UNIX design was so great that its authors did two other operating systems trying to make UNIX done right.
One of the few times I agree with Rob Pike,
> We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.
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.
Mr Pike has indeed constructed a better OS than Unix; too bad AT&T neither knew how to achieve viral popularity, nor why Free Software (as in GPL) is going to dominate the world. By about 1995, it was already too late. (Something similar happened to Inferno vs Java.)
Still, the Unix principles of modularity, composability, doing one thing well, and unified interfaces are widely considered very sane, and adopted.
GPL is on its way out, a good example is that all Linux competitors in the embedded space, including Linux Foundation's Zephyr, none of them has adopted GPL.
GPL based software is now a minority, almost everything uses licenses that businesses rather reach for.
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.
So when it comes to projects that teach the fundamentals of GNU/Linux, such as LFS, overwhelming the user with a large amount of user space complexity is counterproductive to that goal. I would argue that having GNOME and KDE in BLFS is largely unnecessary and distracting as well, but systemd is core to this issue. There are many other simpler alternatives to all of this software that would be more conducive to learning. Users can continue their journey with any mainstream distro if they want to get familiar with other tooling. LFS is not the right framework for building a distribution, nor should it cover all software in the ecosystem.
FreeBSD came before Linux (as 386BSD), and is also active used by the industry. How much code did Sony or Raytheon shared back to FreeBSD? (LLVM is not FreeBSD proper.)
Or the Linux distros used by NVidia.
In case you never read it, https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
Hardly the piece of OS beauty that gets praised about FOSS circles.
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.
Respectfully, that's nonsense. Linux is directly inspired by Unix (note: lowercase) and Minix, shares many of their traits (process and user model, system calls, shells, filesystem, small tools that do "one thing well", etc.), and closely follows the POSIX standard. The fact that it's not a direct descendant of commercial Unices is irrelevant.
In fact, what you're saying here contradicts that Rob Pike quote you agree with, since Linux is from the 1990s.
But all of this is irrelevant to the main topic, which is whether systemd should be part of a project that teaches the fundamentals of GNU/Linux. I'll reiterate that it's only a distraction to this goal.
I know there are strong opinions on this, but isn’t systemd part of the core of most Linux desktops nowadays?
Pike is more than entitled to an opinion, but I think there is some cause-effect reversal at work here. The linux circles aren't people driving the UNIX-love. The UNIX-love is effective in practice - especially the blend of principle and pragmatism that the linux community settled on - so the linux circles happen to be bigger than the most similar alternatives. Better alternatives are going to have to fight through the same slog as linux if they want recognition.
So is UNIX design only great when it serves the message?
The Unix security model is mostly useless today, but it seems like something better is possible as an incremental change, and there are projects that do that, like RSBAC.
If you're going to argue that Linux implementing systemd is a good idea because it's following the trend in "proper" UNIX descendants, then the same argument can be made for it following the trend of BSD-style init systems. It ultimately boils down to which direction you think is better. I'm of the opinion that simple init systems, of which there are plenty to choose from, are a better fit for the Linux ecosystem than a suite of tightly coupled components that take over the entire system. If we disagree on that, then we'll never be on the same page.
Time flies fast, faster than recycled arguments. :)
I'm not sure I'd be smugly pronouncing anything about the superiority of Windows if I were a Microsoft guy today.
It's not surprising that systemd was heavily inspired by NT. That's exactly what Poettering was paid to create, by his employer Microsoft. (Oh, sorry--RedHat, and then "later" Microsoft.)
I'm not a big corporation. I prefer MIT, or better yet, public domain.
I don't understand why people have such difficulties with the Golden Rule, sounds a simple and fair enough concept.
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.
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.
No, in fact I don't. Indeed, I go far out of my way to avoid these parasites entirely, and anyone who depends on them. I don't give a damn what anyone does with my software. I don't need the attorneys to do anything.
For accusing me of "misinterpreting" what you wrote, you seem to be quite confused yourself. What part of "public domain" don't you understand? The means I don't give a shit what you do with the code. You can decide for yourself. You know, the mature, unselfish approach. Busybodies and control freaks hate this one simple trick.
> Regarding freedoms, let us take this scenario.
Here we go, lol. We're headed down the rabbit hole straight to the juicy caramel center of your flawed thinking.
> 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.
Sounds like you had a very poor business model. Probably because you have no idea what you're doing. Your monetization strategy failed. Pick yourself back up and try again.
The solution is not Big Brother and his machine guns to force others to comply with your dictates. (i.e. the lawyers and legal system, if I have to spell it out for you.)
> While, if it was GPL (or AGPL as its needed today)
AGPL is strongly avoided by almost everyone, for good reason. It's even more of a cancer than the GPL.
> 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.
...or they just decide to develop their own version from scratch instead, keep it closed source from day one, and you get nothing at all. Happens all the time.
If you were truly a shit-hot developer you would not be concerned about anyone ripping you off. You'd know you're so creative and putting out so much quality effort on a consistent basis that you'd never worry about being surpassed by anyone.
Big company thought of a good idea to add to your big pile of good ideas? No problem. Copy that and come out with another good idea or two for him to steal. If they're always imitating you, then that means you're the industry leader, doesn't it?
If you're not the industry leader however, because you really only had one good idea and Big Company has more, then what right do you have to try and Stop Progress just for your own selfish ends? That's what this all boils down to: selfishness, due to insecurity.
Your mentality is completely foreign to a true winner, but oh-so-common among the insecure midwits. They're always deathly afraid that their One Thing will get ripped off and they will be left with nothing.
It's a scarcity mentality. That's the problem. It's all in your head.
You're a squirrel with one little nut that you cling to desperately, in hopes that nobody else will grab it. You make all your life about protecting that nut at all costs. You're so glad that Big Brother offers you his machine guns to help you protect it. You don't care about the harm that comes from bringing thugs with guns into the picture to push people around. You're just desperate to protect Your Thing, so you will accept anything that you believe will help this end. It's the same broken mentality that manifests itself everywhere else besides software also. Nothing new under the sun.
Do not pretend that I don't understand you far better than you know yourself, or that I am misinterpreting you in some way. I've seen ten thousand of your type if I've seen one. You're everywhere, especially on HN. I'm well aware of what your mentality is. The root of the problem is your insecurity.
> Its very simple, more or less mathematical game theory.
You don't have a clue about how economics actually works--which is typical for those of your loudly expressed opinions. But you think of yourself as some enlightened game theorist. Not quite.
The bottom line is, you can't FORCE people to behave how you want through your favorite legal fiction or any other, and you damn sure should never try, as it's a fool's errand that only leads to tears. One of the basic laws of the universe.
The people who created GPL knew this from day 1. That's exactly why they created it to be the way it is. Irt was an act of sabotage. This knowledge is currently far above your level however, and is likely to remain so for a long time to come; probably forever.
The world is not falling and BSD is winning the license war for good reason. End of discussion. It's all over but your crying.
You again seem very confused. Its exactly the same as they closing up a bsd fork. So how is the outcome or incentive any different? With bsd they can do that without any effort, with gpl at least they have the friction and may deem it too much of a friction. Google's fuchsia attempt failed despite its behemoth size, Android is still linux.
How exactly is it a sabotage? You are again making up utter absolute fucking crap out of thin air and acting retarded making up an entire fantasy universe in your head.
Since you are such a smartass wanker, tell me this, how is the other company being forced to release their changes making the market less competitive? On contrary, this makes it more competitive, since everyone is forced to compete to this level now, they themselves will have to keep developing something better, and again paying the inhouse cost if they wanna be jealous.
AGPL is strongly avoided by...yes companies who live off of turning existing libraries into websites...who'd have thought, hardly a surprise why and who avoids it.
Big company can add a good idea, but big company has big resources. I am telling you that you can now pivot on their changes and putting them under the pressure cooker again: more competition. Competition is nice.
How the fuck is a simple license that nobody is forced to use a "sabotage", are you really even thinking? How much fucked in the head can someone be to think a completely legal and simple license is a "sabotage"? A "sabotage" against what or whom? If its a sabotage, then protest whatever legal framework allowed it. Do you disagree with copyright, is that what you are saying?
If you disagree with copyright, then I hope you have no problem with taking the source code of competitors by any means. After all, if licenses are bad, and government enforcement of copyright is bad, why should copying and releasing a company's internal sources be bad?
If this is a "scarcity" mentality, then the entire history of Mathematics for the past few centuries is a scarcity mentality. If you are man enough to follow through, then say it out right in the reply that you believe Mathematics is a scarcity mentality.
I mean if I wanted to win at all costs, why shouldn't I steal your code and release it and make life harder for you. Or if I wanted to be a real winner, why don't I go and shoot you.
Tell me again moron, how the fuck does a license "force" you, who the fuck is "forcing" you to use gpl if you dislike gpl? I don't even know how deep a level of mental illness one can have to imagine someone with guns is coming out to kill you and rape you and force you to use GPL programs and libraries. Are you even thinking man? This is literal violent paranoid psychosis level of insanity. You are fucked in the head beyond repair.
How the fuck is a GPL library stopping progress? Why does Big Company feel tied up due to a library being GPL? You said it yourself, they could redo it inhouse? If they were such hot shit they'd do it and continue the march of progress anyways.
Its very simple, its so simple I am not even sure I am talking to a functional level of iq: do you think more progress is made from less eyes on an idea? If the changes made by Big Co were available to the public, that's a much larger pool of engineers to take it in all sorts of directions. You are so fucking dumb its beyond words.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington
It's difficult to have a conversation with someone so profoundly ignorant of reality. Do some research and stop wasting our time with your angry rantings.
Aside of that, plan9 wins on the theoretical side, it was a research OS, but in the practical one... it's opinionated.