Hence the " ;-). Indeed, the heritage isn't nearly as unbroken as its proponents think. I think it's perceived as so traditional because most of the free Unices

Hence the " ;-). Indeed, the heritage isn't nearly as unbroken as its proponents think. I think it's perceived as so traditional because most of the free Unices (and, for a long time, Linux) did it, and some of them still do. FreeBSD started dynamically linking things in /bin much later, around 2004 IIRC, but I think OpenBSD and NetBSD still ship only static binaries there. I think the fact that I can't even remember the last time I cared how things in /bin are linked is good proof of how important this "tradition" is, at least for me...