One time I figured out why a strange dependency was needed in a LaTeX book. It’s part of the official documentation of a project and the author had opened an issue about it. I dug deep into the package code and figured out why, came up with a fix, and contacted the author about the solution. That was two years ago and they have not replied or fixed it, but just worked on different things. I don’t demand anything, but I haven’t felt motivated to help out since then in that documentation project.

This reminds me of Rob Pikes paper from the year 2000.
http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html

If we want to do something radically different, there’s always gopher and gemini browsers.

ed is sadly not installed by default on some modern distros. Even vi is often a symlink to vim in vi-mode.

It’s intuitive if your previous editor was ed(1) and you’re using an ADM-3A-like keyboard.

I like your example with that song. If we interpret the scene as both acting out the behaviour the’ve been taught, they are both reinforcing each others behaviours. Assuming that both wanted to be together but there was an established “dance” around it. They can only work together. What if one (and only one) of them had not done their part? If he hadn’t, she would have left, possibly feeling that he didn’t really want her to stay. If she hadn’t, she risks being labeled “easy”. In both cases, again if we assume they both actually wanted to stay and feel good about it, they don’t both get what they want.
So… if we now, as a conscious effort from society, are trying to get away from this bad system, it seems to me that the only way is a gradual de-escalation from both sides. It also seems to me that if we only tell men to never “pursue”, but do nothing about the “hard to get”-behaviour, then men who follow the new instructions or script will be left with no chance to meet someone.
What I think is missing from the discourse today is that it’s a hard sell to young men to change their behaviour, if doing so is punished by the same people asking them to change. We’re caught in a stalemate where we need to help each other simultaneously, with mutual understanding, trust, and care. In that very sensitive process, trying to move it forward by telling someone they are a potential rapist is probably just making men dig deeper trenches and refuse to listen. Some people want this, I believe. The conflict that lets you feel righteous anger and resentment. But it’s not helping.

gnuplot surprisingly also has a strange license, containing “Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to distribute the complete modified source code.”

What are main things you’ve found that BSDs lack to make you prefer GNU+Linux? What are things from the BSD world you wish that GNU+Linux had?

Sorry, a “storage box” ìs a product by a company called Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/

sshfs is a way to mount something remote through ssh so it behaves like a local directory.

I have a hetzner storage box mounted with sshfs, but I wish I didn’t have to since I’m paying for protondrive too. It took me a whole day to upload my personal files to protondrive through the web interface since it crashed the browser repeatedly and I had to verify what got uploaded or not each time.

It’s more that changes can be made with coordination across the OS, with a shared vision and goal. Linux distros are primarily integration projects, putting together the components from other peoples projects. BSDs are in control of the base OS project as one coherent project.

I see what you mean now. I thought you meant as in upstream/downstream.

Tumbleweed is not a derivative of Leap.

“The discussion continued for quite a while without making much headway.”

I think Debian is interesting, being such a large project of collaboration. I want this democratic, volunteer, non-corporate backed, free project to show that 10000 eyes make bugs shallow. I wish this model produced new ways of doing things, bringing people together in the spirit of creativity and playful productivity.
I’ve used Debian in different ways for around 15 years now, and I really want it to succeed.
Having said that, there is a “but…” looming in the back of my mind. But… it’s difficult to ignore that other distributions are the ones pushing Linux forward. The innovation from Fedora and the distributions still called OpenSuse explore new areas which become the standards.
This is not criticism of Debian, I just wonder if we humans are capable of collaborating freely at that level without some top-down force directing work forward, or if we are bound to being one step behind, always trying to catch up to what others have already done?

One project goal of OpenBSD is: “We strive to make our software robust and secure, and encourage companies to use whichever pieces they want to.”
They are not being taken advantage of, this is a desired outcome.

Are we actually converting people or is the desktop platform just less popular for other OSs in favor of phones etc?

Debian + Flatpaks has been very reliable to me.

The Dijkstra way.

I agree. Maybe this is because Debian tries to be everything, the universal OS, server or desktop or whatever, while for example Fedora Workstation can be preconfigured as a workstation. Back in the day around 2008 this is what Ubuntu was to me, a Debian Workstation. Now it’s different, they’ve diverged so much. Maybe Spiral Linux could be a preconfigured Debian Workstation now.

I’ve had a similar experience. About the old packages with bugs, I think that can work both ways. The newer packages might have bug fixes, but also new features with different bugs. Sometimes it feels like the number of bugs is constant, you just have to choose between old known bugs or new unknown bugs.