Re: [PATCH v1 2/4] sys/man2/sysctl.2: HISTORY: wfix

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi all,

On Tue, Dec 30, 2025 at 01:53:53AM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Hi Collin,
> 
> At 2025-12-29T23:40:11-0800, Collin Funk wrote:
> > It does say 1993, but it also has the following:
> > 
> >     .\"	@(#)sysctl.3	8.1.1 (2.11BSD GTE) 1/13/95
> >     .\"
> >     .TH SYSCTL 3 "January 13, 1995"
> > 
> > The first line being used by SCCS? That is an assumption since I have
> > never used it.
> 
> Yup, that's exactly what it is.
> 
> https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/what.html
> 
> To add precision to my earlier remarks, the "last" Berkeley CSRG release
> appears to have been "4.4BSD Lite Release 2", dated May 1995.
> 
> https://gunkies.org/wiki/4.4BSD_Lite_Release_2
> 
> The "real work" was by then happening as BSDI, where every developer was
> assured that their deeply principled avoidance of the viral GPL would
> result in billionaire status for them all.  Winning!
> 
> > > I suggest the Linux man-pages project not attempt to track the
> > > provenance or timeline of 2.11BSD features.  It's too much work.
> > 
> > And there is probably not much practical benefit, i.e., just some
> > (very few, probably) people interested in the history.
> 
> I number myself among those few, but without some sort of tool to keep
> track of 2BSD + 2.11BSD patches on an _automated_ basis to monitor when
> symbols appear and vanish from the source base, I think researching such
> history is a poor use of Linux man-pages contributors' time.
> 
> Put differently, I would advocate _against_ Alex mandating that
> contributors to "HISTORY" sections pin down just when a feature showed
> up in 2BSD development specifically.  Without the aforementioned tool, I
> think the problem is too hard.  The juice is not worth the squeeze.

I certainly won't mandate anything prior to POSIX.1-2001/Cor2-2004
(informally, POSIX.1-2004), as that's the oldest POSIX that is easily
available.  I personally don't check any older sources than that
regularly.

Actually, I'm even starting to ignore anything older than POSIX.1-2008,
because for some reason the search engine at
<https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/> often fails for
"word search" with

	Not Found

	The requested URL was not found on this server.

so, I'm giving up on POSIX.1-2004 too.  For some reason, the search
engine works fine for more recent POSIX revisions.  The Open Group
website is a terrible thing, and part of the reason I decided to stop
supporting the POSIX manual pages.  The Austin Group would do well
having a talk with whoever is in charge, and fix several things,
including publication of POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.1-2002, and actually
open their standards (the source code of the standard; WG21 did publish
the source of the C++ drafts and they got away with that).

However, I won't reject patches documenting 2BSD and 3BSD, if some
people are interested in doing the work.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

> 
> If any 2BSD advocates feel slighted, we can always point out that this
> project largely uses the GPL, and that they can't expect anything good
> to come from sick, evil copyleftists anyway.  😈🤘
> 
> Surely they can console themselves by counting their money.
> 
> Regards,
> Branden



-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

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