Re: /usr/X11R6

[Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com>]

The fundamental problem with X is that implementation artifacts show
up in the protocol.  Thus, in general, it's not possible for it to be
backwards compatible.

This follows from its underlying design goals: "implementation, not
policy", "make money for the vendors", "don't support a remote execution
abstraction", and "don't support the unix file system abstractions
(directories, files, pipes) in the distributed sense".

Given that it explicitly ignores the unix abstractions, it shouldn't
be surprising that it also breaks with unix tradition.  But perhaps I
repeat myself.

That said, the unix uid/gid concepts don't map well onto a distributed
environment (nor scale well).  But that should be an orthogonal issue.

-- 
Raul