Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 10th Jan 2013 01:41 UTC, submitted by lucas_maximus
"A senior OpenBSD developer has complained on a mailing list that upstream vendors of free and open source software are adding in changes without any thought of whether downstream users could adapt to the change. Marc Espie said this would hurt smaller players by not allowing them to keep up with the changes. Basically what is happening is that numerous changes are being made to Linux and smaller projects like OpenBSD cannot keep up with the changes. And, according to Espie, not all these changes are strictly necessary."
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Member since:2011-08-13
It wouldn't be the first small, sensible improvement they've lifted from GNU. OpenBSD's /bin/ksh supports bash-style escapes in its PS1, so you can run "export PS1=\u@\h\w:\$" and it will behave like you'd expect as a bash user. That's much better than the awful hackery needed in "real" ksh syntax to get that sort of prompt.
Member since:2009-08-18
http://www.osnews.com/thread?548198
Not really that hard to understand why. It maybe a little more effort, but usually a little bit more effort is what makes a better bit of software.
Member since:2008-08-19
So you think the larger group of developers should change how they do things so that the BSD group can avoid doing something simple like adding sed -i capability to keep things compatible?
Or just using the immeasurably superior GNU versions of those tools. That seems to be standard practice on the commercial UNIX systems I've worked on - forget about the versions that come with the system, just install the GNU packages for coreutils, grep, sed, etc. It's easier to just mandate the GNU versions of those utilities than to try and work around the deficiencies of the standard versions.
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2007-02-18
Funny thing is, I can remember a time when there was no shortage of Linux users and devs complaining about how Windows apps and code was not portable to Linux. "Portability is important yadda yadda yadda".
I guess Linux success changed all that, somehow.
I guess Linux success changed all that, somehow.
Only the users who wanted to port Windows programs to Linux. Not the ones who preferred to write something for Linux specifically.
And with libraries like Qt and GTK working on Windows, that problem is also being solved. Yes, success did change all that, but that's because the Linux derivatives went with the pragmatic option.
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Member since:
2006-01-14
So you think the larger group of developers should change how they do things so that the BSD group can avoid doing something simple like adding sed -i capability to keep things compatible? You know, there is a flip side to every coin. Maybe the Linux people feel you're being unreasonable by not see it their way. And if they are the ones writing the code, I guess they can do whatever they want.