BusyBox and multicall binaries (1999)
BusyBox packaged dozens of Unix utilities into a single binary for embedded systems, dispatching to tools based on the name it was invoked with. It became the standard in routers, set-top boxes, and Android devices.
BusyBox succeeded where GNU tools were too large for constrained devices, but developers constantly complained about subtle behavioral differences from the originals.
Multicall binary design became standard in embedded Linux, yet no major desktop distribution adopted it as the default coreutils.
uutils uses the same multicall binary design BusyBox pioneered. OpenBSD's packaging conventions expect individual binaries, and the project's developers rejected that design outright.
