alt Hacker NewsThere is also a (stub) web page:
The problem with this fragmentation of rsync is that Apple and Android will prefer it, but the Linux and greater GPL world will adhere to the original implantation due to inertia. Power users will just have to know the quirks of each version.
The only way to stop this is for the original author(s) to release this under a BSD license.
Edit: For those assuming equivalent/identical behavior, study these words carefully: "accepts only a subset of rsync's command-line arguments."
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It's really no different than every other BSD utility (and SysV utility, if you're running one of those) being different than the GNU ones. We've coped with it for fifty years at this point.
> Apple and Android will prefer it,
My thought upon reading this is why would Apple or Android bother including rsync? I've noticed that I've needed to install it manually on fresh installs of Debian, FreeBSD...
But then, I just checked a recent Mac that I don't use much and haven't put much on, and it's installed.
Basically like GNU Tar/CPIO and BSD Tar/CPIO. I've largely standardised towards using the bsd variant everywhere (especially since now even Windows ships it and it handles lots of other archive formats using the `tar` command) but it's always a pain to install it everywhere
> The only way to stop this is for the original author(s) to release this under a BSD license.
Would that stop it? My understanding was that at least OpenBSD tended do redo things for technical reasons, not just licensing