Subject: Re: bug#12794: Bug in dd: it sends wrong messages to stderr

From: Bernhard Voelker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:14:22 +0100

Dear Linda,

On 11/07/2012 10:06 AM, Linda Walsh wrote:
> That something appears "open" to 
> contributing, means nothing by itself.

yes, it does (see below).

> I've seen more than one open 
> source projects that claimed to be "open", only to see patches to 
> correct design problems, persistently ignored for personal or political 
> reasons -- even when such flaws clearly couldn't be justified on 
> objective, sound, engineering principles.

That's the idea behind "open source" - if you don't like what a program
is doing, or when you have a special reason for the tool behaving different
in your personal, political, or even commercial environment, then take
the sources, modify them to your needs and use the changed tool. Even
spread it around if you like (with the changed sources of course ...).
Everybody knows there are other tools with other licenses where you don't
get this chance.

[hey, now I also avoid using 'you', funny.
 So let's use that *BAD* word again. ;-)  ]

The problem comes when you want to have your change in *that* package
everyone is using, e.g. coreutils. As there are *many* users, these tools
have to do the right thing for them all. And if the change would break
what many users are expecting from that tool, or even what they are used
to, then there must be very good reasons to do the change.

Going back to #12794: there were several misunderstanding in the discussion,
which IMO are all clear now: Bob referred to a mail of Padraig which
never reached Ganton. Well ... let's move on.
Re. dd's output: comparing that little glitch regarding output
behavior we are used from newer tools with the power of dd, I must say
I'm very happy how it is. And if somebody does't like that, then [s]he
is free to use the new "status=none" (unless using a non-GNU dd, of course).

Have a nice day,
Berny