I agree with your general comment in the context of GNU/Linux based systems, as such, in that the development of a good set of package management platforms indeed aided the growth and acceptance of the GNU/Linux OS as a whole – in fact it clearly provided a simple means for Operating Systems built on the Linux kernel and the GNU tool set and Unix clone file systems to move forward in leaps and bounds.

But I do need to clarify for readers of this blog post that GNU/Linux was not the first place package management was seen, nor is it the case that GNU/Linux based Operating Systems were the first to introduce, or even early adopters of package management.

A/IX, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris (yes, even Windows) all supported package management some time before the Linux kernel was even thought of, albeit that things were not quite so kiddie-proof as they are today, package management did both exist, and essentially work.

Alas most of the “open source”, “GNU/Linux”, and now excitingly “OpenSolaris” folks are all too young to have any knowledge, history, or it seems desire to learn the history, or from whence we came. Mores the pity in my opinion.

I recall my first day at Sun, I was shown my “cubicle” I was to work in, it was literally stacked to the celing with old Sun3 systems, CPU’s, “shoe boxes” (external disk), and tape drives, and boxes of keyboards, SCSI cables, monitor cables, and power cables – and I was told “you can have this cubicle, it’s the largest.. it’s all yours.. when you’ve finished putting all these systems (old junk mostly inherited from the USA offices) on sales staff desks *chortle*”). “Welcome to Sun” and off he went (my boss).

Needless to say I learned about Sun’s package management quickly ;-)

Even before the whole “open source” movement started to take shape, SunOS “freeware” packages were shared via USENET over UUCP connections in ASCII encoded SHAR files which when “run” expanded into packages which allowed folk without compilers (yes, sadly compilers eventually were not supplied by default with Unix systems) to install tools which did not come with their Unix or Unix derivative Operating Systems as “standard software”.

So I apologise for the correction as such, indeed a small clarification I admit, but I’m sure you agree a worthwhile one.

Regards,

Dez

—
Dez Blanchfield
(ex Sun, ex HP, ex IBM, ex SGI, ex almost every Unix OEM on the planet)
http://www.Blanchfield.com.au/
http://www.WebSearch.com.au
http://www.CradleTechnologies.com/
http://www.TheStorageForum.com/

—
Dustin Puryear
Author, Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers
http://www.puryear-it.com

While I enjoy the power and flexibility of source compiles, really, those don’t work for large installs or for your average desktop user. That’s two rather big groups.

FreeBSD, Debian, and others are getting it right. Make it easier on the sysadmin and end-user.

—
Dustin Puryear
Author, Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers
http://www.puryear-it.com

Case in point: fink adds apt-get to the Mac OS, but the result is that updates from Apple and updates from fink compete/collide, and when there’s a problem, the natural result is finger-pointing rather than integrated QA.

Debian/ubuntu have scaled amazingly well, but they rely on quite a bit of trust. The MS Windows marketplace includes lots of mutually distrustful players, as does the Mac OS X marketplace. It’s not at all clear how apt-get and the debian bug tracking system (or ubuntu’s launchpad) can scale to support that sort of marketplace.

what about the ubuntu model where ease of use for newcomers instead of developers only ;-P

I was sticking plenty of apps into HP-UX all nicely packaged in the HP software distributor package format (thanks to the HP-UX porting and archiving centre) a long time before Linux was commercially viable. SUN lagged, with big admin coming along a fair while later. Whilst on the big Unices the high value software vendors would do a native package, the free software could be done on an as needed basis, or on request by the Porting and Archiving centre.

But the crucial issue is that someone who understands the platform is compiling, organizing and rearranging the software, and that requires a license that permits that (or individual agreements which can be hard to manage).

Sure some proprietary software was done the same way, SUN shipped NFS code to HP (who then failed to merge it all nicely), but then they didn’t want to the HP improvement in the SUN code base, so instead would happily introduced regressions due to merging cock-ups every other release or so.

Debian does it best (like you need telling), but that is down to the quality and variety of the packages, the tools themselves were behind the proprietary software packaging tools at the time (and probably still are).

One interesting difference though, was HP-UX shipped “patches” for years, when the Linux distros just “upgraded” packages. Which eliminated a whole patch management mess (by forcing packages to track which files they brought with them), which they persisted with for far too long. Microsoft Windows of course still goes in for patch management – ARGHHHH.