fossil

fossil n.  1. In software, a misfeature that becomes
   understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times
   past retained so as not to break compatibility.  Example: the
   retention of octal as default base for string escapes in {C}, in
   spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern
   byte-addressable architectures.  See {dusty deck}.  2. More
   restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility.
   Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and {BSD}
   UNIX tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals.  (In a
   perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this
   functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later
   {USG UNIX} releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.)  3. The FOSSIL
   (Fido/Opus/Seadog Standard Interface Level) driver specification
   for serial-port access to replace the {brain-dead} routines in
   the IBM PC ROMs.  Fossils are used by most MS-DOS {BBS} software
   in preference to the `supported' ROM routines, which do not support
   interrupt-driven operation or setting speeds above 9600; the use of
   a semistandard FOSSIL library is preferable to the {bare metal}
   serial port programming otherwise required.  Since the FOSSIL
   specification allows additional functionality to be hooked in,
   drivers that use the {hook} but do not provide serial-port
   access themselves are named with a modifier, as in `video
   fossil'.