As far as I'm aware x86 was never an open agreed upon standard, people knew what commands where available and what they did, they just reverse engineered the bugger. Then Cyrix had a bunch of extensions, then intel had a bunch of extensions, then they stuck the MMX code on to it, then it became incorporated Then AMD extended it again, etc etc all the way up to AMD64. One big bloody mess.
Proving Linus's last point that standards grow up despite specs not because of them.
Not an argument for Specs at all.
As far as I'm aware x86 was never an open agreed upon standard, people knew what commands where available and what they did, they just reverse engineered the bugger. Then Cyrix had a bunch of extensions, then intel had a bunch of extensions, then they stuck the MMX code on to it, then it became incorporated Then AMD extended it again, etc etc all the way up to AMD64. One big bloody mess.
Proving Linus's last point that standards grow up despite specs not because of them.