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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

The point is that you’re not always the person who gets to decide which distro, which tools to install atop the distro, or which dependencies your scripts will use. If you own those choices, of course you can add in your own tool, but you frequently don’t own those choices.

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But cannot this charge be levied upon all tools and utilities? If you do not have the permission to bring your own tools it stands to reason that you will have to use the tools already in place, be that curl or some other random assortment of literally anything else. I don't much see the moral basis behind showing up at the construction yard and then lamenting over your lack of choice simply because your employer only brought makita brand tools.

No one picks curl to be on a box, it a core library for everything else on the host. It's not a Makita drill, it's more like electrical power at the site and this guy is complaining this tool uses gas or propane.

Doesn't stop anyone else from using a power saw or charging batteries. If you need propane, bring it.

I guess I don't understand the complaint? You're worried that other people are using it for their own projects? The reason it's on every box is because it exposes the API and it's a library for half the shit on the host.

If you don't get to choose anything on the host, why are you concerned what other people use? If you install your own apps, add that lib you want?

I feel the alternative is not better, a light weight bare minimum lib and no ability to install your own is definitely worse.

For sure, try to build out a Linux host without libcurl.

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