Using standardized SI prefixes

[Christof Krüger]

On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 09:05 +1000, James "Doc" Livingston wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 00:35 +0200, Christof Krüger wrote:
> > I agree that this is the way to go. However, I think the OP wanted to
> > suggest to have something like an official policy so that
> > changes/patches are also created by ubuntu and eventually proposed
> > upstream.
> > But I guess there will be no consensus on it so just let upstream do it.
> 
> Good luck convincing every upstream of this.
Well, I'm pretty sure that this will not be possible.

However, if making big steps is not possible, we need to make a lot of
small steps instead. I believe that it is important to point out the
advantages so that someone without a strong opinion about it can decide
after reading this thread.

The point is that the more people use SI prefixes consistently, the more
everyone benefits from it. Therefore, every person convinced counts. You
don't have to convince all upstream authors to switch over. It will
suffice if several popular programs do it right and if authors of new
software respect the standard. People will then get used to the
funny-sounding kibibytes and eventually consider wonder why there are
still programs which use kilo for a quantity of 1024. But I'm getting
idealistic now (but then again, doesn't "open source" imply a bit of
idealism? Well, i don't want to start a discussion about THAT ;) )

Regards,
 Christof Krüger