Re: pc.mod -> part_msdos.mod (etc)

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 08:42:52PM +0200, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
> >> As was discussed in http://www.mail-archive.com/grub-devel@gnu.org/msg06210.html
> >> I intend to prefix all partmap modules with "part_" and rename "pc" to
> >> "part_msdos".
> This partition scheme is "PC-style" ans calling it "msdos" effectively
> means miscrediting IBM's work to Microsoft. I don't believe this to be
> correct.

Well, it's a bit more complicated.  First of all, PC-style isn't appropiate.
"PC" is generally assumed to be hardware and perhaps firmware, but not OS
(otherwise if it doesn't run some version of DOS it's not a PC).

DOS is the operating system that introduced this partition layout.  I don't
know which version, or whether it had this layout from the very beginning; its
design patterns suggest some primitive version only had a filesystem with MBR
and no partition label at all.

Nowadays, DOS-derived operating systems (e.g. Windows Vista) are only being
developed by Microsoft, and this has been true for a long while.  I don't think
it's far-fetched to consider MSDOS the canonical implementation.

Besides, I think IBM can live without the agravation of having this crappy
design being attributed to them.  It's clearly not their fault that 30 years
later we're still living by such poor standards.

<joke>
IOW, there's no problem with miss-attributing something bad to Microsoft, even
if they didn't do it.  If they did something good, we could still attribute it
to them, but this never happened anyway.
</joke>

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."