There’s a Rust coreutils too.
https://github.com/uutils/coreutils MIT license
> MIT license
How is letting me know that apple can use it without contributing back going to affect my decision on which coreutil to use?
Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
31–40 of 85 posts
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#32If I was going to replace coreutils, I think I'd do it with the ones rewritten in rust.
I tried some of those but I'm not a fan of the frilly stuff they add by default to the outputs. I was having a hard time with the output of one of these rust tools (I think it was an ls replacement) that was pretty printing and tabulating stuff. Its nice to read I agree but it was a pain to copy and paste outputs and the option for a normal output was not default.
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
But BSD devs have their own argument https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/
Yeah. Just look what they got from that. Big corps using their work with hardly any upstream contribution (Apple, Sony, etc). At this rate BSDs will be deader than dead within a few years.
Netcraft confirms it.
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#34What would be an advantage of switching from GNU coreutils to BSD coreutils? Doesn't GNU utils have more features?
Stability, readable code and unchanging flags.
GNU project code is infamously cluttered and hard to grok (mostly since it's a pretty old codebase and GNU has always favored having too many chefs in the kitchen over fewer, but competent, chefs).
FreeBSD code is also usually much more stable than the Linux counterparts; tends to be less buggy from my experience at least.
GNU also has gotten in the habit over the years of randomly shifting flags around for no real reason other than to make sure that they stay as the coreutils. They have the effective monopoly on usage (I want to say that BusyBox is the only realistic other competition due to how frequently it's used on smaller resource devices), so that way other implementers are forced to adapt. There's also have a tedency of making their software have really weird Unix pipe interop. The most infamous example I can think of is that there's one GNU coreutils command with the "human-readable" flag, which doesn't do what it usually does (adjust the output of commands displaying filesizes and the like to kb/mb/gb) but instead reformats the output to be usable in a different GNU command which also has a "human-readable" flag that works as expected.
There's a couple of reasons to not want to use the GNU coreutils specifically at least.
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://github.com/uutils/coreutils MIT license
> MIT license How is letting me know that apple can use it without contributing back going to affect my decision on which coreutil to use?
>> How is letting me know that apple can use it without contributing back going to affect my decision on which coreutil to use?
Apple using those utilities could be a good thing. I've used MS PowerShell and WSL a bit, and their implementations of common CLI software is sometimes incompatible. To work around the incompatibilities you end up using proprietary features or doing something inferior. I would be better if they just dropped in the standard utilities. OTOH I understand the fear that they may provide useful proprietary extensions because of an MIT license.
Example, their version of ssh does not allow a script to hand it a password, hence my script was changed to print out "hey, type this password 'blah'" and required user interaction in the middle of an otherwise totally automated process.
Every OS should use the standard (GNU) utilities, or at least a set that aims for complete compatibility (Rust versions).
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> MIT license How is letting me know that apple can use it without contributing back going to affect my decision on which coreutil to use?
>> How is letting me know that apple can use it without contributing back going to affect my decision on which coreutil to use? Apple using those utilities could be a good thing. I've used MS PowerShell and WSL a bit, and their implementations of common CLI software is sometimes incompatible. To work around the incompatibilities you end up using proprietary features or doing something inferior. I would be better if t…
> I've used MS PowerShell and WSL a bit, and their implementations of common CLI software is sometimes incompatible
Are you implying that Microsoft would use the common CLI software interfaces if GNU coreutils weren't GPL? Because I deeply believe they wouldn't. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can think of a few No copy-left license? Compatibility on Linux with BSD-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, MacOS? To annoy Richard Stallman?
> No copy-left license? Are you planning to make proprietary changes to `cat` you are unwilling to share? > Compatibility ... GNU coreutils work fine on all the mentioned plattforms > To annoy Richard Stallman? Not really sure if pettiness would be sufficient motivation for me, but then again, I'm writing this response...
> Are you planning to make proprietary changes to `cat` you are unwilling to share?
Presenting to you Panthera(TM) - the Enterprise Ready cat that you were waiting for!
* LDAP support
* Office 365 integration
* SAP integration
* GDPR compliant outputs
* 24/7 SLA
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#38Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No copy-left license? Are you planning to make proprietary changes to `cat` you are unwilling to share? > Compatibility ... GNU coreutils work fine on all the mentioned plattforms > To annoy Richard Stallman? Not really sure if pettiness would be sufficient motivation for me, but then again, I'm writing this response...
GPL v3 is unsable for embedded/locked hardware, e.g. Macbook, Android phones. That's why Mac OS and Android dodged GPL v3 software.
How so? If Apple chose to distribute GNU cat, they'd need to release any modifications to cat under the GPL but the license's vitality would not "infect" the rest of OSX.
Plenty of GPL software is available on osx.
Re: Bsdutils: Alternative to GNU coreutils using software from FreeBSD
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
But BSD devs have their own argument https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/
Yeah. Just look what they got from that. Big corps using their work with hardly any upstream contribution (Apple, Sony, etc). At this rate BSDs will be deader than dead within a few years.
I don't know about you, but I can't eat code. That said, some people don't care about outside contributions or reuse, so I guess I find the pro-GPL partisanship more than a little misguided. Some people just have different goals, and that doesn't make them better or worse, just different.