I mean… an ABI is more like an agreement. It isn’t a specification. It’d be nice if everything was neatly specified and sound. But as the author notes near the end… there’s a lot of platforms and they all have their own quirks.

There has to be an ABI that has to be agreed upon by everyone. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any interoperability. And if we didn’t have the SystemV ABI — what would we use instead? Prepare for a long debate as every language author, operating system designer, and platform under the sun argues for their respective demands and proposals. And as sure as the sun rises in the East someone, somewhere, would write an article such as this one decrying that blessed ABI.

SystemV shouldn’t be the be all and end all, IMO. But progress should be incremental. Because a lingua franca loses its primary feature and utility when we all return to our own fiefdoms and stop talking to one another in the common tongue.

It’s a pain in the metaphorical butt. But it’s better, IMO, than the alternatives. It’s kind of neat that SystemV works so well let alone at all.