5 ms·

> We really are using a 1970s era 1970 Anno Domini no less

by rusk 8mo ago

pjmlp 8mo ago
Making it even more so of a religion. UNIX is only an OS with some good ideas, and also plenty of bad ones. No reason to stick with it ad eternum as some kind of holy scriptures.
- donkeybeer 8mo ago
  It's "problem" unfortunately is that it happens to be the only major foss os. If there were other foss oses with good support and "better" models I'd gladly try them out. I know I personally would never switch to any non foss os after the user friendliness I have experienced. I would say that's the main reason many stick to it, including game theoretic arguments for commercial players also. Not because people like to stick to ancient models. It's not a ideal system obviously but going back to locked down crap is a no go for me and perhaps many others. BSDs are ok too but the suicidal licensing makes me less inclined.
  - Gud 8mo ago
    What’s suicidal about the BSD license? BSD code is everywhere
    - donkeybeer 8mo ago
      Yes and much of it is sealed off and proprietary. The bsd oses got MacOS for all their hard work, a closed off system that they can't read or port back anything from. Someone would say linux or gpl projects also have been fucked over this way. I suppose if your house has been burgled, such a person would argue we must remove all protections rather than add more.
      - its_magic 8mo ago
        MIT et al are winning over GPL for a reason. I'm not a big corporation. I prefer MIT, or better yet, public domain.
        donkeybeer 8mo ago
        Are they winning as in more people are picking the license or are they winning as in we are getting a overall more enriched foss community? I don't understand why people have such difficulties with the Golden Rule, sounds a simple and fair enough concept.
        its_magic 8mo ago
        We are winning as in "we have more freedom to do as we like without a bunch of lawyers breathing down our necks." Freedom and liberty are what I value. There is no harm occurring to software as a result of more freedom or more liberty. Quite to the contrary. Is your Golden Rule "you will use 'my' software exactly how I dictate, or else I'll call my dogs to attack you"? That's not the one I was taught. I release all my code in the public domain.
        donkeybeer 8mo ago
        Why are you acting so strange and making up misinterpretations of what I wrote? You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use, I fail to see how copyright law can be implemented and defended without lawyers. The golden rule is simple, anyone can look it up, I really don't understand what difficulty you have that made you make up such a strange "not even wrong" theory about it. "do to others what you would have them do to you" , here it means you have benefited from countless man hours of work by other people, so you too should pass on any improvements you made to it just like they did to you. Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario. Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours. While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today), the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying. Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory. Nobody can force anyone to choose a license, its your choice. Again, Mac OS is not a very encouraging example of the overall outcome of BSD licensing. No freebsd/openbsd/whatever person is permitted to read or use Apple's "fork" now. Apple took the hard work of others and instead of paying it back in like, it doesn't take a single cent of money, "paying" back here simply means doing the same the others did, they generously provided you their work as foss, you pass back your delta to it as foss. Thus raising the high water mark of the entire ecosystem. Think academic research. Its usually released in open, so any improvements made by one team are available for others to use and further improve upon. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. How does GPL "force" anyone to do anything? They can either choose to follow the license, or choose another library or home grown an alternative if they dislike the terms.
- bayindirh 8mo ago
  That's true, but some of the arguably worst ideas are the ones which makes it the most approachable, hackable and understandable. Hindsight is an interesting thing. Makes mistakes more visible while making Chesterton's Fences invisible. We shouldn't forget these. These fences are there for the reasons. Yes, fences can be revised, but shall not be ignored.
- fsflover 8mo ago
  You are so vague in your attack on Unix approach that it's borderline trolling. What are your problems with it? Modularity and minimalism have been working perfectly and that systemd does not follow them is a bad thing.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    There is a book on that, gets posted every now and then on HN. In case you never read it, https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf Hardly the piece of OS beauty that gets praised about FOSS circles.
    - rusk 8mo ago
      I love that book but isn’t it nearly 30 years old?
      - pjmlp 8mo ago
        And yet many of the pain points are still kind of relevant, go figure.
    - fsflover 8mo ago
      I'm not talking about the OS though but about the approach.
      - pjmlp 8mo ago
        Goes to both, otherwise UNIX authors would not have tried to improve their creations, working on successors to both UNIX and C.
    - krautburglar 8mo ago
      But that book is a waste. It is just MIT dunning-krugerites who were salty that LISP machines never took off. When it comes to real life, the bell labs approach won, and for several good reasons. Not "worse is better" (another dunning-krugerite cope), but "less is more."
- wobfan 8mo ago
  The article is not about UNIX, what's good and bad, but what's better for understanding Linux. And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. And this is the core of LFS. Discussing whether UNIX is good or bad seems narrow-minded, as there is no solution to that. It's like discussing whether iOS is better than Android. We can always isolate some specific parts and discuss that, but just slashing the whole concept doesn't help anyone and rarely yields any meaningful results.
  - Someone 8mo ago
    > And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. I know there are strong opinions on this, but isn’t systemd part of the core of most Linux desktops nowadays?
    - Gud 8mo ago
      Unfortunately yes
    - edoceo 8mo ago
      All of my Debian out of the box has systemd. On Gentoo it's OpenRC, which I find easier. But! There are some work-around packages that implement some stubs of systemd things because other packages are designed for systemd only world (one such stub is elogind)
- rusk 8mo ago
  My point was, that there’s plenty of ancient things we plod along with, even though they’re not perfect. Many have tried to improve upon them but few have stuck.

> We really are using a 1970s era 1970 Anno Domini no less

by rusk 8mo ago

> We really are using a 1970s era 1970 Anno Domini no less

pjmlp 8mo ago

Making it even more so of a religion. UNIX is only an OS with some good ideas, and also plenty of bad ones. No reason to stick with it ad eternum as some kind of holy scriptures.

donkeybeer 8mo ago
It's "problem" unfortunately is that it happens to be the only major foss os. If there were other foss oses with good support and "better" models I'd gladly try them out. I know I personally would never switch to any non foss os after the user friendliness I have experienced. I would say that's the main reason many stick to it, including game theoretic arguments for commercial players also. Not because people like to stick to ancient models. It's not a ideal system obviously but going back to locked down crap is a no go for me and perhaps many others. BSDs are ok too but the suicidal licensing makes me less inclined.
- Gud 8mo ago
  What’s suicidal about the BSD license? BSD code is everywhere
  - donkeybeer 8mo ago
    Yes and much of it is sealed off and proprietary. The bsd oses got MacOS for all their hard work, a closed off system that they can't read or port back anything from. Someone would say linux or gpl projects also have been fucked over this way. I suppose if your house has been burgled, such a person would argue we must remove all protections rather than add more.
    - its_magic 8mo ago
      MIT et al are winning over GPL for a reason. I'm not a big corporation. I prefer MIT, or better yet, public domain.
      - donkeybeer 8mo ago
        Are they winning as in more people are picking the license or are they winning as in we are getting a overall more enriched foss community? I don't understand why people have such difficulties with the Golden Rule, sounds a simple and fair enough concept.
        its_magic 8mo ago
        We are winning as in "we have more freedom to do as we like without a bunch of lawyers breathing down our necks." Freedom and liberty are what I value. There is no harm occurring to software as a result of more freedom or more liberty. Quite to the contrary. Is your Golden Rule "you will use 'my' software exactly how I dictate, or else I'll call my dogs to attack you"? That's not the one I was taught. I release all my code in the public domain.
        donkeybeer 8mo ago
        Why are you acting so strange and making up misinterpretations of what I wrote? You depend on lawyers either way, whichever license you use, I fail to see how copyright law can be implemented and defended without lawyers. The golden rule is simple, anyone can look it up, I really don't understand what difficulty you have that made you make up such a strange "not even wrong" theory about it. "do to others what you would have them do to you" , here it means you have benefited from countless man hours of work by other people, so you too should pass on any improvements you made to it just like they did to you. Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario. Your small company depend on a complex bsd library thats hard to replicate. It gets the attention of a much larger company, they fork it make various changes to make it much better and keep it closed, their product kills yours. While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today), the company either has to redevelop it inhouse if they wish to serve it as product to the public without releasing its sources, or they do the same thing as in the bsd case, they make a much improved version...and you have equal access to the same sources, you can take that and pivot upon it instead of your company dying. Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory. Nobody can force anyone to choose a license, its your choice. Again, Mac OS is not a very encouraging example of the overall outcome of BSD licensing. No freebsd/openbsd/whatever person is permitted to read or use Apple's "fork" now. Apple took the hard work of others and instead of paying it back in like, it doesn't take a single cent of money, "paying" back here simply means doing the same the others did, they generously provided you their work as foss, you pass back your delta to it as foss. Thus raising the high water mark of the entire ecosystem. Think academic research. Its usually released in open, so any improvements made by one team are available for others to use and further improve upon. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. How does GPL "force" anyone to do anything? They can either choose to follow the license, or choose another library or home grown an alternative if they dislike the terms.
bayindirh 8mo ago
That's true, but some of the arguably worst ideas are the ones which makes it the most approachable, hackable and understandable. Hindsight is an interesting thing. Makes mistakes more visible while making Chesterton's Fences invisible. We shouldn't forget these. These fences are there for the reasons. Yes, fences can be revised, but shall not be ignored.
fsflover 8mo ago
You are so vague in your attack on Unix approach that it's borderline trolling. What are your problems with it? Modularity and minimalism have been working perfectly and that systemd does not follow them is a bad thing.
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  There is a book on that, gets posted every now and then on HN. In case you never read it, https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf Hardly the piece of OS beauty that gets praised about FOSS circles.
  - rusk 8mo ago
    I love that book but isn’t it nearly 30 years old?
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      And yet many of the pain points are still kind of relevant, go figure.
  - fsflover 8mo ago
    I'm not talking about the OS though but about the approach.
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      Goes to both, otherwise UNIX authors would not have tried to improve their creations, working on successors to both UNIX and C.
  - krautburglar 8mo ago
    But that book is a waste. It is just MIT dunning-krugerites who were salty that LISP machines never took off. When it comes to real life, the bell labs approach won, and for several good reasons. Not "worse is better" (another dunning-krugerite cope), but "less is more."
wobfan 8mo ago
The article is not about UNIX, what's good and bad, but what's better for understanding Linux. And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. And this is the core of LFS. Discussing whether UNIX is good or bad seems narrow-minded, as there is no solution to that. It's like discussing whether iOS is better than Android. We can always isolate some specific parts and discuss that, but just slashing the whole concept doesn't help anyone and rarely yields any meaningful results.
- Someone 8mo ago
  > And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. I know there are strong opinions on this, but isn’t systemd part of the core of most Linux desktops nowadays?
  - Gud 8mo ago
    Unfortunately yes
  - edoceo 8mo ago
    All of my Debian out of the box has systemd. On Gentoo it's OpenRC, which I find easier. But! There are some work-around packages that implement some stubs of systemd things because other packages are designed for systemd only world (one such stub is elogind)
rusk 8mo ago
My point was, that there’s plenty of ancient things we plod along with, even though they’re not perfect. Many have tried to improve upon them but few have stuck.