Re: [bug-inetutils] More of a feature request than a bug fix

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   I wanted to use inetutils because it comes from GNU.  I respect GNU
   software because I believe that it will always remain free.  If I
   only wanted a lightweight "ping" I could have easily used net-kit
   instead.  However, I believe that net-kit is now being maintained
   by Redhat.

Once GPL'ed, always GPL'ed.  Your point is moot, and silly.  The GNU
project uses a lot of software that is not copyrighted by the FSF;
XFree86, Perl, etc.  Who the copyright holder is quite irrelevant as
long as it is Free Software, this is what is important.

   Forget about the boot disk example for a minute and think about the
   root filesystem on a hard disk installation.  What sysadmin
   wouldn't be happy to have a small, tight root fs, free of clutter?

Clutter and space have nothing in common.  Say if you have an small
"tight" /, you install lots of nifty small utilities there, and
install their full versions in /whatever, this will cause far more
clutter since one is forced to (i) keep track of two versions, (ii)
keep track if one is using the small version or the big version, and
(iii) keep the things separate because it would cause havoc if you
replaced the small version with the big one (or vice-versa).x

   I have been building my own GNU/Linux system using the Filesystem
   Hierarchy Standard as a guide.

If you are so concerned about software being FSF copyrighted, why are
you using Linux?  It has several problems like using non-free micro
code.

   It just doesn't seem right to fill up the /lib directory only to
   support "ping".

What about other programs that need these libraries?

   I used BASH with the --minimal-config option rather that switch to
   some other micro-shell that is unfamiliar to most people.

`ash' is far better choice for a small shell replacement, and is closer
to being POSIX compliant than Bash.

   This is the same reason I chose to use fileutils, sh-utils,
   textutils and possibly inetutils over something like busybox.  With
   a little planning you can actually fit a lot of this "standard"
   stuff onto one compressed rootdisk.

If you are really concerned about space, than using coreutils and
glibc are the worst possible choices.