Re: diff - GNU og BSD ?

[Jeremy Messenger <mezz7@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 10:07:57 +0100, Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai wrote:

> -On [20040217 22:42], Jeremy Messenger (mezz7@xxxxxxx) wrote:
>>Well, if the GNU diff is faster, has more features and etc than OpenBSD
>>diff then I don't see any good reason with between BSD vs GPL license.
> 
> The speed can always be worked upon.  It all has to do with algorithms
> and state machines.  Which is exactly my avenue.
> A lot of the wait was on Henry Spencer's new release of his regexp
> handling stuff.  I'll time this out, after having tried to contact him
> on numerous occasions.  I'll add some of this stuff to the TenDRA
> Project to work on.
> 
> Features aren't necessarily a good thing.  Remember the GNU camp
> actually has options for true (--help and --version)!

Well, it's necessarily when you are taking it away from us. The GNU
diff has been part of base system for the very long time and you decide to
replace to BSD diff that has lesser feature, slower and etc. It hurts. My
belief, you have to make sure the BSD diff is better than GNU diff for the
replacement rather than worry about the GPL license since there are a lot
of other GPL tools in the base system where you can't replace them yet
(probably more like never).

Anyway, Matt has answered the rest and I agree with him about I see no
problem using GNU for utilities. I don't understand why people are worry
about it where it doesn't get in our way.

Cheers,
Mezz

> Same thing for size sorting in ls, just use a | to sort.
> 
>>Since, GPL license can be part of base as long it doesn't connect with the
>>kernel by default.
> 
> I love to stay away from viral licenses where I can.


-- 
bsdforums.org 's moderator, mezz.