Thanks, Matthew, for some balances in this thread.
I don't see a need to reconcile the two sides. (It would be good if that
was possible, though.)

RMS wrote, why in his personal opinion, he does not recommend the use of
OpenBSD. And some p*** at him. What a shame ! 'Freedom' is not only
one's choice of software, but also one's choice of an own opinion.
It would serve this list and the people on it well, to allow RMS to voice
his own opinion. And, if in personal disagreement, argue. Like some
actually did in here.

Unfortunately, BSD and GNU come from different perspective, hence
different philosophy of what free and open source software
could/would/should be.

In my opinion (and I welcome correction on this one), BSD historically
came from the perspective of academically improving a proprietary AT&T
software while moving away from the original proprietary code and
fully disclose the improved code while still providing for the
proprietary software to incorporate those academic improvements with
further option to keep their proprietary enhancement to themselves.
This option for incorporating and optionally withholding those
improvements is what many cite as BSD's more liberal licensing
feature.

GNU and GPL, on the other hand, comes from the struggle against
proprietary software entities and ward off interest of incorporating
free and open source code into the fold of closed-source proprietary
software thus ensuring the availability of the source code for
enhancement and oblige the availability of those improvements to all.
This obligation on the part of those improving the source code is
criticized as restrictive, but it guarantees full source code
improvement/change disclosure.


--
Tito Mari Francis H. Escaqo
Computer Engineer and Free Software Proponent

Nobody is criticizing RMS over his opinion.  They are criticizing him  
for ignorance and misrepresentation of the facts regarding OpenBSD.

---
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net

Actually, no, I am criticizing RMS over his opinion.

He's supposed to have dedicated his life to such matters as free software.

His arguments towards not recommnending OpenBSD are just a front. They
sound logical, but he could interpret and present things differently.

The real reason he doesn't recommend OpenBSD is because OpenBSD represents
a viable alternative to his political views, and a very loud counter-voice
to the `GPL world'.

I've thought some more about it, and I cannot find any charitable 
interpretation of Stallman's words.

You've got a choice of:
1/ complete idiot
2/ senile old fool disconnected from reality
3/ dangerous political activist with a hidden agenda

Or

4) not up on the OpenBSD projects goals and current licensing requirements


Some of that is probably due to the low profile of OpenBSD (low-profile
is good, though) and the yammering of the FreeBSD crowd (which both
includes a lot of MSFTers, and takes it upon itself to represent all *BSD).

I realize it's good fun in Redmond to poke at RMS, however, that will
not inform the public about the advantages of OpenBSD.  The only purpose
there is to make everyone look bad.

Articles and other means of providing information about OpenBSD will
increase knowledge of OpenBSD.

Regards,
-Lars

> > You've got a choice of:

To quote Robert Steele (from memory):

"Given a choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always go for
incompetence, because incompetence is vastly more likely."

( cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_David_Steele )

Yes.  I was pretty determined to stay out of this thread entirely, but
I think you touch on an important point here.  Like most people who
have been in the field for a while I have a lot of respect for
Richard's efforts, but whether he recommends using OpenBSD or not or
whether he is acting on incorrect information about what ships with
the system is in fact not that interesting.  Richard is entitled to
his opinions, and if his opinion of what 'free' means is different
from a some other group's, that's something I for one can live with.

What /is/ interesting, in my view, is the fact that OpenBSD is where
some of the best technology available today, certainly when it comes
to networking, is developed.  And there's more to come.

Using OpenBSD we build the systems we need, and they work a helluva
lot better than most of the other stuff out there.  OpenBSD is free
and lets us create reliable, high performance, low maintenance
networks and services, Stuff That Just Works.  In fact it's so good it
makes you *want* to contribute back.  That's what I want to emphasize.

- P
-- 
Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team
http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.datadok.no/ http://www.nuug.no/
"Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic"
delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.

Amen, There is nothing more to say. There is the one still looking for 
an OS that might work for some of their needs, and there is OpenBSD for 
a lots of them. And yes, it just work!

So a high profile public figure talking out of his ass and
representing things he's not informed about as facts as opposed to
asking questions to get informed is better ... how? That's what we
would expect from a political activist not an engineer.

You mean not interested. He got to meet Theo personally, so he could
easily stay informed -- if he wanted too.

Best
   Martin

Also I like the way he posts and disappears.

And the solution for that is to point out the factors which
differentiate OpenBSD from the others, because it is these
characteristics which RMS actually praised during the BSDTalk interview.

Possibly there is a bit of confusion between FreeBSD which is oriented
towards proprietary binaries and OpenBSD which requires full source code.

-Lars