Perl Regex Removed From Grep in Mountain Lion • Hacker News Board

Re: Perl Regex Removed From Grep in Mountain Lion

#61

Post by mynegation » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 6:25 AM UTC

dfc wrote: post #28

mynegation wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be a Linux fan, but there you go: Mac OS X as Unix is inferior to Linux. Package management in Ubuntu is second to none, I have newer version of everything, sane terminal colors and fonts out of the box, I don't have to download monstrosity that is Xcode just to get a damn compiler, compiling some non-mainstream sources may not work out of the box.

Package management in Ubuntu is not second to none, it is second to Debian. Dont get me wrong Ubuntu has done a lot of wonderful things, but lets give credit where credit is due...

Well, second to none of the operating systems I am using (also includes Mac OS X and couple of Windows versions). The point being is that package management on OS X is not on the level of Ubuntu (or Debian for that matter).

Re: Perl Regex Removed From Grep in Mountain Lion

#62

Post by mcpherrinm » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 8:27 AM UTC

dfc wrote: post #54

mcpherrinm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to PPAs, I'm not speaking from a user perspective, but from that of a sysadmin having to maintain mirrors. PPAs are just easier than setting up all the key signing and mirror infrastructure. Yeah, apt and dpkg are great compared to what else was available a decade ago. But that doesn't mean that Ubuntu's additions, however incremental, are worthless or somehow inferior to Debian. Incremental gains are st…

I'm confused about PPAs and setting up a mirror infrastructure. What mirror infrastructure? What key signing is involved in a mirror that is not involved in signing packages for a PPA? Ubuntu's additions are nice. But they are minor improvements to apt/dpkg. Without them apt and dpkg would still be phenomenal.

I administer a small number of systems and deploy custom packages to all of those.

Running a custom mirror, signing packages, managing keyrings on the mirror, and getting them on all systems is nontrivially harder than using a PPA and associated scripts.

Now, I run a mix of Ubuntu and Debian systems. I don't use PPAs that much, but when I do they're just plain easier.

Yes, it's an incremental gain, but that's a gain. It makes them better. They weren't first, but they're innovating. Sometimes, the "innovations" aren't fantastic especially some of the more harebrained stuff on desktop (PulseAudio, avahi). But no longer is Ubuntu just a Debian rip-off: They're producing new and useful additions.

The relative merits are debatable, and so I'm not going to continue that thread. In the end, it boils down to X + epsilon > X, for any epsilon > 0.

Re: Perl Regex Removed From Grep in Mountain Lion

#63

Post by bluedanieru » Sun, Sep 30, 2012, 8:44 AM UTC

jkn wrote: post #52

bluedanieru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's more likely than you might think over a span of a couple decades... But, I think if they were to go rogue it would be a matter of forking a GPL-licensed version of the software and continuing development on that under an open license.

I don't think it is likely at all even in decades, and if they did they would be sued by loads of contributors for violating their binding promise to adhere with free software spirit in future licenses. You get some guarantees when you assign your copyright to the FSF. And all this is ignoring that most GNU programs are licensed under a GPL variant and any future version, so they would not need the copyright to upgra…

I'm not saying it's a thing that's going to happen, just that you shouldn't have some blind faith that it won't ("I trust they won't do such a thing"). I'm pretty sure RMS would agree with the sentiment.