4 ms·

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
They're not totally unrelated to the license - all the good code is GPL, and hardware manufacturers sometimes would rather create an insecure software solution than use GPL code. If somewhat good BSD code is available, manufacturers will use it instead, and it will reduce the attack surface of many embedded systems.
- drdaeman 13y ago
  Do you know any such example of manufacturer reimplementing POSIX userspace from scratch instead of using GNU coreutils or Busybox? Sometimes vendors do not use POSIX userspace altogether by providing big-proprietary-init blob (LG TVs do), but that's irrelevant to Busybox vs Toybox debate.
  - oakwhiz 13y ago
    I do know that a lot of manufacturers use Vxworks instead of Linux for embedded systems, I'm not sure what they use for userland though
    - adestefan 13y ago
      vxWorks doesn't really have a userland. However, they do implement certain POSIX APIs and those are all homegrown.
- synchronise 13y ago
  'all the good code is GPL' is a pretty unrealistic claim to make.
  - oakwhiz 13y ago
    I agree with this.
- binarycrusader 13y ago
  all the good code is GPL Yeah, like the Apache web server, OpenBSD, OpenSSH, most of the software released by the Internet Software Consortium, LLVM, SDL, Ogre3D, Xorg, Python, Perl, Django, V8, Lua, Mesa, CEGUI, JQuery, CURL, Sass, Groovy, and LESS among others. You're right, all of the good code is GPL -- oh wait, none of those are. I guess that code's no good.
eksith 13y ago
I was replying to the parent's assertion the "author's fix is to then implement a replacement that would allow vendors to completely lock down embedded devices." This is an entirely a false premise used to attack the author for his license choice; rather unfortunate since it belittles the entire project. It implies that only corporate entities with closed source licenses can improve the code/hardware... which they will dastardly keep close to their hearts, bless 'em. Meanwhile, a vast number of others will take the code and do improvements themselves. Some portion of them (not all, obviously, and this seems to be the grating point for GPL proponents) will willingly contribute code back as has happened to the countless other BSD/ISC/PD projects floating around. And they will be better off for it since contributed code wasn't due to some license prerequisite, but by willing choice.
- gillianseed 13y ago
  >This is an entirely a false premise used to attack the author for his license choice Well the author made a big deal of the licencing himself as a reason for the project. >And they will be better off for it since contributed code wasn't due to some license prerequisite, but by willing choice. I don't see how they are 'better off', if I release a program and say to people that you can pay me if you want to and no one or extremely few do, am I 'better off'? It's the code/money coming back to me that decides whether I'm 'better off' in my book. Personally I'd rather take the code even if given 'because they legally must', then not have the code at all, if I am really interested in code contributions at all that is. If I'm not then permissive licencing is my preference. There are many types of projects out there were code contributions are appreciated but not really sought, and there are many projects out there were contributions and cooperative development is important for it to bear fruit. I personally think permissive licences typically lends itself best to the former and copyleft licences to the latter. The reason for this is that I think copyleft creates a level playing field for contributors, each participant are legally bound to offer their enhancements in source form which can be incorporated back into the project. But of course there's no clear rule, and the nature of the project itself most likely has a huge impact, like if the project is meant to be a component to be used in other projects then permissive licencing is likely used regardless of the level of cooperative development. Meanwhile if the project is 'stand-alone', copyleft is in my experience the widely chosen licence, this seems to be extremely typical for open source desktop software, regardless of platform.

oakwhiz 13y ago

They're not totally unrelated to the license - all the good code is GPL, and hardware manufacturers sometimes would rather create an insecure software solution than use GPL code. If somewhat good BSD code is available, manufacturers will use it instead, and it will reduce the attack surface of many embedded systems.

drdaeman 13y ago
Do you know any such example of manufacturer reimplementing POSIX userspace from scratch instead of using GNU coreutils or Busybox? Sometimes vendors do not use POSIX userspace altogether by providing big-proprietary-init blob (LG TVs do), but that's irrelevant to Busybox vs Toybox debate.
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  I do know that a lot of manufacturers use Vxworks instead of Linux for embedded systems, I'm not sure what they use for userland though
  - adestefan 13y ago
    vxWorks doesn't really have a userland. However, they do implement certain POSIX APIs and those are all homegrown.
synchronise 13y ago
'all the good code is GPL' is a pretty unrealistic claim to make.
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  I agree with this.
binarycrusader 13y ago
all the good code is GPL Yeah, like the Apache web server, OpenBSD, OpenSSH, most of the software released by the Internet Software Consortium, LLVM, SDL, Ogre3D, Xorg, Python, Perl, Django, V8, Lua, Mesa, CEGUI, JQuery, CURL, Sass, Groovy, and LESS among others. You're right, all of the good code is GPL -- oh wait, none of those are. I guess that code's no good.

eksith 13y ago

I was replying to the parent's assertion the "author's fix is to then implement a replacement that would allow vendors to completely lock down embedded devices." This is an entirely a false premise used to attack the author for his license choice; rather unfortunate since it belittles the entire project. It implies that only corporate entities with closed source licenses can improve the code/hardware... which they will dastardly keep close to their hearts, bless 'em. Meanwhile, a vast number of others will take the code and do improvements themselves. Some portion of them (not all, obviously, and this seems to be the grating point for GPL proponents) will willingly contribute code back as has happened to the countless other BSD/ISC/PD projects floating around. And they will be better off for it since contributed code wasn't due to some license prerequisite, but by willing choice.

gillianseed 13y ago
>This is an entirely a false premise used to attack the author for his license choice Well the author made a big deal of the licencing himself as a reason for the project. >And they will be better off for it since contributed code wasn't due to some license prerequisite, but by willing choice. I don't see how they are 'better off', if I release a program and say to people that you can pay me if you want to and no one or extremely few do, am I 'better off'? It's the code/money coming back to me that decides whether I'm 'better off' in my book. Personally I'd rather take the code even if given 'because they legally must', then not have the code at all, if I am really interested in code contributions at all that is. If I'm not then permissive licencing is my preference. There are many types of projects out there were code contributions are appreciated but not really sought, and there are many projects out there were contributions and cooperative development is important for it to bear fruit. I personally think permissive licences typically lends itself best to the former and copyleft licences to the latter. The reason for this is that I think copyleft creates a level playing field for contributors, each participant are legally bound to offer their enhancements in source form which can be incorporated back into the project. But of course there's no clear rule, and the nature of the project itself most likely has a huge impact, like if the project is meant to be a component to be used in other projects then permissive licencing is likely used regardless of the level of cooperative development. Meanwhile if the project is 'stand-alone', copyleft is in my experience the widely chosen licence, this seems to be extremely typical for open source desktop software, regardless of platform.