> > On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 02:00:14PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
quoted text
> > >     OpenBSD is by far the most free OS in the landscape.  Everything that
> > >     ships with it is free or else it won't be distributed with it.
> > >
> > > Yes, that's what I was told.  I was also told that OpenBSD's ports
> > > system includes non-free programs.  Is that accurate too?

quoted text
> William Boshuck wrote:
> > Strictly speaking, no.  If you unpack ports.tar.gz
> > you will find a bunch of makefiles, packing lists,
> > & c., all of which are free.  OpenBSD's ports system
> > depends on programs in the base system which are free.
> > On a modern UNIX-like operating system it possible,
> > even easy, to use free tools like awk, make, perl,
> > sh, and so on, directly or indirectly, to facilitate
> > the installation and maintenance of (free and non-free)
> > software.

On 11/12/2007, Theo de Raadt <deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org> wrote:
quoted text
> William is right.
>
> The OpenBSD ports tree is just a scaffold, and that scaffold is 100%
> free.  It contains no non-free parts.
>
> It contains URL's to non-free software, and free Makefiles that
> knows how to build that non-free software.   But the entire ports
> tree has no non-free software in it at all.
>
> Does that make it non-free?

I would like to ask Richard a question. It may seem off-topic, but it isn't:

Do you believe that The Pirate Bay is guilty of copyright infringement?

In case you're not familiar, The Pirate Bay ( http://thepiratebay.org/
, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay ) is a Swedish website
that offers users the opportunity to upload metadata files that
contain information about where and how data files can be downloaded.
It also allows users to download the metadata files that users have
uploaded. Some users (possibly even a large number) use this service
to upload metadata files that contain info that can be used to obtain
copyrighted material, possibly without the copyright holder's
permission.

This is IMHO very similar to the way the OpenBSD ports system is
related to unfree software:
- The unfree software is not hosted by OpenBSD. The ports tree
effectively only contains metadata.
- The individual ports in the ports system are maintained by
(advanced) OpenBSD users. The inclusion of a port that users chose to
submit and maintain does not imply an endorsement of the (possibly
unfree) software that can be installed using the port metadata.
- The use of the ports system is officially *discouraged* for average
users. Average  Joes are encouraged to *not* use ports but use OpenBSD
_packages_ instead, which are precompiled binaries which are hosted by
OpenBSD. ( See "IMPORTANT NOTE" here:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#Ports ) There are no unfree
packages. See for yourself: (caution: very long page and long load)
http://www.openbsd.org/4.2_packages/i386.html
- Unlike the Pirate Bay, the OpenBSD ports system does itself
distinguish between free and unfree content. See this comment by Nick
Guenther:
quoted text
> It may be relevant to point out:
> http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119731456628749&w=2
> > Having a way to sift out the non-free stuff during a search of the ports
> > tree would be useful.
>
> PERMIT_*=(not Yes)

In addition, it is *considerably harder* to install unfree software on
OpenBSD than on gNewSense. This eg. is what installing Skype entails:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.bsd.india/352
On gNewSense, it is *much* easier to install Skype. Just add an unfree
repository to /etc/apt/sources.list and type a one-line command to
install. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that gNewSense will not
warn a user who does that that they are installing unfree software, so
why expect more from OpenBSD?

Richard, I you wrote:
quoted text
> If OpenBSD did not suggest non-free programs, I would
> recommend it along with the free GNU/Linux distros.

I suspect that your skepticism of OpenBSD stems from yourself being
unfamiliar with the OpenBSD packages and ports system and not aware
that the OpenBSD project does not in fact host unfree packages (and
that ports for unfree programs such as users have submitted only
contain metadata).

In summary, I strongly feel that OpenBSD in fact does *not* suggest
non-free programs. Despite the heated and sometimes personal nature of
this thread, I think the honorable thing to do would be to be the
bigger man and acknowledge the misunderstandings and make good on your
offer to recommend OpenBSD.

Thanks and regards,
--ropers