 
closer to the design traditions used in glibc - there is less divergence 
between the choices made, and the communities overlap more.  The Linux 
syscalls, unlike the other interfaces, are generally designed for an 
environment using glibc.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com