CentOS - Apr 2015 - Real sh? Or other efficient shell for non-interactive scripts

Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> wrote:
> > The schily tools act as a container to publish the current code state.
There is
> > no such maintained web page.
>
> I was referring to the summary on the SourceForge page, where you just list
the contents of the package without explaining why one would want to download
it.
I thought I don't need to make advertizing for well known software.

I manage the only actively maintained portable Bourne Shell and I do so
as well for SCCS.

> > I would be interested to understand why Heirloom seems to so well
known and my
> > portability attempts seem to be widely unknown.
>
> I can think of several explanations:
>
> 1. The Heirloom pages explain what features each download provides, rather
than just give a list of program names.
The problem is that the developes page cannot contain much information and in 
general, I prefer to code than to write advertizing.

> If you tell me that I can download ?bsh?, I have no idea why I want bsh
based solely on its name.  If you tell me that I can download ?od?, I reply that
I already have a functioning version of od, thank you very much. :)
Bsh is mainly in schily tools to show people how the first shell with an 
interactive editable history did look like. Bsh != Bourne Shell.
It was named bsh because I implemented my history editor at H. Berthold AG
while working on a depanded page variant of UNOS.
> 2. Many of those who might be interested in your osh are already well
served by the Ancient Unix V7 + SIMH combination:
>
>   http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/ancient/
>
> You are left with the subset of people who want to run something other than
the shells that come with their OS, and who want it to run natively.
>
> I should point out that a lot of people using the Ancient Unix images
actually don?t want old bugs fixed.
>
> 3. It?s not clear from the files I?ve peeked into in your source
distribution when bsh first became available in an OSI-approved form, but it
seems to be sometime in the 2005-2007 range.
>
> If that is true, then bsh is several years late to fill a gap already
filled by ash, in the same way that the prior existence of bash makes the
open-source version of ksh93 uninteresting to most people.
>
> This is why you need a web page to sell your project: to explain why
someone should abandon bash, zsh, ash, dash, posh, ksh93u+, mksh?
I am not interested in working against ksh93, as this is much closer to POSIX 
than the current Bourne Shell. The Bourne Shell however is a nice idea for the 
system shell in /bin/sh because it is faster than bash and as fast as ksh93 but 
much smaller (if you use the UNIX linker, you can implement lazy linking that 
causes it to be only 80 kB when interpreting scripts). See:

	http://schillix.sourceforge.net/man/man1/ld.1.html

for the UNIX linker man page, -zlazyload

> 4. CDDL annoys a lot of people.  Yes, I know, GPL annoys a lot of people,
too.  But again, you?re going up against ash, which is BSD, which annoys almost
no one. :)
The CDDL does not annoy people, this is just a fairy tale from some OSS enemies.
BTW: I am of course not against ash, I just support the Bourne Shell.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

On Apr 27, 2015, at 10:10 AM, Joerg Schilling <Joerg.Schilling at
fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
> 
> Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> wrote:
> 
>> I was referring to the summary on the SourceForge page, where you just
list the contents of the package without explaining why one would want to
download it.
> 
> I thought I don't need to make advertizing for well known software.
I first learned of its existence last week, and then only by coincidence to the
present discussion.

I immediately disregarded it for the reasons I?ve already given.

If it wasn?t for this thread, I?d still be ignorant of the reasons why I should
care about the existence of Schily Tools.
> the developes page cannot contain much information
SourceForge gives you a way to link to a page on another site.
> I prefer to code than to write advertizing.
Well, there?s your diagnosis, then.  Successful software requires advertising,
whether F/OSS or not.

The original Bourne shell was advertised through the pages of CACM, in books,
etc.  A search for ?Schilling? on linuxjournal.com turns up nothing except for
some references to cdrecord.

So, why do you expect that I should have stumbled across Schily Tools before
now?
>> If you tell me that I can download ?bsh?, I have no idea why I want bsh
based solely on its name.  If you tell me that I can download ?od?, I reply that
I already have a functioning version of od, thank you very much. :)
> 
> Bsh is mainly in schily tools to show people how the first shell with an 
> interactive editable history did look like. Bsh != Bourne Shell.
Yes, I realize that osh is closer to the original Bourne shell.  My point is
that you can?t expect people to just know, without having been told, why they
want bsh, or osh, bosh, or smake, or?

Most of these tools compete with tools that are already in CentOS.  If you want
people to use these instead, you?re not going to persuade many people with a
tarball.

As for the tools that do not have equivalents in CentOS, the file name is not an
explanation.

You can?t expect people to just blindly download the tarball, build it, install
it, and then start reading man pages.  You have to entice people first.

This thread is accomplishing that to some extent.  I just think your time would
be better spent writing such thoughts up on a web page somewhere, then linking
to that from the SourceForge page.  You will reach many more people that way.
>> 4. CDDL annoys a lot of people.
> 
> The CDDL does not annoy people, this is just a fairy tale from some OSS
enemies.
The following irritates me, I am a ?people,? and I am not an OSS enemy:

  http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue
> BTW: I am of course not against ash, I just support the Bourne Shell.
Like it or not, your shells are in competition against all the other shells that
became available earlier than yours.  There is only so much free time in the
world.  You can?t expect people to stop using something they?re already
successfully using without some amount of persuasion.

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 11:41 AM, Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com>
wrote:
> >
>>> 4. CDDL annoys a lot of people.
>>
>> The CDDL does not annoy people, this is just a fairy tale from some OSS
enemies.
>
> The following irritates me, I am a ?people,? and I am not an OSS enemy:
>
>   http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue
It is really the GPL that has the restriction preventing
'best-of-breed' components being combined, but it doesn't matter, it
isn't going to change.   I can see Sun being irritated with Linux
(and for good reason...) but isn't it time to let it go?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
      lesmikesell at gmail.com

Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> wrote:
> Yes, I realize that osh is closer to the original Bourne shell.  My point
is that you can?t expect people to just know, without having been told, why they
want bsh, or osh, bosh, or smake, or?
>
> Most of these tools compete with tools that are already in CentOS.  If you
want people to use these instead, you?re not going to persuade many people with
a tarball.
Could you explain me why people did write gmake even though smake did exist 5 
years eralier already?
> > The CDDL does not annoy people, this is just a fairy tale from some
OSS enemies.
>
> The following irritates me, I am a ?people,? and I am not an OSS enemy:
>
>   http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html#WhatAboutTheLicensingIssue
This is of course completely wrong.

I recommend you to read the GPL book from the Lawyers from Harald Welte.
They explain why a filesystem is not a derived work of the Linux kernel.

This of course in special true for ZFS as ZFS was not written for Linux and 
works without Linux already.

http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling	ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily