Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:52 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Why would base-1024 prefixes make any sense when the numbers are
> base 10?

Numbers are numbers, but they are displayed in base 10 and people
commonly think/work in base 10.

In the interest of debating specific policy ahead of the meeting, I'll
go ahead and propose:

Proposal 1
"Whenever practical Developers are encouraged to use SI units and base
10 values (ie 1KB = 1000 bytes).  They may use base 2 values when this
output is more likely to be useful to users (eg in memory hexdumps,
etc).  Either way, unit prefixes defined in IEC 80000-13 (KB, KiB,
etc) must be used so that output is unambiguous.  This does not
require maintainers to patch upstream code to change its behavior, but
they should be applied with code that originates in Gentoo."

While I understand the resentment at the redefinition of prefixes that
have been in use for decades, the ambiguity of using SI prefixes with
non-SI definitions creates confusion and potentially error.  I think
clarity should always be valued when the change is otherwise cosmetic.

So, use MiB or MB as makes sense, but the latter should be the default
and should always mean 1000000 bytes.

If there is strong objection to my first proposal I offer:

Proposal 2
"Whenever practical developers are required to use unit prefixes
defined in IEC 80000-13 (KB, KiB, etc) so that output is unambiguous.
This does not require maintainers to patch upstream code to change its
behavior, but they should be applied with code that originates in
Gentoo."

This takes no stance on whether 1000 vs 1024 is preferred but still
requires the new-style prefixes to remove ambiguity.  I strongly
advocate that using "KB" to refer to 1024 bytes is a recipe for
confusion, if only because everybody who attends a decent school comes
out indoctrinated that kilo means something else.

Rich