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Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

joshmcguigan.com

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Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#71

Post by lelanthran »

colordrops wrote: post #67
happymellon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a fairly good idea based upon corporate actions today. Look at Mac OS. That's what happens when freedoms don't have to be honoured. Corporations have spent a lot of effort trying to work around the GPL, whether it was via network services or something else. If everyone had gone down the BSD route we would have been there, just a lot quicker. This is why I would never licence any of my work as anything…

It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack. There is a ton of cross pollination between mac and Linux software, at least on the command line.

> It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack.

But that's not relevant to the parent's point, which is "If all open source, such as Linux, was BSD licensed, then only proprietary unixes would be common", which I happen to agree with.

Linux would have been further behind because all the proprietary unixes could take the best parts, without giving back (like Apple did/does with BSD), and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now).

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#72

Post by cies »

aulin wrote: post #31
LightFog wrote: post #17

It’s a shame to see all this effort going toward replacing core GPL licensed utilities with permissive ones. It seems like a particularly common thing in the Rust community. It feels disrespectful of the intentions of the work that went into the tools that are being cloned.

It's not just disrespectful, it's stupid and dangerous. GPL is one of those exceptional things that shaped the world as it is today. These projects are nothing more than an attack to our freedom.

> nothing more than an attack to our freedom

C'mon... It improves memory safety!

I agree with GPL being a way to protect the investment in the commons so it remains "freer" than with MIT/BSD licensed code. But in the cloud platform world this is has show to be not so helpful (hence we need the AGPL). Both GPL and AGPL are (AGPL more so) shunned by big biz: this is a blessing (fuck 'm) and a curse (they have much money to invest).

All open source releases are extending the commons (freely available to everyone), so if MIT/BSD code is released I still cheer for that (even if it clones GPL code).

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#73

Post by happymellon »

colordrops wrote: post #67
happymellon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a fairly good idea based upon corporate actions today. Look at Mac OS. That's what happens when freedoms don't have to be honoured. Corporations have spent a lot of effort trying to work around the GPL, whether it was via network services or something else. If everyone had gone down the BSD route we would have been there, just a lot quicker. This is why I would never licence any of my work as anything…

It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack. There is a ton of cross pollination between mac and Linux software, at least on the command line.

I don't know who would argue that.

There was a lot of Unix already, and Linux ate it's lunch by being a simple recompile away.

MacOS does a lot to try and hide that it's a Unix.

> There is a ton of cross pollination between mac and Linux software

Do we have any good examples, because Apple spends a lot of effort breaking cross platform compatibility?

> at least on the command line.

There is a lot of Linux command line software ported to MacOS, but I can't think of any good examples for the other way around.

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#74

Post by dagw »

colechristensen wrote: post #29
LightFog wrote: post #17

It’s a shame to see all this effort going toward replacing core GPL licensed utilities with permissive ones. It seems like a particularly common thing in the Rust community. It feels disrespectful of the intentions of the work that went into the tools that are being cloned.

GNU coreutils is to a very large extent nearly exactly copied functionality from other unix distributions (unix system v, BSDs). It's not like GNU is getting ripped off here. GNU coreutils is a clone, nobody's feelings should be hurt if somebody else makes another clone of the same functionality. (license zealots will have hurt feelings but for different reasons)

GNU coreutils is a clone

Coreutils may have started as a clone, but quickly became so much more. While the 'traditional' unix tools were pretty much frozen when it came to new features, GNU was experimenting and adding new features and trying to improve the UX (which not everybody approved of). There's a reason why the first thing many people would do on a new Unix install was to add GNU coreutils, and in fact many of the GNU features eventually made it back into the traditional tools.

So the real question is will uutils eventually reach a point where it is better/different enough that people will actively want to replace coreutils on their GNU systems, or will it remain 'just' a clone.

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#75

Post by Jach »

nubinetwork wrote: post #22
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay; what problems would you expect to hit if you used a system where they were merged? (My best thought so far is having multiple hosts sharing a single /usr over NFS while having per-host root filesystems, but I've never actually seen that done. I've also thought about building a distro that kept its initramfs as root and just mounted everything else into it, but that's even further off the beaten path.)

I can think of a few off the top of my head... - broken shell scripts that are hardcoded to "/bin/bash" rather than "/usr/bin/env bash" (this might work for a while, but what happens when they remove the symlink?) - broken compiles because "/lib" and "/lib64" no longer exist, because of the lack of testing prior to making the change on behalf of users - broken boots because initramfs (dracut/etc) isn't structured cor…

Gentoo doesn't do this crap every 3 weeks, come on. I agree in the sense that I didn't want to have this choice thrust upon me, much like many other choices, but Gentoo has always been good about supporting different choices. My system is still systemd-free, for instance, and I'm rocking MATE. I read the news item, upgraded my profile to the non-merged next version now that I have to make a choice of merged or not, and I suspect I won't have to think about this on Gentoo again for at least years.

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#76

Post by cies »

t-3 wrote: post #65
aulin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just disrespectful, it's stupid and dangerous. GPL is one of those exceptional things that shaped the world as it is today. These projects are nothing more than an attack to our freedom.

I don't know why so many people think compelling code to be shared is practical, desirable, or better than leaving it up to choice, but GPL is definitely not more free than BSD license.

BSD is freer license (you can do more with the code, including releasing binaries based on the original source w/o releasing the source of the improvements), GPL is a license for freer code (you are not allowed to release binary derivatives w/o releasing the source of the improvements).

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#77

Post by CJefferson »

lynx23 wrote: post #25
LightFog wrote: post #17

It’s a shame to see all this effort going toward replacing core GPL licensed utilities with permissive ones. It seems like a particularly common thing in the Rust community. It feels disrespectful of the intentions of the work that went into the tools that are being cloned.

You could say the same thing about LLVM/Clang. Apple and Google only cooperated on that because they really really dont want a restrictive licence like the GPL. But then again, after a while, Clang is a nice alternative... Which makes me think: Why exactly are you indirectly lobbying for a monopoly? Just because there is a GNU version of something can not mean there shouldnt be any other version. It just can not mean…

The problem with gcc wasn't the GPL, it was the FSF leadership, particularly Stallman.

There were things people wanted to do with a good C++ compiler, like output a high-quality parse tree (which is useful for all kinds of things), which would have been easy to add to gcc, but were explictly forbidden from being merged into gcc under any circumstances.

This was just in case some closed-source person used that parse tree for non-GPL purposes.

This is why the C++ LSP (language server protocol, used in various text editors) used by basically everyone is based on clang, and there still isn't a gcc-based one.

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#78

Post by cies »

eru wrote: post #58
IshKebab wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses a single binary like Busybox to solve that: https://uutils.github.io/coreutils/docs/multicall.html I agree it's not what I would spend my time on, but I guess some people found this problem more interesting than us. I don't see a problem with that. Security vulnerabilities in GNU coreutils are rare but they happen. Also this would make building and editing the tools more accessible.

I remember I had some idea for (GNU) grep, but I couldn't even build the damn thing. It's autotools hell.

Another good reason besides mem safety (yay!), license (nay!): build tooling (to improve hackability -- yay!).

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#79

Post by nicman23 »

prmoustache wrote: post #47
aulin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just disrespectful, it's stupid and dangerous. GPL is one of those exceptional things that shaped the world as it is today. These projects are nothing more than an attack to our freedom.

Your freedom is not the least impacted by the MIT or BSD licences. The software distributed is and remains free and open source.

tell that to ie playstation users that basically use bsd and cannot use the computation of their device for nothing that sony does not permit.

very freedom

Re: Swapping GNU coreutils for uutils coreutils on Gentoo Linux

#80

Post by kosmozaut »

LightFog wrote: post #17

It’s a shame to see all this effort going toward replacing core GPL licensed utilities with permissive ones. It seems like a particularly common thing in the Rust community. It feels disrespectful of the intentions of the work that went into the tools that are being cloned.

What's wrong with the MIT license?
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