On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 10:38:08AM -0500, Stuart VanZee wrote: > >From: Rui Miguel Silva Seabra > > > >He's not labelling OpenBSD non-free, just non-free-friendly because some > >non-free are distributed in the ports site. > > And yet, you still don't have it quite right. Saying that the ports system > distributes software is not correct. The ports system only distributes some > make files and a few patches (all free).
I'm not talking about the CVS tree, I'm talking about http://www.openbsd.org/4.2_packages/i386.html I'm sorry for the "abuse" of language if you want to make a strong difference between port and package. That is an OpenBSD site which has software, like for instance zangband, which is proprietary and is compiled and distributed from: ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.2/packages/i386/zangband-2.6.2p1-no_x11.tgz > These make files contain links to > where to download said "evil" software and make them easy to install... This is no mere link to a file, it's plain forward availability of a conveniently pre-compiled package which is installable and is tantamount to a recommendation. > should the user choose to. Since I'm (at least) smart enough not to install proprietary software, I don't have a strong problem with it, but for someone like RMS who want's to be able to recommend strictly Free Software operating systems, this can be seen as a severe drawback. I don't understand such violent answers from some people, they are as unproportional as some of their claims are false. > choose to run IE on OpenBSD if he wanted to. > So I ask you: How does that limit freedom? When you promote the usage of proprietary software, you're promoting a network effect that ends-up with more people being less free: those who chose to entrust others with their good judgement because they are not knowledgeable enough to make the decision just by themselves and get to accept your recommendations. Then some pages which only work with IE are now accessible, and maybe more people will use IE instead of Free Software browsers, and where does this road lead to? No good, IMHO. Best, -- All Hail Discordia! Today is Pungenday, the 3rd day of Chaos in the YOLD 3174 + No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown + Whatever you do will be insignificant, | but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi + So let's do it...?
