bug#14525: ls -k produced no size, ls -lk lists in bytes? What's up w/k?

[Linda A. Walsh]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 06/01/2013 02:02 AM, Linda Walsh wrote:
>> in Coreutils 8.21.1.1 (x86_64) on snoozy
>> When I type in ls -k, I get a small listing (filenames only horizontally)
>> (and no sizes).
>> When I type in ls -lk, I get a long listing -- but it isn't using K, but
>> bytes.
> 
> Since coreutils 8.15 the behavior was changed to be more consistent
> with other systems and POSIX:
> http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commit;h=448718
----
        What replaced it?

        I mean it doesn't do something *different*, it just ignores it.
So does this mean that to be POSIX compatible all the utils will have to be
dumbed down and have functionality removed?

        If you needed it for something else, or something else replaced it --
that's one thing, but it seems like the trend is just removing added 
functionality
that gnu-linux users have come to enjoy...

        Do we need a new non-posix core utils that keeps
the extended functionality?  I don't understand why you guys are butchering
the gnu products and removing features to comply with posix... it was never
intended to be a highest common denominator, but a lowest...