[dfrage]

Second item from the top:

> gpsd

> gpsd is a service daemon that monitors a GPS attached to a serial or USB port, decodes the position/velocity/time information it sends, and republishes in a simple uniform format on an IANA-designated TCP/IP port. This enables multiple applications to read from a GPS without contention. The distribution also provides C and Python libraries to encapsulate the client side of talking with gpsd.

From the core team page on the following project (https://ntpsec.org/core-team.html), with at least one falsifiable claim:

> Eric S. Raymond has been the technical lead of GPSD, a close peer project of NTP and one of its principal time sources, since 2004. GPSD has billions of deployments in Android smartphones world wide and is a mission-critical component in most of the world’s drones and driverless cars and robot submarines.

The top item, where he's also the technical lead:

> NTPsec

> A stripped down-security-hardened and generally improved version of the NTP reference code. Features code bulk reduced by a factor of 4, better monitoring and diagnostic tools, and Network Time Security.

Aspires to become one, but it's early in the process to see if it'll succeed.

Those are projects I've vaguely followed over the years. Reading down the list, this claims to be one, and the claim is partially falsifiable:

> giflib

> The ubiquitous service library for rendering GIFs. I handed off the project 1994 to avoid problems with the U.S. patent system, but accepted back the lead in 2012. This code had the odd effect of making me virtually omnipresent; it seems nobody has ever bothered to write a replacement, and it's now ubiquitous in web browsers, cellphones and gaming consoles. In a nicely ironic touch, it earned me an appearance in the credits of the Microsoft XBox.

[KirinDave]

GPSD was historically an important project, but I wouldn't call it "load bearing" in the same sense as core networking or service contributions.

It's also increasingly less important as the changes dropped in 4.19 are picked up by downstream software authors. Most software installations that care about gps are deployed in SBC configurations. A lot of other folks (e.g., hobbyists with external microcontrollers or arm SBCs) are parsing directly.

Folks most interested in linux attached hardware are either older school hardware hackers (who rely on this project) or folks using new LoRa radios (in which case that stuff is in the card and annoyingly locked down because it's part of some LoRa monetization schemes).

Sooooo yes. Not a bullshit project. But no, not a ILBS project.

[dfrage]

I'll repeat the claim from the NTPsec project page:

> GPSD has billions of deployments in Android smartphones world wide and is a mission-critical component in most of the world’s drones and driverless cars and robot submarines.

And tools, to support for example the development of tools like Emacs and GCC, indirectly support "core networking or services".

You can narrowly define "core networking or service contributions" to exclude everyone by Linus Torvalds and Vint Cerf, but that's boring.

[tptacek]

Raymond didn't write gpsd, did he? He took it over as the "maintainer". But as 'geofft observed awhile ago, if you actually git-log the project, you'll see that most of the substantive changes to gpsd aren't Raymond's.

Is it possible that what Raymond really has is a (waning) talent for getting his name attached to other people's work?

[dfrage]

This is merely a list of the "critical Internet services or libraries" that he claims in one way or another, and ensuring the maintenance of such software is part of the whole thesis.

To scare quote that, and denigrate it over "substantive changes" ... well, I must thank for your solid support of his thesis.

[cromulent]

Sincerely: Thanks for your detailed reply, I'm more knowledgeable now :)

[dfrage]

A perfectly cromulent reply, you're welcome. :-)