Is it save to mount / with noatime?

[JB]

Heinz Diehl <htd <at> fritha.org> writes:

> ...
> Here's what Linus says on noatime:
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/14148
> 

There is an interesting comment by Alan Cox:
"...
>    /dev/md0 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,user_xattr)
...
Ext3 currently is a standards compliant file system. Turn off atime and its
very non standards compliant, turn to relatime and its not standards compliant
but nobody will break (which is good)
..."

I assume he was talking POSIX ? Standards (file systems) test suites ?
Btw, is that comment still valid, and also for ext4 ? 
Is braking standards good ? :-)

JB