LonnieOlson

There was a very long thread on the misc@openbsd.org mailing list of the last week. It all started with some comments from Richard Stallman responding to complaints to him about his past remarks on BSDTalk. Lots of flaming and other arguments ensued. Including this snippet.

Theo: “Since both emacs and gcc contain code inside them which permit them to compile and run on commercial operating systems which are non-free, you are a slimy hypocrite.”

RMS: “I see you are being your usual friendly self ;-}.”

Much of it was very thought provoking, but the majority was just bickering. The biggest point of the whole war being that RMS had specifically recommended against OpenBSD because it “included” non-free software, referring to the ports system. Theo and others took offense at this because the ports system doesn’t “include” any external software, it is only a framework of Makefiles that make installing lots of software packages, Free and Non-Free, easy. And the entire ports system is 100% Free-Software.

IMHO, the saddest part of this whole debacle is the fact that besides the extremely obscure gNewSense pet project of RMS, there is no other operating system, or distribution of an operating system more Free than OpenBSD. Both RMS and Theo have similar goals with Free Software, but have radically different tactics and personalities.