#$&^%@! all-the-world-is-gnu idiots

[John Hughes]

Tar is tar is tar is tar, right? Only if you think unix is unix is unix.
There is a standard for what tar should do, but if you think Sun's tar is
the same as HP's tar is the same as AIX's tar is the same as True64's
tar....your wrong....and GNUtar has done a good job of making sure that
the standard is complied to....that said, there are plenty of times I have
needed gtar to untar a gtar'd archive on Sun that Sun's tar couldn't
handle....was it Sun's tars fault....prolly not...but when you consider
the idea of being able to get 1)Sun's source code for tar and 2)getting to
compile on True64....then maybe you can start to apreciate that you can do
that with gtar....and if after all these years there happens to be a few
quirks to gtar as there is with all the oem tars...then be glad its
opensource and Freeware(TM).

John "This is not an attack" Hughes


Stewart Stremler said:
>
> <rant>
> Y'know, one of the reasons I liked Linux was that in the beginning, by
> and large, the community didn't suffer from "All the world is just like
> us",  so there was some concern about making sure data was portable
> across all system.  Unlike, say, the despicable microsofties who just
> shrugged and said "Why bother? Just get a Windows box. We don't have to
> make our data accessible to anyone else."
>
> So what's with the friggin' extensions to GNU tar?  Why is Jakarta
> releasing tarballs that are ONLY expandable with GNU tar? Why is GNU tar
> producing incompatible tar files?
>
> "Oh, just install the GNU version of tar."
>
> That's the same kind of "portability" that the microsofties espoused ten
> years ago that helped to fuel the Linux community to begin with.
>
> There are days when I'm inclined to think of the GNU project as a failed
> experiment.  Being deprived of _choice_ is the true evil.  And GNU is
> rapidly heading down the "you don't get a choice" path and dragging
> linux with 'em.
>
> </rant>
>
> Don't mind me.  I'm just frothing.
>
> -Stewart "CENSORED" Stremler
>
> --
>   http://www.kernel-panic.org
>   list archives http://www.ultraviolet.org
>   To unsubscribe, send a message to the address shown in the
> list-unsubscribe header of this message.



--
John Hughes