Comment 5 for bug 590925

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 04:52:32AM -0000, Grondr wrote:
> I'll try one more time to make the point I'm trying to make, and then
> I'll give up until someone who seems to understand it chimes in. (And
> by the way, calling a usability complaint "flamebait" isn't exactly
> setting the right tone yourself.)

I'm not calling the usability complaint itself flamebait. I'm calling
the language you used to convey said usability complaint flamebait. And
counter-productive.

> You complain that I called it "broken", but it wasn't until after I
> posted my first entry in this that I even -realized- that the
> currently- default nc -did not allow- both -l and -p in the same
> command line!

I don't see where you're going with this /at all/.

> So yeah, when I wrote that report, I honestly believed that Ubuntu had
> shipped a completely broken netcat---one that, despite my best
> efforts, could not be made into a listener. I just couldn't believe
> it. It seemed incomprehensible that their quality control had fallen
> so far that they could (a) modify and (b) -break- such a fundamental
> part of netcat.
>
> As I see it, there's plenty of blame to go around:

Yes, everyone except you suck. Now that we've established this, can we
/please/ get on with fixing the 1 (one!) bug that you actually seem to
have encountered?

> Unless Ubuntu can successfully apply backpressure upstream (I'd have
> said, "We won't make OpenBSD's version of nc the default until the
> following fake-out usability issues are addressed"),

The OpenBSD folks never asked for us to include their software, much
less make it our default netcat. This is not politics. There's no need
to go and make demands to all sorts of people. It's simple engineering.
In the time I've spent writing this response I could have fixed this bug
several times.

> Ubuntu certainly isn't shy about making their own downstream patches
> in other things---this seems like an issue that begs for it.

You'd be surprised how much the OpenBSD netcat in Ubuntu has been
patched compared to what's in OpenBSD, /precisely/ to make this
transition smooth. Yes, I missed this "-p" option when I did this. Shit
happens.

> As for filing a feature request with OpenBSD for better and clearer
> version/origin info, I can try it, but I'm fairly sure the OpenBSD
> crowd will just say, "We've been using this for years and it's -our-
> program, so why should -we- be the ones to include something that
> points out it's from OpenBSD?"

Yeah, openbsd-devel seems like quite an argumentative place. I've met my
quota for argumentativity for this week, though.

> They might object that it's Ubuntu's job (or maybe Debian's---I don't
> know who made this change)

I did.

> to make it clear, since U/D are the ones who decided to -switch-,
> after years of the traditional nc, to using OpenBSD's version in the
> first place.

Yeah. And as is always the case when humans are involved, mistakes
happen, which brings me back to the 1 (one!), small bug you seem to be
experiencing:

  netcat-openbsd should accept "-p" along with "-l".

I would update the bug title and description (as appropriate), but I
can't be bothered to respond to another burst of outrage.

Replacing netcat-openbsd with netcat-traditional just because of such a
small (in terms of lines of code to fix it) bug would be just as silly
as switching from Ubuntu to Fedora because of this (easily revertable)
change. Well, except that Fedora also ships the OpenBSD version of
netcat as their default nc and have been for years.

> And as for the original nc, it so happens I've been friends with its
> author for almost 30 years.

Cool. Hobbit actually has a name?

--
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Developer
http://www.ubuntu.com/