open(1) removed from Debian? (was: 'open' instead of 'xdg-open' for usability?)

[Ma Xiaojun]

> A danger in customizing shell-level commands is that shell-scripts can
> become hard to debug remotely and hard to share.

True. But you can even customize /bin/sh on Debian/Ubuntu.

> I'm personally in favour of keeping xdg-open and not making a grab for
> "open", because it helps people remember that the user of a script might
> be running a different desktop environment, and that "xdg-open
> instructions.txt" might not (for example) bring up gedit by default for
> them.

Fail to see the connection. I guess xdg, if it stands for X Desktop
Group, would be obsolete soon if people move to Wayland or Mir based
desktop.

BTW, I happen to know one breakage caused by Linux not having open(1) like OS X.
https://github.com/swaroopch/byte_of_python/issues/8