Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 15:32:36 +0100 From: Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: [Fwd: Re: RMS says: 'Use BSD, for goodness sake!'] Message-ID: <20030626143236.GF57378@iconoplex.co.uk>
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----- Forwarded message from "James P. Howard II" <howardjp@vocito.com> ----- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:17:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: RMS says: 'Use BSD, for goodness sake!' From: "James P. Howard II" <howardjp@vocito.com> To: <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> Cc: <scrappy@hub.org>, <sphaleotas@blueyonder.co.uk>, <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org> Reply-To: howardjp@vocito.com X-Mailer: SquirrelMail (version 1.2.8) The FreeBSD mailing lists are broken and reject mail from me, could you forward this to the list for me? Paul Robinson said: > as - could be replaced, maybe even re-implmented. This should be a part of gcc. > awk - encourage people to port their code away from awk. Big. Required by standards. OpenBSD has removed GAWK in favor of the one true awk. It could probably be modified to support GAWK features pretty easily. > bc - an undergrad could re-implement based on man page See dc. > binutils - collection of some 20 smallish apps, all manageable This should be a part of of any cc reimplemtnation effort. > bzip2 - could be reimplemented This isn't GPLd. > cc - find an alternative compiler? From where? This is the hard one. > cpio - reimplement from man page, or replace/remove requirement for cpio is required by standards. OpenBSD reimplemented using pax. > cvs - Don't need this do we? :-) look at another version control? If rcs were rewritten, this would be a walk in the park. > dc - see bc bc is properly a dc preprocessor. I completely reimplemented dc using libgmp back in 1999. It was perfect, except for the fact that precision under dc is given base-10 and under GMP in base-2. There was no work around. > dialog - need it now, kill it later, or re-implement based on man page ports/misc/freedialog, something I did in 1999. Just a wrapper for the library, though. The library is LGPLd. > grep - the issue here is the regexp, otherwise re-implement. OpenBSD on Sunday removed GNU grep in favor of freegrep, which was another project from 1999. It was a busy couple of months :) > groff - look at alternate doc formatting? Not likely. Every man-page ever written needs groff. > gzip - nasty, but re-implementable. Or we move to a non-GNU zip format. libz itself is freely reusable. Writing a wrapper should not be difficult. > less - re-implementable quite quickly I am not sure this is GPLd. > libreadline - big one to replace, IMHO Dump it. What in the tree needs it? gdb is, I think, it and any future rewrite of gdb can use libedit. > man - could be re-implemented based on file format information known man is a wrapper for groff -Tascii -mdoc (okay, there is a bit more, but it would not be difficult). > ncurses - big, high-impact, hard to replace Is there version from an earlier (Net/2ish) release of FreeBSD available? > ptx - remove/replace/re-implement. Probably the former. ptx is already gone. > rcs - remove and make an optional package? If you keep cvs, rcs is kind of useful to have around. > send-pr - remove! OK, re-implement, if you must. :-) It's a dozen-line shell script, easily redoable. > sort - another undergrad project based on the man page OpenBSD has a replacement. > tar - find alternative, or re-implement OpenBSD redid using pax. > texinfo - find alternative, or remove from base If the rest of the GNU tree were gone, texinfo would not be necessary :) Jamie ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Paul Robinson
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