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Thanks for the details, I did give compiling it a try and saw some of the things you mention, but my knowledge of C, pre-standards C, and libc wasn't enough to

Thanks for the details, I did give compiling it a try and saw some of the things you mention, but my knowledge of C, pre-standards C, and libc wasn't enough to fully make sense of them. I'll agree it looked better than I expected; I've seen much worse cases of single-decade old programs not compiling/working (one in Haskell and another involving C++ and Java, although they were much larger programs). But I don't think it was unfair to use that as an example of early Unix software, or to point out that it was harder than "just compiling it". One defense against my argument could be that a version of 'grep' has been maintained through C versions and operating systems, with source code availability playing a part in that (although presumably GNU grep avoided using Unix source code).

joveian 3y ago
My extremely limited experience with Java is similar, it seems to do much worse than C at compatability over time. Of course you are right that it is a fair example of early Unix code, I just didn't read the comment you were actually replying to carefully enough :(. Pre-standard C has more issues, so I don't think that is fair vs Windows but that is not what you were replying to. Source availability gives some additional options that you don't have with only binaries but I think you are right that without it being open source the use is limited (and potentially negative, like how the BSDs were limited by the USL lawsuit in the early 90s). Useful open source software is likely to be maintained at least to the point of compiling, though it may take a while to break enough for someone to bother (sox is in this middle stage right now with package systems applying a few security patches but no central updated repository that I know of).