8 ms·

Toybox, a Busybox alternative with a BSD license

101 points by networked 13y ago

hoverbear 13y ago
I got to know Landley fairly well on IRC over a course of a few months, he was a really clever fellow. At the time Toybox was just in it's infancy, glad to see it maturing.
jimktrains2 13y ago
There use to be a little DOS GUI program called ToyBox. My dad installed it to allow easier access to stuff installed on our computer for my siblings and I.
RexRollman 13y ago
Maybe I missed it, but why recreate Busybox? It it just about the license? Nevermind, found it here: http://landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt http://landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt
- eksith 13y ago
  That's a whole heap of very controversial topics. I'm very curious how it will turn out as I favor BSD/ISC over GPL for the same basic reason as well : In the absence of universal receiver, go to universal donor (BSD/PD)
  - spacelizard 13y ago
    That analogy is a bit flawed. People who can't legally combine the GPL with other projects had to make the conscious decision of choosing an incompatible license. If you acknowledge the idea that there are no non-universal recipients or donors in software, then it makes more sense to use copyleft.
    - eksith 13y ago
      I'm not too sure what you're trying to say here. "If you acknowledge the idea that there are no non-universal recipients or donors in software..." ? My perspective is that of a donor; not a receiver. I want to ensure that what I create has as few hindrances as possible in terms of adoptability and the last thing I need is the license (which has no bearing whatsoever on the actual functionality of the work to begin with) to get in the way. And I've seen it get in the way of plenty of other past projects.
      - spacelizard 13y ago
        If you release your software under copyleft, and someone else can't use that in another project because they chose an incompatible license, the "hindrance" is entirely their fault, not yours. Now if someone takes your permissively licensed code and makes it proprietary, THAT is a real hindrance to users of that software, and while it may not be your fault directly, you had the power to stop it because you are the copyright holder and could have copylefted it. So permissively licensed software actually has more potential than copyrighted software in allowing a license to "get in the way."
        eksith 13y ago
        I want to give people choice to contribute back. 'Do as you please and leave the copyright' vs. 'Do as you please, leave copyright, distribution requires sources etc...' Which is more permissive? "Permissive" in your sense of the word is entirely a misnomer since it's effectively a permission whitelist not a blacklist. This is getting to be entirely repetitious since I've had this discussion many times before. I'll let an old post explain why I can never in good conscience put GPL on anything I do : http://eksith.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/gpl-vs-bsd http://eksith.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/gpl-vs-bsd
        Nursie 13y ago
        One persons restriction on what developers can do is another persons "Never able to access the source to devices I own" I'm sure you have your reasons for disliking the GPL. Many of us love it for those very same reasons, and for the freedom it grants to everyone, not just the immediate recipient.
- tjaerv 13y ago
  The video of the presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0
- randallu 13y ago
  I like that self-hosting is a focus; I'd love for Android to become self-hosting and have some good development tools (and I believe that good tools would be much easier if Android ran regular java code and didn't require dexing -- incremental compilation is made much harder by this [over] optimization). It seems like with qcc he's focused on self-hosting toybox rather than the system upon which it runs... (also linking big projects like WebKit takes a lot of address space; last time I tried I was unable to link a debug WebKit on a 32bit machine...).
mschuster91 13y ago
If I may ask,why all the effort of reinventing the wheel as there already exists the gnu userland/coreutils and busybox? Just because of the license?!
- tjaerv 13y ago
  Yes, because of licensing. See his recent presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0
- jahewson 13y ago
  He also argues that busybox has now become bloatware with a large attack surface area.
cliffbean 13y ago
I am sympathetic to people who prefer BSD-style licenses for many reasons, including simplicity, GPLv3 overreach avoidance, and even just declining to give attention to a certain obnoxious man (regardless of what you think of the politics). However, the individualist in me really likes being able to install my own software on my own hardware. The GPL license, specifically in the areas of a system needed to boot and minimally run, has successfully helped me do this several times in the past, by pushing vendors to deliver source for something that they probably wouldn't have otherwise. It doesn't always work, and it isn't perfect, but it has worked in some cases where seemingly nothing else would have. As long as this continues to be the case, I won't celebrate the replacement of busybox for licensing purposes.
- adestefan 13y ago
  It's pretty strange that the talking notes linked below say that one of the biggest threats to computing is locked down embedded devices. The author's fix is to then implement a replacement that would allow vendors to completely lock down embedded devices.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Huh? The author's fix is to help develop embedded systems by freely distributing an unencumbered tool set with: 1) A smaller attack surface 2) Correctness as a focus with regard to code 3) Conciseness as a focus with regard to tools 4) Improved speed 5) Clear documentation (In TODO) http://www.landley.net/toybox/status.html http://www.landley.net/toybox/status.html http://www.landley.net/toybox/design.html http://www.landley.net/toybox/design.html
    - cliffbean 13y ago
      Those are nice things, but they're also orthogonal to the license choice, which happens to be the detail which made the headline here.
      - oakwhiz 13y ago
ausjke 13y ago
worked with Robert closely in the past, who is a real geek and a kind and nice person to work with, I'm so happy to see this coming along.
james2vegas 13y ago
Funny how this project with the BSD license is so anti-BSD (yeah, BSD users are 'busybox-envious', amongst other things). Fails to notice the presence of a large number of BSD-licensed userland tools, in the BSDs, while denigrating as many similar projects as possible (linking to inaccurate, flame-bait anti-Perl articles as a bonus).
jjindev 13y ago
I only watched a bit, but isn't the idea that "phones become disruptive" contrary to other expectation, of ubiquitous computing? Needing "your device" to be self supporting seems to hearken back to rare computing. (I think I'd like to see better communication between devices, with the expectation that a real Linux development machine will be trivially cheap from here on out.)

101 points by networked 13y ago

I got to know Landley fairly well on IRC over a course of a few months, he was a really clever fellow. At the time Toybox was just in it's infancy, glad to see it maturing.

jimktrains2 13y ago

There use to be a little DOS GUI program called ToyBox. My dad installed it to allow easier access to stuff installed on our computer for my siblings and I.

RexRollman 13y ago

Maybe I missed it, but why recreate Busybox? It it just about the license? Nevermind, found it here: http://landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt http://landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt

eksith 13y ago
That's a whole heap of very controversial topics. I'm very curious how it will turn out as I favor BSD/ISC over GPL for the same basic reason as well : In the absence of universal receiver, go to universal donor (BSD/PD)
- spacelizard 13y ago
  That analogy is a bit flawed. People who can't legally combine the GPL with other projects had to make the conscious decision of choosing an incompatible license. If you acknowledge the idea that there are no non-universal recipients or donors in software, then it makes more sense to use copyleft.
  - eksith 13y ago
    I'm not too sure what you're trying to say here. "If you acknowledge the idea that there are no non-universal recipients or donors in software..." ? My perspective is that of a donor; not a receiver. I want to ensure that what I create has as few hindrances as possible in terms of adoptability and the last thing I need is the license (which has no bearing whatsoever on the actual functionality of the work to begin with) to get in the way. And I've seen it get in the way of plenty of other past projects.
    - spacelizard 13y ago
      If you release your software under copyleft, and someone else can't use that in another project because they chose an incompatible license, the "hindrance" is entirely their fault, not yours. Now if someone takes your permissively licensed code and makes it proprietary, THAT is a real hindrance to users of that software, and while it may not be your fault directly, you had the power to stop it because you are the copyright holder and could have copylefted it. So permissively licensed software actually has more potential than copyrighted software in allowing a license to "get in the way."
      - eksith 13y ago
        I want to give people choice to contribute back. 'Do as you please and leave the copyright' vs. 'Do as you please, leave copyright, distribution requires sources etc...' Which is more permissive? "Permissive" in your sense of the word is entirely a misnomer since it's effectively a permission whitelist not a blacklist. This is getting to be entirely repetitious since I've had this discussion many times before. I'll let an old post explain why I can never in good conscience put GPL on anything I do : http://eksith.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/gpl-vs-bsd http://eksith.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/gpl-vs-bsd
        Nursie 13y ago
        One persons restriction on what developers can do is another persons "Never able to access the source to devices I own" I'm sure you have your reasons for disliking the GPL. Many of us love it for those very same reasons, and for the freedom it grants to everyone, not just the immediate recipient.
tjaerv 13y ago
The video of the presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0
randallu 13y ago
I like that self-hosting is a focus; I'd love for Android to become self-hosting and have some good development tools (and I believe that good tools would be much easier if Android ran regular java code and didn't require dexing -- incremental compilation is made much harder by this [over] optimization). It seems like with qcc he's focused on self-hosting toybox rather than the system upon which it runs... (also linking big projects like WebKit takes a lot of address space; last time I tried I was unable to link a debug WebKit on a 32bit machine...).

mschuster91 13y ago

If I may ask,why all the effort of reinventing the wheel as there already exists the gnu userland/coreutils and busybox? Just because of the license?!

tjaerv 13y ago
Yes, because of licensing. See his recent presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0
jahewson 13y ago
He also argues that busybox has now become bloatware with a large attack surface area.

cliffbean 13y ago

I am sympathetic to people who prefer BSD-style licenses for many reasons, including simplicity, GPLv3 overreach avoidance, and even just declining to give attention to a certain obnoxious man (regardless of what you think of the politics). However, the individualist in me really likes being able to install my own software on my own hardware. The GPL license, specifically in the areas of a system needed to boot and minimally run, has successfully helped me do this several times in the past, by pushing vendors to deliver source for something that they probably wouldn't have otherwise. It doesn't always work, and it isn't perfect, but it has worked in some cases where seemingly nothing else would have. As long as this continues to be the case, I won't celebrate the replacement of busybox for licensing purposes.

adestefan 13y ago
It's pretty strange that the talking notes linked below say that one of the biggest threats to computing is locked down embedded devices. The author's fix is to then implement a replacement that would allow vendors to completely lock down embedded devices.
- eksith 13y ago
  Huh? The author's fix is to help develop embedded systems by freely distributing an unencumbered tool set with: 1) A smaller attack surface 2) Correctness as a focus with regard to code 3) Conciseness as a focus with regard to tools 4) Improved speed 5) Clear documentation (In TODO) http://www.landley.net/toybox/status.html http://www.landley.net/toybox/status.html http://www.landley.net/toybox/design.html http://www.landley.net/toybox/design.html
  - cliffbean 13y ago
    Those are nice things, but they're also orthogonal to the license choice, which happens to be the detail which made the headline here.
    - oakwhiz 13y ago

ausjke 13y ago

worked with Robert closely in the past, who is a real geek and a kind and nice person to work with, I'm so happy to see this coming along.

james2vegas 13y ago

Funny how this project with the BSD license is so anti-BSD (yeah, BSD users are 'busybox-envious', amongst other things). Fails to notice the presence of a large number of BSD-licensed userland tools, in the BSDs, while denigrating as many similar projects as possible (linking to inaccurate, flame-bait anti-Perl articles as a bonus).

jjindev 13y ago

I only watched a bit, but isn't the idea that "phones become disruptive" contrary to other expectation, of ubiquitous computing? Needing "your device" to be self supporting seems to hearken back to rare computing. (I think I'd like to see better communication between devices, with the expectation that a real Linux development machine will be trivially cheap from here on out.)