8 ms·

Ok, I'll ask the obvious. Why is OpenBSD trying to maintain a list of IATA airport codes? (And before you ask why not, try to think of some answers yourself fi

by em500 4y ago

Ok, I'll ask the obvious. Why is OpenBSD trying to maintain a list of IATA airport codes? (And before you ask why not, try to think of some answers yourself first. I can come up with a few drawbacks, though I'm nowhere close to a subject expert.)

roydivision 4y ago
And whatever the valid reason, why isn’t it an import of some official list?
- widjit 4y ago
  It is an official list: a list of airports visited by OpenBSD developers. It's just a bit of culture, don't worry about it so much.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    So if you were doing a more serious program you wouldn't use this? I'm not familiar with BSD but when I was using Kali if I was using a share it was to feed into something else, classic example being wordlists fed into hydra[1] or something. [1] https://sectools.org/tool/hydra/ https://sectools.org/tool/hydra/
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  Official lists are very often not permissively licensed (or openly at all).
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  Because that would require trusting some third party that claims (accurately? deceptively? who knows) that those airports exist. As maintainers of and contributors to a security-focused OS, OpenBSD devs want to verify the existence of each airport themselves before deciding it's fit for inclusion.
- em500 4y ago
  The official list is payware: https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-directory/ https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-di... Alternatives are to scrape some other website (who presumably paid IATA for the data) or Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_airports_by_IATA_and_ICAO_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_airports_by_IATA_and_...) which may or may not be more complete/accurate than OpenBSD's own crowdsourced list.
piker 4y ago
It could just be a fun Easter egg to keep developers engaged.
rdpintqogeogsaa 4y ago
From what I can tell, at least it's historically inherited. 4.4BSD had a list of airports in the same location. Its inclusion in 4.4BSD seems a mystery though. No other files on the 4.4BSD distribution seem to reference it. The atc(6) game involves airports, but it doesn't seem to actually open this file, both in 4.4BSD and in OpenBSD.
- fanf2 4y ago
  It goes back a bit further than that, to 4.3BSD-Reno https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/share/misc https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/sh... The previous release, 4.3BSD-Tahoe, did not have /usr/share
brynet 4y ago
History is so quickly forgotten: https://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html https://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html .. also: https://www.openbsd.org/events.html https://www.openbsd.org/events.html
- em500 4y ago
  Your reply doesn't seem to answer my question at all. I opened both links, searched for "airport" and "IATA" and nothing relevant came up.
  - brynet 4y ago
    Well then here's a few more keywords for you. 'jet-lag', 'travel'. Hackathons tentatively take place in airport lounges.
    - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
      Non-sequitur? I'm reading "hackathons may occur in airports, therefore OpenBSD should maintain a list of all airport codes." Suppose the list didn't already exist, how would you justify adding it?
mrweasel 4y ago
There's also share/misc/birthtoken with a list of birth stones and flowers. That's actually much more weird than a list of airport codes. https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/birthtoken https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/birthtoken
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Also a list of operator precedence, various phone area codes (country & local), an ASCII table. I guess it's just a "list of databases that was useful/fun to someone, at some point". Harder to "just get it from the internet" back in the 80s.
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    The phone codes must be terribly out of date and inaccurate those are so hard to maintain even with paid official data sources
  - bodyfour 4y ago
    Some things like the ASCII table have been there (or rather in the original location of /usr/pub) since near the dawn of UNIX itself: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/8cf2a84555f3384521768152d4e94e01a57ae3ab/usr/pub/ascii https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/8cf2a84... (Also available as "man ascii" from almost as long ago https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Research-V7-Snapshot-Development/usr/man/man7/ascii.7 https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... ) OpenBSD seems to like collecting extra items though
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  I was always more of a Debian person but you're making me want to switch, this is some old internet style fun.
- bawolff 4y ago
  I think mac os also has the list of birthstones
bandrami 4y ago
Many weather apps use IATA codes; I've looked them up in that file before for that.
jl6 4y ago
I think it’s nice to have a few small standard data sets that you can use in examples, tutorials, man pages and testing.

by em500 4y ago

roydivision 4y ago

And whatever the valid reason, why isn’t it an import of some official list?

widjit 4y ago
It is an official list: a list of airports visited by OpenBSD developers. It's just a bit of culture, don't worry about it so much.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  So if you were doing a more serious program you wouldn't use this? I'm not familiar with BSD but when I was using Kali if I was using a share it was to feed into something else, classic example being wordlists fed into hydra[1] or something. [1] https://sectools.org/tool/hydra/ https://sectools.org/tool/hydra/
Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
Official lists are very often not permissively licensed (or openly at all).
hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
Because that would require trusting some third party that claims (accurately? deceptively? who knows) that those airports exist. As maintainers of and contributors to a security-focused OS, OpenBSD devs want to verify the existence of each airport themselves before deciding it's fit for inclusion.
em500 4y ago
The official list is payware: https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-directory/ https://www.iata.org/en/publications/store/airline-coding-di... Alternatives are to scrape some other website (who presumably paid IATA for the data) or Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_airports_by_IATA_and_ICAO_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_airports_by_IATA_and_...) which may or may not be more complete/accurate than OpenBSD's own crowdsourced list.

piker 4y ago

It could just be a fun Easter egg to keep developers engaged.

rdpintqogeogsaa 4y ago

From what I can tell, at least it's historically inherited. 4.4BSD had a list of airports in the same location. Its inclusion in 4.4BSD seems a mystery though. No other files on the 4.4BSD distribution seem to reference it. The atc(6) game involves airports, but it doesn't seem to actually open this file, both in 4.4BSD and in OpenBSD.

fanf2 4y ago
It goes back a bit further than that, to 4.3BSD-Reno https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/share/misc https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/sh... The previous release, 4.3BSD-Tahoe, did not have /usr/share

brynet 4y ago

History is so quickly forgotten: https://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html https://www.openbsd.org/hackathons.html .. also: https://www.openbsd.org/events.html https://www.openbsd.org/events.html

em500 4y ago
Your reply doesn't seem to answer my question at all. I opened both links, searched for "airport" and "IATA" and nothing relevant came up.
- brynet 4y ago
  Well then here's a few more keywords for you. 'jet-lag', 'travel'. Hackathons tentatively take place in airport lounges.
  - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
    Non-sequitur? I'm reading "hackathons may occur in airports, therefore OpenBSD should maintain a list of all airport codes." Suppose the list didn't already exist, how would you justify adding it?

mrweasel 4y ago

There's also share/misc/birthtoken with a list of birth stones and flowers. That's actually much more weird than a list of airport codes. https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/birthtoken https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src/share/misc/birthtoken

Beltalowda 4y ago
Also a list of operator precedence, various phone area codes (country & local), an ASCII table. I guess it's just a "list of databases that was useful/fun to someone, at some point". Harder to "just get it from the internet" back in the 80s.
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  The phone codes must be terribly out of date and inaccurate those are so hard to maintain even with paid official data sources
- bodyfour 4y ago
  Some things like the ASCII table have been there (or rather in the original location of /usr/pub) since near the dawn of UNIX itself: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/8cf2a84555f3384521768152d4e94e01a57ae3ab/usr/pub/ascii https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/8cf2a84... (Also available as "man ascii" from almost as long ago https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Research-V7-Snapshot-Development/usr/man/man7/ascii.7 https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... ) OpenBSD seems to like collecting extra items though
dontbenebby 4y ago
I was always more of a Debian person but you're making me want to switch, this is some old internet style fun.
bawolff 4y ago
I think mac os also has the list of birthstones

bandrami 4y ago

Many weather apps use IATA codes; I've looked them up in that file before for that.

jl6 4y ago

I think it’s nice to have a few small standard data sets that you can use in examples, tutorials, man pages and testing.