5 ms·

Seriously question. What makes curl so special? Couldn't the same be said e.g. for wget?

by lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago

Uvix 2y ago
Curl ships as a library; wget is only available as a command-line tool, I believe.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  libwget exists too, and is licensed under LGPL. The wget/wget2 tool itself is GPL3 licensed. The "MIT" license is less complicated to comply with than LGPL, but that's probably not why it's getting chosen.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
detinho 2y ago
Don't know about wget, but curl also provides libcurl [0] so you can embed it on your software. Also curl supports a wider range of protocols, as can be seen on [0]. [0] https://curl.se/libcurl/ https://curl.se/libcurl/
peterpost2 2y ago
Curl is an ancient tool in internet terms and runs on pretty much everything.
dazzawazza 2y ago
Game dev here: * it's got a license that allows it to be embedded * it's well known amongst game devs * its deals very well with all the mind-numbingly uninteresting network issues game devs don't care about It's mostly used for analytics, fetching news, RSS feeds etc. Seperate proprietry libs are used for the CDN side of game dev. Basically it works and the gamedev industry is incredibly conservative about new/different tech. Alas it's also greedy. I know of games making $1 million a day that pay nothing in to the curl.
- xyst 2y ago
  $1M/day … Genshin Impact? Or maybe a handful of the microtransaction/IAP filled games.
  - dgb23 2y ago
    At this point we should rename "microtransactions" to "macrotransactions". From a quick search: $500 for a character cosmetic: https://www.si.com/esports/league-of-legends/ahri-ban-rate https://www.si.com/esports/league-of-legends/ahri-ban-rate $50'000 for a feature bundle: https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-introducing-a-48000-ship-bundle-but-only-for-players-who-have-already-spent-10000 https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-introducing-a-4800... $100'000 for an auctioned weapon cosmetic: https://www.followchain.org/most-expensive-csgo-knives/ https://www.followchain.org/most-expensive-csgo-knives/
    - xyst 2y ago
      I’m in the wrong business. Just need a product that attracts a couple of whales with addictions for superficial items, especially digital ones.
  - mopsi 2y ago
    Grand Theft Auto V uses curl and earns about that much in a year. Fortnite, Roblox and PUBG use curl too; they're massive money-printing machines. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/06/09/games-curl-too/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/06/09/games-curl-too/
- dijit 2y ago
  ^ this is the true. Sadly, it's really difficult to get companies to pay money they don't have to.
  - sph 2y ago
    Then don't choose a super permissive license like BSD/MIT. I was reading The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith recently (1776), and one passage stuck to me: that the regular market works because it is driven by the inherent self-interest and egoism of humans, while only beggars expect to earn a living out of the goodwill of the people. I love free software, but it makes no sense as a business model. If you want to make money out of free software while avoiding leeches, use a serious license. AGPL3, MPL2.0 or EUPL. The entire ecosystem of permissive licenses is pushed, hard, by companies themselves, and perpetuated by their naive employees. Hence the creation of the corporate-friendly Open Source Initiative (OSI) that has completely eaten the lunch of the FSF.
mschuster91 2y ago
curl is a library, unlike wget, it's truly cross-platform, and it handles pretty much everything http-related that you can throw at it, in many cases better than the "native" HTTP implementations of the OS or game development framework.
noname120 2y ago
Nobody gets fired for choosing curl.
mytailorisrich 2y ago
libcurl is very capable and easy to use. Pretty much go-to library if you need connectivity through any of the common protocols.
lynndotpy 2y ago
cURL is nice because it's an HTTP request tool that's got about three decades of all the minutia built into it. It's got a CLI and a library, and it runs on every operating system you might develop for. I think a big difference is that the author is pretty darn proud of cURL and brags about it often, and that curl's license is more permissive than wget's GPL.

Seriously question. What makes curl so special? Couldn't the same be said e.g. for wget?

Uvix 2y ago

Curl ships as a library; wget is only available as a command-line tool, I believe.

jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
libwget exists too, and is licensed under LGPL. The wget/wget2 tool itself is GPL3 licensed. The "MIT" license is less complicated to comply with than LGPL, but that's probably not why it's getting chosen.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

detinho 2y ago

Don't know about wget, but curl also provides libcurl [0] so you can embed it on your software. Also curl supports a wider range of protocols, as can be seen on [0]. [0] https://curl.se/libcurl/ https://curl.se/libcurl/

peterpost2 2y ago

Curl is an ancient tool in internet terms and runs on pretty much everything.

dazzawazza 2y ago

Game dev here: * it's got a license that allows it to be embedded * it's well known amongst game devs * its deals very well with all the mind-numbingly uninteresting network issues game devs don't care about It's mostly used for analytics, fetching news, RSS feeds etc. Seperate proprietry libs are used for the CDN side of game dev. Basically it works and the gamedev industry is incredibly conservative about new/different tech. Alas it's also greedy. I know of games making $1 million a day that pay nothing in to the curl.

xyst 2y ago
$1M/day … Genshin Impact? Or maybe a handful of the microtransaction/IAP filled games.
- dgb23 2y ago
  At this point we should rename "microtransactions" to "macrotransactions". From a quick search: $500 for a character cosmetic: https://www.si.com/esports/league-of-legends/ahri-ban-rate https://www.si.com/esports/league-of-legends/ahri-ban-rate $50'000 for a feature bundle: https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-introducing-a-48000-ship-bundle-but-only-for-players-who-have-already-spent-10000 https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-introducing-a-4800... $100'000 for an auctioned weapon cosmetic: https://www.followchain.org/most-expensive-csgo-knives/ https://www.followchain.org/most-expensive-csgo-knives/
  - xyst 2y ago
    I’m in the wrong business. Just need a product that attracts a couple of whales with addictions for superficial items, especially digital ones.
- mopsi 2y ago
  Grand Theft Auto V uses curl and earns about that much in a year. Fortnite, Roblox and PUBG use curl too; they're massive money-printing machines. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/06/09/games-curl-too/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/06/09/games-curl-too/
dijit 2y ago
^ this is the true. Sadly, it's really difficult to get companies to pay money they don't have to.
- sph 2y ago
  Then don't choose a super permissive license like BSD/MIT. I was reading The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith recently (1776), and one passage stuck to me: that the regular market works because it is driven by the inherent self-interest and egoism of humans, while only beggars expect to earn a living out of the goodwill of the people. I love free software, but it makes no sense as a business model. If you want to make money out of free software while avoiding leeches, use a serious license. AGPL3, MPL2.0 or EUPL. The entire ecosystem of permissive licenses is pushed, hard, by companies themselves, and perpetuated by their naive employees. Hence the creation of the corporate-friendly Open Source Initiative (OSI) that has completely eaten the lunch of the FSF.

mschuster91 2y ago

curl is a library, unlike wget, it's truly cross-platform, and it handles pretty much everything http-related that you can throw at it, in many cases better than the "native" HTTP implementations of the OS or game development framework.

noname120 2y ago

Nobody gets fired for choosing curl.

mytailorisrich 2y ago

libcurl is very capable and easy to use. Pretty much go-to library if you need connectivity through any of the common protocols.

lynndotpy 2y ago

cURL is nice because it's an HTTP request tool that's got about three decades of all the minutia built into it. It's got a CLI and a library, and it runs on every operating system you might develop for. I think a big difference is that the author is pretty darn proud of cURL and brags about it often, and that curl's license is more permissive than wget's GPL.