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Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

joshmcguigan.com

131–134 of 134 posts

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like you're advocating for wiping them all from history and outlawing everything but GPL licensed code, which just isn't possible, nor desirable. That's a strawman: Nothing I said implied any sort of genocide. I'm pointing out that the pro-user license has more benefits than the pro-corporate licenses.

> That's a strawman Is there another reading of "If they had to use" that I'm not aware of? Seems to imply force either through legal or practical means. > the pro-user license has more benefits than the pro-corporate licenses I'm a user and a developer and neither of those descriptions seem to apply to the licenses being discussed. I benefit from both, as do you, as does the whole world. I bet proprietary software v…

> Is there another reading of "If they had to use" that I'm not aware of?

Well, yes.

You started your argument with "If BSD wasn't available they'd be using QNX".

So I followed on from that with "If they had to use QNX... If they had to use GPL..."

I was just following the logical outcome of your "If BSD wasn't available" argument, not advocating that BSD must not be available.

> I'm a user and a developer and neither of those descriptions seem to apply to the licenses being discussed.

I don't know how you can think that "pro-user" doesn't apply to the GPL - it's the singular goal of the GPL to protect user freedoms. This has never been ambiguous.

GPL == freedom for the user. It's always been this way. This is nothing new. You cannot, with a straight face and at this point in the conversation, claim that you didn't know the goal of the GPL.

As far as the pro-corporate aspect of BSD, that's pretty clear to me, because of how extensively corporations were able to mine BSD code for shareholder benefit.

So, yeah, with BSD, you might argue differently (for example, argue that corporate mining of BSD code is a side-effect), but there is no way to argue that GPL isn't pro-user.

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#132
post #48

> Instead of modifying all the packages that depend on GNU coreutils (known as the package sys-apps/coreutils in Gentoo), I modified the GNU coreutils package to instead install uutils coreutils. That's not the way to do it (in Gentoo). He should have added coreutils to /etc/portage/profile/package.provided. Portage would then assume the package is installed even if it's not. This is used to install self-built binari…

Thanks for pointing out `package.provided`. It does look like it could be a reasonable way to do this, but I'm not sure how exactly I'd be able to atomically swap GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils using that method? I think I'd need to add `sys-apps/coreutils` to `package.provided`, then install uutils coreutils while telling Portage to ignore file collisions (because I'd be overwriting GNU coreutils binaries). Howe…

packages.provided only bypasses the dependency issues. File collisions is a different problem with different solution(s). For a quick test, if I had to do it, I would probably make the ebuild install uutils in /usr/local/, then unmerge coreutils (and probably have a static busybox on stand-by, just in case).

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a strawman Is there another reading of "If they had to use" that I'm not aware of? Seems to imply force either through legal or practical means. > the pro-user license has more benefits than the pro-corporate licenses I'm a user and a developer and neither of those descriptions seem to apply to the licenses being discussed. I benefit from both, as do you, as does the whole world. I bet proprietary software v…

> Is there another reading of "If they had to use" that I'm not aware of? Well, yes. You started your argument with "If BSD wasn't available they'd be using QNX". So I followed on from that with "If they had to use QNX... If they had to use GPL..." I was just following the logical outcome of your "If BSD wasn't available" argument, not advocating that BSD must not be available. > I'm a user and a developer and neithe…

> GPL == freedom for the user. It's always been this way. This is nothing new. You cannot, with a straight face and at this point in the conversation, claim that you didn't know the goal of the GPL

Your words. My words indicate that I see both licenses and being pro-everyone.

> As far as the pro-corporate aspect of BSD, that's pretty clear to me, because of how extensively corporations were able to mine BSD code for shareholder benefit.

Mining is an ecologically destructive activity which bears no resemblance to using software under the terms which it was licensed.

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