My apologies for using Mr. Hooks post to reply to this thread. Marco is right. The project is used by many different individuals. I could care less about political ideology.
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Austin Hook <[email protected]> wrote: > Doubt that the ideological purity of OpenBSD has ever been an objective in > the larger political sense. OpenBSD has a different kind of purity that it > strives for. Left, right, mainstream, libertarian, socialist, anarchist, > communist, or government spy, so long as you keep your politics out of the > code, and write it clean and brilliant, that's all we ask. > > More power to the libertarians if they can do the best job using the tool > that results. Personally I hope they can, but they have their work cut out > for them, same as anyone else. > > Also, as an international project, few here give a damn about overly narrow > US centric political pigeon holes of which libertarianism is certainly one. > > Austin > > > > > On Thu, 17 Feb 2011, Alex Libman wrote: > > On 2/16/2011 2:28 AM, Steve Shockley wrote: >> >>> Status quo, then? >>> >> >> Of course. I obviously didn't expect anything to be changed through >> this half-humorous / half-serious conversation, except to better measure >> and document the political and cultural attitude within this project. >> If as the result of this even one person has spent even one minute >> logically analyzing the wisdom of clinging on to the Berkeley legacy >> indefinitely, then this whole exercise has been worth it. >> >> >> To review, the "status quo" is: >> >> * OpenBSD currently remains the best choice for people who care about >> attaining as much Copyfree license purity as we possibly can, but >> FreeBSD looks to surpass it by getting rid of GCC and other GNU >> entanglements, which are an even bigger issue than kernel BLOB's. >> >> * OpenBSD currently remains an OK bare-hardware server OS, especially if >> you can offload certain performance-sensitive tasks to something else, >> but it continues to fall further behind as many companies pump >> billions of R&D dollars into next-gen security innovations, including >> "managed code" OS'es, that will eventually make BSD's accomplishments >> technically obsolete. Whether you like it or not, OpenBSD's greatest >> long-term legacy may have more to do with FLOSS licensing politics >> rather than security and design. >> >> * BSD's unrepentant legacy of violence (government funding) and other >> socialist cultural leanings continue to leave a bad taste in many a >> libertarian's month, but historical "karma" is ultimately far less >> crucial than licensing terms, so we will continue to use it. An ever- >> growing fraction of the Copyfree software stack is coming from non- >> governmental sources like Google, Apple, Apache, Haiku, etc. It's a >> tedious distinction, but nonetheless a relevant one, and libertarians >> should give priority to projects that reflect their values. Any >> significant Copyfree OS (even a *BSD fork) to take this seriously is >> getting a big fat check, and not only from me. >> >> * The "I Got Flamed By Theo de Raadt" t-shirts will continue to sell >> very well. (And I didn't even have to betray any technical ignorance >> to earn that distinction - my C skills have been rotting since the >> days of MS-DOS, tee hee hee.) Our fun little game of trying to >> research and deduct the exact political and philosophical leanings of >> various BSD VIP's will go on indefinitely. >> >> * This advocacy@ mailing list will probably remain ~95% off-topic spam, >> but I doubt any of it will ever provoke as much anger as I did (ex. >> several profanity-filled private e-mails). Those people need to >> examine the root causes of their anger... It seems that a lot of >> FLOSS programmers are disproportionately jumpy these days - that's >> obviously too narrow an observation to lead to any conclusions, but >> could it be that their love for "egoboo" is not being adequately >> requited? A lot of FLOSS programmers are coming to re-examine their >> values in these tough economic times, and this can lead them in >> several possible directions, from a more business-friendly outlook to >> a belief that more "free software" should be funded by the state. >> >> This "elephant in the room" cannot be ignored forever. >> >> "You can't be neutral on a moving train."
