RMS says: "Use BSD, for goodness sake!"

[Paul Robinson]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 12:35:53PM +0100, Peter McGarvey wrote:

> * Paul Robinson <paul at iconoplex.co.uk> [2003-06-26 12:04:33 BST]:
> > awk - encourage people to port their code away from awk. Big.
> 
> Does anyone actually USE awk?

Yes.

> Other than to filter columns that is.

That's exactly what it's used for. I haven't seen anybody use awk for more
than a command line `awk '{print $4, $6}'` in years. I know one guy who uses
it for other stuff, and he's moving it all to perl anyway. If we were to
write a 'colprint' command that would do the same thing, most people would
not notice the difference if it went.

> But as awk is usually available on other Unixes, I'm apt to rely on it's
> existance.  So I'd hate to see it go.

There is nothing stopping it being a port/package.
 
> > rcs - remove and make an optional package?
> 
> Get's my vote.  I'm fedup accidentally typing 'ci', and getting prompted
> for stuff....  I'd much prefer a "command not found" message.

Indeed. For the vi fans out there who like to work when drunk, the removal 
of ci will be a little godsend. We don't use it, it can be made an external 
package, one less thing to worry about.
 
> Doesn't OpenBSD have a preferance for BSDL?  I seem to remember the pf
> project kicked-off due to a problem with the IPFilter licence.  Perhaps
> we should see what we can lift from them.

Good point, but if memory serves, the last time I looked at OpenBSD there 
was still a chunk of GPL floating around.

The big one is gcc. Remove that, and we're really rolling. The alternatives 
aren't very good though - TenDRA? I remember the troll a few weeks ago 
suggesting this, and maybe it's a plan. The impact would be massive though. 
All those makefiles with command line options to be passed to gcc...

The more I look at that list though, the more of them I think could be 
pulled out as external packages/ports

-- 
Paul Robinson