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Comment by there | Hacker News Reader

redshift is also open source and thus works on other platforms, where f.lux is closed source.

It works on other platforms because it's open source? Isn't that a bit of an overstatement? For the fun of it, I just downloaded this and tried to compile on my Linux box:

  ~/tmp/tmp# uname -a
  Linux susie 2.6.27.39-0.2-default #1 SMP 2009-11-23 12:57:38 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  ~/tmp/tmp# cat /etc/SuSE-release
  openSUSE 11.1 (x86_64)
  VERSION = 11.1

  ~/tmp/tmp# wget http://launchpad.net/redshift/trunk/1.4.1/+download/redshift-1.4.1.tar.bz2
  ~/tmp/tmp# tar xf redshift-1.4.1.tar.bz2
  ~/tmp/tmp# cd redshift-1.4.1/
  ~/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1# ./configure
  [...]
   redshift 1.4.1

      prefix:             /usr/local
      compiler:           gcc -std=gnu99
      cflags:             -g -O2
      ldflags:

      Adjustment methods:
      RANDR:              yes
      VidMode:            yes
      WinGDI:             no

      Location providers:
      GNOME Clock:        no

      GUI:                statusicon

  ~/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1# make
  ~/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1# make
  make  all-recursive
  make[1]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1'
  Making all in src
  make[2]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
  Making all in gtk-redshift
  make[3]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src/gtk-redshift'
  sed -e "s|\@gui_module\@|statusicon|g" gtk-redshift.in > gtk-redshift
  make[3]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src/gtk-redshift'
  make[3]: Entering directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
    CC     redshift.o
  In file included from redshift.c:60:
  gamma-randr.h:33: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before xcb_randr_crtc_t
  make[3]: *** [redshift.o] Error 1
  make[3]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
  make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
  make[2]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1/src'
  make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
  make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/tmp/tmp/redshift-1.4.1'
  make: *** [all] Error 2

This is Linux mind you, not some AIX box on which it will never compile, even though it has X11 installed. (And yes, I know I can disable RANDR in the above case and it will compile, that's beside the point)

The point is not that it works out of the box on all platforms, but that if it doesn't work on your platform, you have the source code available, so you can make it work on your platform by changing the software. You can't do that with closed-source binaries.

With that I can mostly agree (but the comment implied otherwise).

But - and this is sometimes a huge but - open source software (OSS) is more and more dependant on other OSS, making it sometimes next to impossible to port it to other platforms. Try building VLC from scratch and you'll see what I mean (you can use Linux). Furthermore, API changes are quite common for OSS even in minor version updates and that creates an additional mess (dependency hell), as was clearly demonstrated in my example above.

It's not all black and white.

this discussion is completely pointless, but yes, it can work on other platforms because it's open source.

i was able to compile it just fine on my openbsd laptop.

There's a huge difference between "thus works on other platforms" and "it can work on other platforms".

f.lux works as advertised. Love it. Use it. Highly recommend it. More so, now that is has nice GUI and all.

The fact that it is closed source should not be a problem unless you are RMS!

The fact that it is closed source should not be a problem unless you are RMS!

um, or unless you use an operating system or architecture for which they don't build a binary, so you can't use it no matter how well it works as advertised.

Sure. OSS is great and I am a big fan. But which major OS is f.lux not available for, again?

Your argument in the present context is exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned RMS!

Also, f.lux does work as advertised on the OSs that it is available for.

:-)

> But which major OS is f.lux not available for, again?

FreeBSD

> f.lux does work as advertised on the OSs that it is available for.

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