spauldo

Except you left out an important bit of the OP's statement, where he/she is talking about Linux's success over BSD specifically.

When Linus was talking about the GPL being part of Linux's success, he was talking about Linux's success in general. And yeah, the GPL most likely is a big part of Linux's success.

However, if 386BSD had been freely available in '91, Linux would likely never have had the opportunity to build the developer base needed to take it from a student's neat project to a viable operating system.

I agree that it's easier. Eventually "they" will probably replace "him/her." Language drift takes time, though, which was my original point.

To add to what everyone else is saying, most Lisps support redefining functions in a running application. Instead of the code/compile/test loop most languages use, you can create Lisp programs iteratively from inside the program.

It's really quite neat. Emacs is an easy way to play around with it, but if you're a CS language nerd Racket might be a good fit for you. And if you want this type of environment but without all the parentheses and polish notation, check out the Smalltalk implementation Squeak.

Both can be true, you know.

Sure, and USL vs BSDI had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Seriously, if you like the GPL, use arguments that are verifiably true. Otherwise you're just another fanboy spouting talking points.

In context it seems they're concerned about clear ownership of the code. It's lumped in with rules about not submitting code that might not have clear licensing or ownership. Here's the specific part from NetBSD's Commit Guidelines:

Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoft's Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT, or Facebook/Meta's Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code, and must not be committed without prior written approval by core.

Maybe, but default masculine was way more common. That was still taught as proper usage in the 80s here in the US. He/she was its most common replacement until fairly recently.

A lot of us grew up back when "he" was first being replaced by "he/she" (or just "her"). We'll get used to "they" as we encounter it more and more in daily usage. Just give it time.

Clojure and Common Lisp are very different beasts.

Finger is a protocol. It's older than IP.

You can read about it in RFC 742.

To be fair, they don't have Armadillos in Europe. of course, you could say the same for Mars...

Tornado: return to the barn when you receive emergency weather alerts. Not much different than people.

The resources system was really cool though. It gave you a unified configuration system and allowed deep levels of themeability. I remember you could assign a pixmap to every element of Netscape 3's interface, for instance.

Motif wasn't considered ugly at the time (at least by most people). If you ran Netscape on your SGI, you know what Motif looks like.

Motif did have a reputation for being a total drag to develop with, though. It's based on Xt. So is Athena, so if you've ever written an Xaw app it's pretty similar.

It's the platform that's proprietary.

Sun used a lot of open parts, but they had absolute control over the platform. Everything in your solution came from Sun or a Sun partner. Fujitsu doing weird stuff with Japanese mainframes was an interesting fact but irrelevant to 99% of Sun's user base.

Intel/AMD combined with EFI or IBM-compatible BIOS? You can get that from anybody. An HP server is basically interchangeable with a Dell.

Sun was proprietary in the same way Apple is.

In my case, it's literally free money. I travel a lot for work. I pay for everything with my card, and I'm reimbursed by the company. I rack up points, and whenever I travel for pleasure or as an independent contractor, hotels are free. I'd get free airfare like my coworkers do if I didn't avoid flying and drive everywhere.

The system is broken. No one with the power to fix it has any incentive to do so. Might as well get what you can.

DMV is a state level agency and varies a lot depending on where you are. It's partially privatized here in Oklahoma and mostly painless (you only need the actual DMV for driver's tests, CDL background checks, etc.) but when I lived on the Illinois side of St. Louis I routinely heard of people spending hours in line.

Normally I'm not a huge fan of privatization but the way it's done here works great. The fees are set by the state and the agency gets a percentage, so if an area is underserved someone just opens another one.

FreeBSD does, but I haven't tried it. It has its own chapter in the handbook. No idea about the others. I rarely need to run Windows binaries so I'm not the best person to ask.

Depends on what you need. Software compatibility is mostly good, as long as it doesn't have a dependency on systemd or some other Linux-specific feature. Driver support varies, but FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there.

FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility feature that lets you run native Linux binaries. I've never used it so I can't say how good it is, though - all the stuff I use runs fine natively.

The major BSDs have decent package management and sizeable repositories, with the option to build software (and customize compile-time options) using the ports or pkgsrc systems. You can also rebuild and customize the kernel and base system (aka "make world") but that's strictly optional these days.

I seem to remember there was some GNOME stuff that had a hard systemd dependency and wouldn't run on the BSDs. That was a while back though and I don't run GNOME so I don't know whatever happened there or what the status is.

If a nation state actor is out to get you, then your cybersecurity is meaningless anyway.

The term "PLC" is a lot more specific than "computer with some GPIO ports." No one that works with PLCs would consider a Raspberry Pi to be one.

These things are walled gardens. You never see the operating system. You can only change their behavior using the vendor's software. They generally run a single program (that you write using the vendor's software) on a fixed scan cycle. They read the inputs, run your program, write the outputs, then repeat.

While you're giving up the nearly infinite possibilities that an SBC gives you, the benefits more than make up for the lack of flexibility. They run (and have parts and support available) for decades. Modules are easy to diagnose and replace. An electrician who isn't a programmer can follow ladder logic and troubleshoot problems. Integrators can quickly come up to speed and understand your code.

There's a reason companies will pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for these things.

A microcontroller based solution is rarely a good replacement for a PLC. You can find integrators willing to come out and troubleshoot your device in the field a lot more easily than embedded progammers and vendor support is usually excellent. When your plant is down, that sort of thing matters. PLCs handle harsh environments for decades, whereas with a microcontroller all the thermal issues and power conditioning are all on you. When something fails, it's usually just a matter of pulling a spare module off the shelf and plugging it in.

If that's an old GE 90-30 (a common FANUC system), it's time to replace it. You're currently in that period when the CPU has reached end of life but the modules are still supported and the vendor has an easy upgrade path. Emerson owns the brand now, and can sell you a new unit that'll run your old program with minimal changes. You can call them and get a list of integrators in your area. It'll be pricey, but you won't need to do it again for another quarter century.

The first line of text on their homepage?

But I don't see anything wrong with OpenBSD saying they focus on security when it's well documented that they do, in fact, focus heavily on security.

I ran it diskless for years with read-only NFS mounts. Set up syslog and a pflog daemon to send logs elsewhere, and you don't need write access most of the time.

I'll add another recommendation for Scheme. The concepts in SICP map very well into Scheme, whereas I can only imagine them being awkward and non-idiomatic in JS. There's lots of passing around first class functions and use of recursion.

One of the two professors (Dr. Sussman) that give the lectures in this series is a co-creator of Scheme.

Because a lot of people aren't libertarians?

I agree that the characterization was uncalled for in the post you replied to. But I don't agree with your statement that most people who generally oppose regulation have good reasons for doing so. Conservative media outlets have pushed that stance for decades now and it gets regurgitated all the time. Ask most of them what specific regulations they want to see gone and you'll get a blank stare.

I swear if Sun Microsystems was still around, their machines would still ship with 8-bit pseudocolor and you'd have to pay an extra $3k for 24-bit.

Yep. I can do basic plumbing, but I haven't touched it since I started making enough money to pay a plumber to do it for me. Plumbers are worth every dollar they charge if it means I don't have to spend two hours under a sink cursing at rusty bolts.

It's really no different than every other BSD utility (and SysV utility, if you're running one of those) being different than the GNU ones. We've coped with it for fifty years at this point.