What is Toybox? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is Toybox?

#21

Post by bityard » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #14

saagarjha wrote: post #12

So I was reading the background on Toybox and it’s definitely…interesting? Seems like the author used to work on BusyBox, had a falling out, then in a fit of pique wrote a permissively licensed version?

IIRC busybox became part of some GPL enforcement lawsuit(s) because it was being packaged in a lot of embedded situations without the necessary source-publishing. So the author split off to work on toybox instead, a new implementation under permissive licensing. I guess it just goes to show you should pick licenses that actually reflect what you want to happen to your code.

Er, no, that's not quite right.

Busybox was written by Bruce Perens. The goal was to fit a whole Linux system onto a floppy disk for rescue disks and installers. Busybox licensed under GPL was not an accident. The kernel was GPL of course, but the rest of the userland was either GNU or largely GNU-inspired. Bruce Perens was heavily involved in early Debian development and even led the project for a while. "Copyleft" is at the core of how Debian operates.

Busybox being GPL licensed was in no way an accident or frivolous decision. It is still licensed under GPLv2 to this day.

I don't know when Rob Landley became involved in Busybox, and I don't know what drama resulted in the reimplementation of Toybox but I do remember he started it with hope that it would eventually ship on Android smartphones. I guess it worked out okay for him, because now he gets paid by Google to work on Toybox.

Re: What is Toybox?

#22

Post by greatcircle » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 9:56 PM UTC

written-beyond wrote: post #7

Please watch this Landley talk for the best explanation. He's a peculiar one but his work is fascinating https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9TatW9ino

Landley said in one of his talks (I think it was the linked one) that his goal with Toybox was to enable Android devices to function as a Linux-like development environment.

Toybox provides the shell utilities. You can plug in a keyboard and mouse via the USB charging port. You can screencast to a TV via a Chromecast. Somehow you'd need to get a compilation toolchain on there.

It's an interesting idea IMO. For many people an Android device is their only computer... though I'm not aware of anyone doing this for real in the wild?

Re: What is Toybox?

#23

Post by written-beyond » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

greatcircle wrote: post #22

written-beyond wrote: post #7

Please watch this Landley talk for the best explanation. He's a peculiar one but his work is fascinating https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9TatW9ino

Landley said in one of his talks (I think it was the linked one) that his goal with Toybox was to enable Android devices to function as a Linux-like development environment. Toybox provides the shell utilities. You can plug in a keyboard and mouse via the USB charging port. You can screencast to a TV via a Chromecast. Somehow you'd need to get a compilation toolchain on there. It's an interesting idea IMO. For many p…

To be a little pedantic, that's not exactly what he meant. I only say this because his true vision is a lot more beautiful than that.

He wants to reduce the barrier to entry for tech and empower anyone with the drive to build not be limited by their resources. This is particularly why he focuses on Android smartphones because they're the most popular in the developing world. Also since smartphones are full fledged computers with touchscreens as their primary input method it's the perfect tool for this.

Furthermore, his baseline for this is any such device should have the tools necessary to build a working version of Linux from start to finish on itself. Which is why he's built toy box; it should, by the end of it, have all the tools necessary to building a working build of Linux with a single binary.

Re: What is Toybox?

#24

Post by Nursie » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 3:44 AM UTC

bityard wrote: post #21

Nursie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC busybox became part of some GPL enforcement lawsuit(s) because it was being packaged in a lot of embedded situations without the necessary source-publishing. So the author split off to work on toybox instead, a new implementation under permissive licensing. I guess it just goes to show you should pick licenses that actually reflect what you want to happen to your code.

Er, no, that's not quite right. Busybox was written by Bruce Perens. The goal was to fit a whole Linux system onto a floppy disk for rescue disks and installers. Busybox licensed under GPL was not an accident. The kernel was GPL of course, but the rest of the userland was either GNU or largely GNU-inspired. Bruce Perens was heavily involved in early Debian development and even led the project for a while. "Copyleft"…

> Busybox being GPL licensed was in no way an accident or frivolous decision. It is still licensed under GPLv2 to this day.

I realise that my comment is quite ambiguous now. The author I referred to was the author of toybox, Rob Landley, and he was the maintainer of busybox in the early 00s. It was him I meant should pick licenses carefully, but honestly reading more about the situation, my take was too simplistic.

It looks like there was a load of license drama as busybox was a mess of GPL2. GPL2+, GPL 3 and "Linux style" licenses - https://lwn.net/Articles/202106/ https://lwn.net/Articles/202120/

And that's about the time Rob resigned and went off to do toybox on his own. Having read that I'm honestly much more sympathetic, it seems like it was a real mess.

Re: What is Toybox?

#25

Post by jmgao » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 5:00 AM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #20

mijoharas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm missing context on what you're referring to. Does AOSP include a lot of GPL'd software or something? Do they not comply with the GPL license? (are you talking about the linux kernel or something?)

AFAIK the only GPL code in AOSP is the kernel... so, y'know, just one of the most important parts of the system.

There's also the entire Java standard library, which was a hilarious fuck you response to Oracle's lawsuit.