Subject: Re: ksh as option for shell [Re: Bash as Option for Shell]
To: NetBSD-current Discussion List <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: current-users
Date: 10/17/2004 15:37:40
[ On Saturday, October 16, 2004 at 17:15:27 (-0500), Peter Seebach wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: ksh as option for shell [Re: Bash as Option for Shell] 
>
> I actually sorta like pdksh.  The licensing terms are less restrictive

Well, pdksh is almost entirely truly in the "public domain" -- there's
simply no comparison to any other open source copyright license.

(If NetBSD continues to use pdksh as a primary shell for all official
releases it might be a good idea to re-copyright it in the form it's
released in as TNF-owned so that the lack of "public domain" in some
jurisdictions couldn't ever become an issue for any NetBSD users.)


>, and
> I don't see any reason to favor one implementation over another just because
> it got there first.

There's a lot to like about pdksh, but it's certainly not perfect.

The One True KSH has grown to be a very big and complex monster and yet
it continues to have an absolutely terrifying number of bugs fixed
between releases.

Some of that size and complexity does bring very interesting and perhaps
very useful new features though -- i.e. most of those things Chap
mentioned (though I disagree with the fact that installing pdksh as
/bin/ksh is fundamentally confusing, though the "NOTES" files should be
installed under /usr/share/doc and be referenced by the manual page).

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
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