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Devil's advocate: Isn't this kind of behavior how we ended up with what became the POSIX command-line utilities? A bunch of people re-implementing and extending

Devil's advocate: Isn't this kind of behavior how we ended up with what became the POSIX command-line utilities? A bunch of people re-implementing and extending each other's stuff without changing the name? I know that the word has changed a bit since then and that it's a bit different to appropriate a soul-less corporation's command names vs an individual volunteer.. It just happened to strike me as odd at the moment I came across this thread that we're so up-in-arms about this when we're all happily using utilities that were produced by the very same process every day.

zonidjan 7y ago
I don't know that massively popular utilities were ever "reimplemented" with the same name. Ported, or forked, or extended, but not reimplemented. It's not clear to me if pcp-dstat is a fork or a total rewrite. Also, most of those utilities were named things which solely described what they did. It's a bit different to make a new "cut" vs a new "clhodapp".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- JdeBP 7y ago
  Then there is a lot of history that you do not know, starting with BSD and progressing through the late 1980s and early 1990s when there was a torrent of "clones" of things. The "Vixie cron" that you might even still be using is a "PD" clone of the Unix cron program, reimplemented from scratch with the same name. The van Smoorenburg "init" that you might have heard of was a clone of (an at the time sadly already out of date) Unix init program. All of the stuff in GNU coreutils and other similar GNU toolsets was a deliberate reimplementation from scratch. And then there are the Thompson, Mashey, Bourne, Almquist, Bourne Again, Korn, Z, and Watanabe shells. And BusyBox and ToyBox. And /usr/lib/sendmail . And the "mailx" utility. And "awk". And "vncviewer". And "getty". And so on. * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/508142/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/508142/5132 * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988382 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005677 * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/316279/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/316279/5132
  - breakingcups 7y ago
    I'd like to add the common aliasing of vi->vim
    - JdeBP 7y ago
      You're too late. It's the fourth item in the first Stack Exchange answer. (-:
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  almost every BSD tool is a rewrite of the original unix tools, and every GNU one is a separate rewrite too.

zonidjan 7y ago

I don't know that massively popular utilities were ever "reimplemented" with the same name. Ported, or forked, or extended, but not reimplemented. It's not clear to me if pcp-dstat is a fork or a total rewrite. Also, most of those utilities were named things which solely described what they did. It's a bit different to make a new "cut" vs a new "clhodapp".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
JdeBP 7y ago
Then there is a lot of history that you do not know, starting with BSD and progressing through the late 1980s and early 1990s when there was a torrent of "clones" of things. The "Vixie cron" that you might even still be using is a "PD" clone of the Unix cron program, reimplemented from scratch with the same name. The van Smoorenburg "init" that you might have heard of was a clone of (an at the time sadly already out of date) Unix init program. All of the stuff in GNU coreutils and other similar GNU toolsets was a deliberate reimplementation from scratch. And then there are the Thompson, Mashey, Bourne, Almquist, Bourne Again, Korn, Z, and Watanabe shells. And BusyBox and ToyBox. And /usr/lib/sendmail . And the "mailx" utility. And "awk". And "vncviewer". And "getty". And so on. * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/508142/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/508142/5132 * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988382 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005677 * https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/316279/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/316279/5132
- breakingcups 7y ago
  I'd like to add the common aliasing of vi->vim
  - JdeBP 7y ago
    You're too late. It's the fourth item in the first Stack Exchange answer. (-:
throwaway2048 7y ago
almost every BSD tool is a rewrite of the original unix tools, and every GNU one is a separate rewrite too.