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> but this point is one of the most insular HN-bubble comments I've seen...I have never spoken to anyone who's wanted or needed the source code for Bash or Zsh.
by quadrifoliate 5y ago
> but this point is one of the most insular HN-bubble comments I've seen...I have never spoken to anyone who's wanted or needed the source code for Bash or Zsh.
It might be in-bubble, but "I have never spoken to anyone who..." is a poor heuristic for evaluating the superiority/inferiority of a product.
I have also never spoken to anyone who needed a repair manual for a truck, but I can probably agree with the statement that truck companies that publish comprehensive repair manuals are better than truck companies that don't.
Similarly, I can guess having the source for bash or zsh probably helps people who work with them more closely than I do.
- samhw 5y ago> It might be in-bubble, but "I have never spoken to anyone who..." is a poor heuristic for evaluating the superiority/inferiority of a product. ∃x→¬P(x) is a poor response to ∃x→P(x), but a good response to ∀x→P(x). In this case, the parent commenter was claiming - in context - that all end users need or benefit from having the source code to their software, so it is relevant to say that that statement is true of absolutely nobody I know. If he were making the abstract statement that publishing the source code might benefit some people, that would be another thing. In reality, I don't think it makes any difference whether Apple bundles the source code to these programs, when the source code, by definition, is openly available, and can be accessed much more easily by Googling it much more quickly and easily than by searching for it somewhere in /usr/lib.