| <html><head><title>toybox news</title> |
| <!--#include file="header.html" --> |
| |
| <h2>Q: "Why is there toybox? What was wrong with busybox?"</h2> |
| |
| <p>A: To answer the first part: Toybox dates back to when its maintainer |
| <a href=https://lwn.net/Articles/202106/>handed off BusyBox maintainership</a> |
| and <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2006.html#28-09-2006>started over from |
| scratch</a> on a new codebase after a |
| <a href=http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2006-September/058617.html>protracted licensing argument</a> took all the fun out of |
| working on BusyBox. Toybox was just a personal project until it got |
| <a href=https://lwn.net/Articles/478308/>relicensed years |
| later</a> after its author did a lot of thinking |
| <a href=http://landley.net/talks/ohio-2013.txt>about licenses</a> |
| and about <a href=http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#21-03-2011>the |
| transition to smartphones</a>. This led to the |
| <a href=http://landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt>2013</a> |
| <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGmtP5Lg_t0>talk</a> laying |
| out a strategy to make Android self-hosting, which helped |
| <a href=https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=76861>bring |
| it to Android's attention</a>, and they |
| <a href=https://lwn.net/Articles/629362/>merged it</a> into Android M.</p> |
| |
| <p>To answer the second part: BusyBox predates Android |
| by almost a decade, but Android still doesn't ship with it because GPLv3 came |
| out around the same time Android did and caused many people to throw |
| out the GPLv2 baby with the GPLv3 bathwater. |
| Android <a href=https://source.android.com/source/licenses.html>explicitly |
| discourages</a> use of GPL and LGPL licenses in its products, and has gradually |
| reimplemented historical GPL components such as its bluetooth stack under the |
| Apache license. Similarly, Apple froze xcode at the last GPLv2 releases |
| (GCC 4.2.1 with binutils 2.17) for over 5 years while it sponsored the |
| development of new projects (clang/llvm/lld) to replace them, |
| implemented its SMB server from scratch to replace samba, |
| <a href=http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/>and so |
| on</a>. Toybox itself exists because somebody with in a legacy position |
| just wouldn't shut up about GPLv3, otherwise its maintainer would probably |
| still happily be maintaining BusyBox. (For more on how said maintainer wound |
| up working on busybox in the first place, |
| <a href=http://landley.net/aboriginal/history.html>see here</a>.)</p> |
| |
| <!--#include file="footer.html" --> |
