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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This is not what I would consider a "political reason". A political reason would be something like refusing to package it because of what political party Howard supports.
There is plenty of software you'll find in these repositories that aren't under the GPL. CMake uses BSD, the Apache web server uses the eponymous Apache license, LibreOffice and Firefox use MPL, Godot and Bitcoin Core use the MIT license, and I'm sure there are plenty of other software licenses that I haven't thought of yet.
I will change it to "licensing reason". Thank you
But the software you listed are used by many peoples. bc-gh is robust and performant, GNU bc is not actively developed, and benchmark shows that it is clearly slower than bc-gh in most case. But in most distros bc-gh is not available.
Did any distro give concrete reasons for why they have actively chosen not to package it, or perhaps they just haven't given it much thought yet?
perhaps they don't care about bc. I think they don't even notice that GNU bc haven't been updated since 2017.
"perhaps" "I think"
In short you've got no clue.
Seems like a whine, bc is an interactive tool and it's unusual to use it for anything where its response isn't instant.
GNU bc is one of the oldest GNU tools and it uses an MP library that RMS banged out in an afternoon or two, I think. It could probably be adapted to use GMP which is very high performance.
Preferring GPL to other licenses seems fine with me, unless I want to work for Amazon without getting paid.
GNU bc is unmaintained for years. The latest version is from 2017. It don't have a repo or a mailing list.
bc-gh started in 2018 and it is still actively developed. It is adopted by many projects I've listed in my post.
Does gnu bc have outstanding bug reports? If not, it doesn't need updates. Its spec was frozen 30 years ago, more or less. Rather than unmaintained, I'd call it maintenance-free. BIFL software as it were. Sounds great to me.
is the syntax the same?
some common things that have a better version; like sed; are ignored because of licensing and i'm convinced that if the syntax were the same we would all be using it anyways.
Yes, the syntax is the same. It also support various GNU and BSD extensions.
I wish you luck with your campaign!
This has been the story of Linux since the 1990s.
BSD does the same thing. They famously stuck at the gcc 4.2 series about a decade too long because of licenses.
Nothing new under the sun.
But there are technical reason too. IIRC, gcc > 4.3 drop support for some architecture?