“A senior OpenBSD developer has complained on a mailing list that upstream vendors of free and open source software are adding in changes without any thought of whether downstream users could adapt to the change. Marc Espie said this would hurt smaller players by not allowing them to keep up with the changes. Basically what is happening is that numerous changes are being made to Linux and smaller projects like OpenBSD cannot keep up with the changes. And, according to Espie, not all these changes are strictly necessary.”
http://lwn.net/Articles/524606/
Better content, better site and certainly better author.
Thanks for the link. I skipped the story and went right to the comments after seeing who it was submitted by.
Actually, I think this particular ITwire article is worth reading. It’s possible that it’s because it’s an interview, therefore most of the content is written by the interviewee.
Among other things, it also points out this:
“Contrary to what people in lwn.net (Linux Weekly News, a website which wrote about Espie’s post without contacing him) did say, there’s still a lot of innovation in OpenBSD, and in other BSDs too.”
It was submitted to undeadly.org … I simply submitted it here.
As it was actually news about an Operating system I thought it was somewhat relevant to this site.
Edited 2013-01-10 10:55 UTC
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?548112
Edited 2013-01-10 10:52 UTC
If not all the changes are strictly necessary, then why should it effect OpenBSD or BSD in general? The examples mentioned are desktop environment type stuff, which is not exactly something OpenBSD needs to support.
Wouldn’t OpenBSD do better by focusing on the essentials that it does better than Linux?
You would learn the answer to that question if you actually read the article…
If you had read the article, you’d know that a big source of the problem is pointless changes, especially in build scripts, where things like GNU sed is required, even though the same thing could very easily be done with any sed in a widely-compatible way.
It is getting worse, as it seems (in the interviewee’s view) that newer POSIX standards just seem to be rubber stamping in GNU tool chain features into the standard, with little or no consideration of non-GNU tool chains, even if they’re doing really cool, innovative stuff.
You both miss my point.
Yes, it makes it harder to port those programs to OpenBSD. But they’re not OpenBSD’s core environment. And the BSDers have a problem with GPL software (as mentioned in the article, which I have not only read, but comprehended) that means they’ll have to write their own version anyway.
The point is that quite a few Linux developers seems to have acquired the mindset previously (and currently) held by many Windows developers: “It works on my primary platform, who gives a shit if it’s portable?”
Quoting the article:
“and no, gsed -i is not a valid excuse. Come on, you need half a line of shell script to do the equivalent of gsed -i”
Sure adding half a line of shell script (I assume 40 characters, right?) is “easy”, but it cluters, and if you have to do it every time it becomes a pain. And people don’t use the GNU extension because they don’t bother to check, but because they are damn convenient.
Personnaly at work, I mainly use a Linux box, and I also have from time to time to use a Solaris box, and it is just a pain in the ass to have to write things like “find . | xargs grep ‘somestring'” instead of just “grep -r ‘somestring'” and so on. In the end I just end up using the GNU tools on Solaris as well.
GNU extensions were not created to make the system incompatible, they were created for convenience. And I don’t see why it should be up to upstream to spend extra work on supporting other platform.
Except other platforms don’t want to include GPL code in their OS.
Your attitude is exactly why there has always been cross platform problems ranging from browsers to now just building the browser itself.
It find that you don’t do it in your own environments, but open source on larger projects is supposed to be about collaboration, and this sort of laziness makes it artificially difficult.
Edited 2013-01-10 08:51 UTC
They don’t have to. They can reimplement those GNU extensions. GPL covers only copyright, not reimplementation.
And it’s not really GPL’s fault that some people are too ideological to include GPL programs.
It’s not <non-GPL compatible license>’s fault that some GPL folks are too ideological to include <licensed> programs.
On the contrary. GPL folks have taken from BSD without fuss.
BSD is GPL-compatible
Exactly. The very OPPOSITE of ideological.
My point was that just as GPL is not compatible with BSD there are many licenses that are not compatible with the GPL and not accepted in the GPL camp for ideological reasons.
There isn’t a movement in Linux distributions to replace standalone BSD software with standalone GPL software as there is in the BSD world to replace standalone GPL software with new ones.
I can understand getting rid of GPL libraries to prevent any accidental breach of licence, but standalone programs pose no threat. Yet the BSDs have an allergic reaction to them.
That wasn’t my point. The Linux and GPL camps are also replacing software under non-compatible and “unacceptable” licenses.
There’s nothing wrong with this, I’m just saying it’s exactly the same as the BSD’s not accepting the GPL in base.
It’s not an allergic reaction, the GPL simply isn’t compatible with the philosophy and stated goals of the BSD’s. jsut like closed-source licenses are not compatible with Linux (sort of…) and the GPL.
It should also be noted that this is only for the base system. GPL and pretty much any other license (that’s clearly defined) as acceptable in ports.
We’re getting a bit off track here though.
One of the examples used in the article was about sed. I don’t see how, for example, using GNU sed would pollute the BSD base. It’s something they could just adopt if they didn’t want to reimplement GNU extensions. As I said to the other commenter, they could just implement that extension. Yes it’s GNU, and yes it’s not POSIX, but standards only define a minimum, not a limit. The only reason not to implement something like sed -i is an ideological allergy.
No, GPL was mentioned in the first page of the article as one of the primary reasons for incompatibility.
if GNU sed was used it is no longer a BSD operating system is it?
Maybe so, but I’m bringing it up as an example of BSD ideology that is getting in the way. And remember, as you pointed out, they were implementing it according to the standard in such a way that they don’t even consider implementing an extension just because it’s GNU.
The only thing that is getting in the way is that people are using the POSIX versions like they should.
This is absolutely no different than web developers abusing -webkit prefixes.
Edited 2013-01-10 19:10 UTC
But why does GNU have to create their own grep and sed etc instead of just using the BSD ones? Could it be…ideologic reasons?
Because they wanted to add extensions? And NIH syndrome is a thing?
To paraphrase: Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to the boredom of a developer.
I don’t know. Did BSD grep and sed come before GNU grep and sed? From what I know, GNU was a reaction to proprietary programs for which source was unavailable. In that sense, it’s not ideology but pragmatism to write something you have control over.
GNU was designed to be a complete reimplementation of Unix that shared no code with AT&T or Berkeley. It’s been that way since the 80s, and the “no copying from BSD” rule was essentially to keep the lawyers at bay.
In fairness, BSD wasn’t open source when many GNU tools were first developed.
BSD (and even AT&T UNIX) were open-source from the get-go. You couldn’t get binaries for UNIX back in the day. You got tapes with the source on them, compiled them yourself, and installed it.
BSD was not “free software” according to the strange definitions of the GNU crowd. But it was (and always has been) open-source.
Sorry, I should have been more clear; BSD’s source wasn’t considered clear of all proprietary intellectual property when GNU started out.
OSI definition? Or look but don’t touch?
Somewhere between the two.
As I said above, there were a number of on-going legal disputes about the ownership of code.
They were working their implementation to POSIX spec as it states in the article.
But the POSIX spec does not forbid extensions. It would be a sad day if people can’t make more than just the bare minimum.
that is true, but the whole point of having a compatible bare minimum is that things can be ported easily between unix like operating systems, OpenBSD is not the only OS that isn’t Linux and has a team of people porting software.
And as far as I can tell, GNU sed does conform to standard. It just has a little extra that people happen to find useful and use. It’s not as though the actual bare minimum implemented by GNU userland tools are somehow nonstandard.
So GNU does keep the bare minimum. But we shouldn’t let interoperability get in the way of providing convenience as long as it doesn’t break the standard.
Or is that what we actually prefer?
Embrace and extend….
But not extinguish. It’s not like this is part of a master plan to steal all the developers. It’s the natural result of having an open system that requires reciprocation. More development happens resulting in even more development – a positive feedback loop.
The GNU tools aren’t at fault it is developers that aren’t conforming to the standard which is the problem.
It really is that simple. If I want a piece of software to run on another unix whether it is commericial or opensource it is a pain to port as discussed in the article.
What definition of “conforming” are you using? Does “conforming” mean not using extensions? If so, do programs that use, say, Qt libraries, non-conforming because they’re not mandated by the POSIX standards?
But as the article and people here say, a lot of people aren’t looking to have their things run on other unixes. They’re not obligated to, especially since Linux is popular. It’s the OpenBSD ports maintainers that want to port software.
Oh comon, QT is different because it is a set of libraries and presentation framework.
If the extension is not part of the POSIX (whichever level is supported), and the script uses it is not conforming.
I think you have a fundamental mis-understanding of the issue.
The main complaint is that the Linuxism aren’t needed and are relatively trivial to get around (such as the example given) and is a detrimental to other projects which aren’t Linux.
No, it’s exactly the same situation. Anything that is not in POSIX but runs on POSIX can be considered an extension. Tell me where in the POSIX standard that states implementations can’t put in extensions?
You’re the one trying to argue that extensions to a standard makes something non-conforming. Only extensions that break the standard are non-conforming. Extensions that add entirely new features that doesn’t effect existing features are always conforming.
If it’s trivial, then by definition it is not detrimental. If the BSD or other OS port maintainers want to use other people’s code, then they do the work. It’s not like KDE is mandating the BSDs use their desktop environment and then not changing their builds to not use sed -i.
Didn’t say that.
No I am not arguing that, you are still fundamentally misunderstanding what I said.
I am saying the scripts or whatever else do not conform to POSIX standards because they use non-standard extensions.
This is exactly the same situation as people only using -webkit and -moz extensions in CSS, it may work perfectly in one browser and not another.
I don’t understand what you find so difficult about this.
It is a lot of unnecessary work that could be better spent else-where. I been in similar situations where someone’s laziness has costs me hours worth of work.#
All the article is about is making people aware of the issues of using “linuxism” and saying “don’t forget about the other open source *nix systems”.
I have no idea why you think this is such as issue.
Edited 2013-01-11 13:21 UTC
Scripts aren’t expected to conform to POSIX standards. There is no concept of “conform” for scripts, or anything for that matter, that uses a standard. “Conform” only applies to the implementation of a standard.
Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time understanding you because you are misusing the concept of what it means to conform. I may have been sympathetic if the problem was that the scripts used some undocumented work-around for certain bugs in the standard implementation, but as you know, it’s not.
So, we can turn my analogy around. It’s exactly the same situation if I write a program that utilizes Qt. By your reckoning, my program is non-conformant because it doesn’t use only POSIX standard functions.
It’s a two way street. If people don’t have the time to make their code work on other *nix systems, but find they’re not hugely missing out on users/reciprocation, then they don’t have to. If the other *nix systems wants to benefit from the work of others, they either adopt the GPLed tools, the source, or write their own implementation.
Like it or not, licence is playing a part here, because the guy they interviewed said as much. The BSD maintainers want their “freedom”? This is the price they have to pay for that “freedom”. No freedom is cost free.
Stop twisting my words, there is the proper way of doing it which is be advocated here, or you can just make a ton of assumptions about a system and it will only work there.
Anyway I am out, you are obviously a bit of a moron.
Edited 2013-01-11 15:27 UTC
This is one of your earlier replies to me:
Stop forgetting what you wrote and maybe I’ll suddenly appear not to be twisting your words.
I told you I am out of this discussion because you are deliberately missing the point.
Stop twisting the situation and maybe my words won’t appear to twist your words.
This isn’t about some developer complaining that their project doesn’t build smoothly across systems.
This is about a port maintainer for OpenBSD who is complaining that he and others like him can’t port other people’s projects easily.
You can’t demand that anyone care about cross platform builds if they don’t see a point in it.
If other people want to port it, they can’t demand people support them, nor even to expect it.
Like it or not, open source is about volunteer effort. You can’t demand people to volunteer better. There is no “proper way” because not everything has to be so cross platform that it can’t rely on extensions for convenience.
Your words aren’t being twisted. They’re just wrong.
rah rah rah rah rah.
At the end of the day you are deliberately missing the overall plea and complaint of the article.
As far as I am concerned you are a complete moron.
Have a nice life.
The overall plea and complaint of the article is wrong and misguided and completely unreasonable, dickhead.
RAH RAH RAH RAH
I am [osnews memeber name] and I am going to avoid the overall issue to prove a point.
The overall issue as he said straight away is that portability is lost when it doesn’t have to.
He also mentions where people will assume the same for Android instead of unix and you maybe the person complaining about Android has all the features instead of Linux distros.
No, the overall issue as he said straight away is that upstream changes causes work for the downstream, leading to the decline of small downstream projects due to lack of resources.
Some of the examples he gave, as you said, were trivial, which, as I said, by definition means it is not a big issue. Portability is not lost if the BSD guys simply sucked it up and used GNU tools in the porting process.
The other issue the guy mentioned is that GNU extensions are being considered as POSIX standards “just because”. That is a non-issue only being made an issue because some BSD guys don’t even want to consider implementing GNU extensions.
You are focusing on a very narrow aspect of the article.
I find it stupid to complain about people not volunteering correctly when they were no under obligation to volunteer in the first place.
The thing about Android features is that the Linux guys won’t object to including non-GPL/GNU changes from Android, whereas the BSD guy’s problem is of their own making.
You have proven to be a complete and utter moron.
Well argued. Congratulations.
Recursive grep is not a GNU extension, it’s part of POSIX.
Actually, recursive grep is not posix but a common extension.
So add aliases or shell functions into the build script / your shell environment to map frequent longer functions into shorter workarounds.
You don’t need to type 40 character long command chains each and every time.
Well, they already do the server, firewall and routing side better than Linux so I guess they have to move on to something new
Right, and it’s not as if Linux is going to catch up to OpenBSD on those fronts, which is the other side of Linux popularity.
Laughable, one could as easily say Linux is a much better server, firewall, and server than fugly, old and slow OpenBSD.
Indeed you are right about OpenBSD, it is indeed old and crufty. Just like me. maybe that’s why I like it. Same goes for Linux though, Minix is where the real action is at.
To be frank, anyone who complains that a server isn’t pretty clearly isn’t the sort of person who should be giving advice on which enterprise OS to run on production systems.
OpenBSD on a server is Ecce Homo in its original form. Systemd is that old half-blind bint who “touched it up a bit.”
Oh you know because doing the desktop type stuff is perfectly doable for years now. I use it on a few PCs of mine and it is an easy to understand and maintainable unix.
Edited 2013-01-10 08:12 UTC
He mentions true memory randomization and jits. He may be right that it´s unsecure buat as I recall it´s not part of POSIX: here OpenBSD is the source of incompatibility
No, the problem is developers making arbitrary and dangerous assumptions with regards to memory behaviour and layout.
Are you referring to the OpenBSD developers?
Yes, obviously….
Over the years I’ve heard a few complaints like this and it’s totally valid. It’s getting worse each year.
But in the end I don’t care for the BSD licence or BSD distros/software and it seems a lot of other people feel the same way. Unless I start an ISP I probably won’t ever have to use it professionally.
I hear the license argument used a lot as reasons not to use *BSD and quite frankly I think it’s a dumb reason.
BSD doesn’t impose any restrictions on the way you use your software. It doesn’t affect the quality of the software itself. The only possible reason to dislike *BSD because of the software license is if you’re a narrow-minded elitist that would sooner attack fellow open-source advocates for being different than learn and embrace other technologies.
Hell, why don’t we all just stop using Apache because it’s not GPL? Or Firefox because it’s MPL? Or even Xorg because it’s MIT? There’s a whole tone of software you run on Linux that isn’t GPL, so this whole GNU / GPL elitism that many have is just retarded.
Edited 2013-01-10 16:55 UTC
Ahhh, WRONG! The reason why the GPL is popular is that many of the developers in open source are now paid by corporations. These corporations want some kind of assurance that the hard work they are paying for isn’t going to be plundered by a competitor and stuffed into a close source project. It has nothing to do with elitism and everything to do with business.
EDIT: Thats not to say that many volunteers don’t feel the same way. Its the reason why the GPL is the way it is and why Linux isn’t under the BSD license.
Edited 2013-01-10 18:45 UTC
Again, that doesn’t have any impact on using the software what so ever.
If you’re a developer, then choosing which licence to release your code as and what projects to work in is very important. But we’re talking about reasons not to run a piece of software – not develop for.
Furthermore, if you really cared about the developers work being rewarded, then you wouldn’t boycott *BSD just because of it’s license – because that’s essentially just wasting the developers time.
And lastly, if you really stood by your principles you wouldn’t use Firefox, Apache, Xorg nor any of the other non-GPL software on Linux. So all this “I only use GPL” and the boycotting of *BSD because of it’s licence, when MIT is almost identical and essential to Linux desktops, is pure hypocrisy.
Sorry if this comes across aggressive, but it really winds my up that the hard work of BSD developers is effectively rubbished by the non-developer Linux community simply because a few zealots don’t like the fact that BSD allows corporations not to contribute back to the original source. Something that makes absolutely no difference to the software from a users perspective.
No boycott of BSD has been mentioned. Choosing to use programs that happen not to be BSD is not boycotting. The article only goes as far as to mention “laziness”.
Did you stop and think for a minute that the fact that “GPL people” do use Firefox, Apache and Xorg is because it is a matter of pragmatism and not principle? Again, no boycotting is happening on the GPL side.
As we established, the fact that “GPL people” often use non-GPL software on their systems liberally because of pragmatic concerns is the very opposite of zealotry.
The zealotry is on the BSD side. How hard is it to implement sed -i?
I’m not talking about the article, I’m talking about how some individuals specifically chose not to run Free/OpenBSD because of the license. My comment was directly in response of one ‘OSNewser’ stating exactly this.
Well yes, obviously. But you’ve completely missed my point. I was saying that the very people who whine about the licence *BSDs are released under and refuse to use those OSs for those reasons, are the same people who happily use other software with almost identical licences. My point was those people are using double standards. My point was such laziness in principles are more than just pragmatism, but arguably just an excuse to hide the real reason for not wanting to use *BSDs; because it’s slightly different.
It’s exactly the same as fanboys who bitch about Debian being better or worse than Gentoo. Or KDE and GNOME rights. Or even the vi / emac wars. Except in this instance, licences are a completely irrelevance excuse.
Already disproved. Read up.
But if they were pragmatic then they equally wouldn’t oppose OpenBSD (or even FreeBSD) because of it’s licence.
So the pragmatics are not those I take issue with. It’s the vocal few.
You’re really not listening to my point; I’m not talking about developers (licence zealotry is more understandable if you’re releasing code), I’m talking about users. And only a small subset of users at that (I’m in no way tainting all Linux users as BSD-bigots lol).
But you never do understand any of the points I put across. Whether I explain them badly or you’re just closed to any opinions other than your own – maybe a bit of both? I don’t know, but I think we should just give up now while this discussion is amicable
Edited 2013-01-11 08:31 UTC
Nope. The person you were responding merely stated their preference. They’re not boycotting. They’re prefering GPL over BSD if the GPL exist.
That’s essentially the same thing. I will grant you that the term ‘boycott’ can be quite emotive, but the crux is the same: refusing to use one product as a personal protect (in this case, against non-GPL copyleft licences)
I should point out that I wasn’t intending to criticise him specifically (though in hindsight I can see why you thought I was). He did say that he also preferred Linux (as a user) to OpenBSD and that he might consider BSD if he worked for an ISP. So he was definitely more pragmatic and the licences were just one of many reasons. But it was his comment that reminded me of some of the conversations I’ve had in the past with less open minded individuals. As he said himself, there are plenty of people who cite licences as a reason not to use BSD technology and you often see working production-ready technology completely re-written for Linux because said technology isn’t GPL – which strikes me as an immense waste of everyone’s time.
(and don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Linux nor implying that BSD is in any way perfect. I facepalm over the arguments FreeBSD zealots raise about GPL in their OS. I just wish the FOSS community got alone instead of all this dumb infighting that happens)
Edited 2013-01-11 11:46 UTC
I know you don’t like my nitpicking, but I don’t care:
A preference is NOT the same, whether essentially or otherwise, as a refusal.
You maybe talking about the “vocal few”, but by definition, they’re not “many” and thus is neither here nor there in almost any discussion.
Indeed, but like I said, the previous poster was more pragmatic. Not everyone is.
with the greatest of respect, you were the one that joined this debate mid way through, so I couldn’t give a fly f–k what you consider relevant. Where as the person I was actually discussing this with raised the topic about users who choose not to run BSD because of the licence, and thus my point was very relevant within the context of that discussion.
This obsession you have of constantly having to belittle and disprove everyone is just retarded. I mean, you were arguing with a pen tester about pen testing, and that after admitting you know nothing about security. Surely even you can see how backwards that kind of behaviour is? You’re truly beyond the capability of a friendly discussion.
Edited 2013-01-11 14:21 UTC
I don’t belittle or disprove people. I only do it to ideas or statements. The trick is not to get so attached to ideas or statements such that non-agreement does not appear to be directed personally. Having said that, I don’t even try to belittle or disprove ideas and statements. I point out what I think is wrong with them and people are allowed to rebut my observations. Prolonged questioning is not an argument.
I wasn’t arguing with a pen tester. I was questioning the pen tester to try and understand the subject I didn’t know much about. Little did I know that said pen tester was seeing my attempts to learn as trying to argue and possibly as trying to override his [self attested] authority on the subject. The pen tester tried to belittle my honest questioning with ad hominems, throwing the first figurative punch.
Then said pen tester tried to continue the argument he was having on his own in another unrelated article at no provocation at all.
You sure love your high horses, Mr Reeve.
So you think the larger group of developers should change how they do things so that the BSD group can avoid doing something simple like adding sed -i capability to keep things compatible? You know, there is a flip side to every coin. Maybe the Linux people feel you’re being unreasonable by not see it their way. And if they are the ones writing the code, I guess they can do whatever they want.
It wouldn’t be the first small, sensible improvement they’ve lifted from GNU. OpenBSD’s /bin/ksh supports bash-style escapes in its PS1, so you can run “export PS1=\u@\h\w:\$” and it will behave like you’d expect as a bash user. That’s much better than the awful hackery needed in “real” ksh syntax to get that sort of prompt.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?548198
Not really that hard to understand why. It maybe a little more effort, but usually a little bit more effort is what makes a better bit of software.
Or just using the immeasurably superior GNU versions of those tools. That seems to be standard practice on the commercial UNIX systems I’ve worked on – forget about the versions that come with the system, just install the GNU packages for coreutils, grep, sed, etc. It’s easier to just mandate the GNU versions of those utilities than to try and work around the deficiencies of the standard versions.
Funny thing is, I can remember a time when there was no shortage of Linux users and devs complaining about how Windows apps and code was not portable to Linux. “Portability is important yadda yadda yadda”.
I guess Linux success changed all that, somehow.
Only the users who wanted to port Windows programs to Linux. Not the ones who preferred to write something for Linux specifically.
And with libraries like Qt and GTK working on Windows, that problem is also being solved. Yes, success did change all that, but that’s because the Linux derivatives went with the pragmatic option.
There is a lot of talk about licenses and the old war between GPL and BSD going on here, but not a lot of talk about practical reasons or thoughts on what is going on upstream.
I maintain a handful of small projects which have been accepted into Linux distros and some of the BSD port trees. I do my development on Linux and have, from time to time, introduced Linux-isms into my build scripts or code. It isn’t an act of malice or a stand for/against a license, I’m just making use of the tools available to me.
Now, luckily, I’ve heard from some very nice people in the BSD communities who have either made suggestions or sent me patches which would allow me to make my upstream projects more cross-compatible. I am always happy to make these changes. Sometimes it might mean re-writing a few lines or adjusting some functions, but the Linux/BSD tools are similar enough it takes very little effort and, as a result, it opens up my software to a wider audience. It seems like a win-win all around. They get code which works natively without patches and I get a bigger audience. As a bonus I now write cleaner cross-platform code. I seriously don’t see why anyone would ignore the obvious benefits of working with the BSD communities to improve their code.
Because it’s not always that easy. Generic programs are usually pretty portable, because they’re able to code to standard APIs like POSIX.
But system level programs are harder to make portable, because to work effectively, they need to take advantage of OS specific functionality – e.g using driver interfaces, or using frameworks that simply don’t exist on any other platform. You *could* make something work by coding to the lowest common denominator – or you could code to Linux, hit 99% of your target users, and not worry too much about the others.
Because the BSD licence can’t guarantee the improvements will be passed back, whereas GPL obligates it (upon distribution). I’m not saying BSD don’t pass back improvements, because they obviously do, but there’s no guarantee.
It is a practical matter what licences to choose, and the guy who made the mailing list post did list licences as one of the major issues.
Actually no it doesn’t if the software is used internally by a company.
At my last job I maintained my own fork of (out-dated) GPL JavaScript and CMS libraries when used in an intranet setting. None of the bugs I have fixed were ever ported back.
Which is a moot point because any modified “open source” programs that doesn’t see the light of day may as well not factor into any calculation.
Comparing like with like – publicly redistributed binarie – GPL guarantees reciprocation.
From ‘man udisksctl’:
“Additionally, this program is not intended to be used by scripts or other programs – options/commands may change in incompatible ways in the future even in maintenance releases.”
Yay continuous wheel reinvention!