Stuart Henderson wrote on Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 06:43:00PM +0000: > On 2007/12/13 11:51, Richard Stallman wrote:
>> I'm talking about something else: >> what the system distro suggests that the user do. > OpenBSD does not suggest that people use ports. > We suggest people use binary packages. I think this answer is slightly incomplete and, in that sense, not entirely accurate in the present context. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#PkgVsPorts "15.4.6 - What should I use: packages or ports? In general, you are *highly* *advised* to use packages over building an application from ports. [ ... snip about two paragraphs elaborating why ... ] Of course, there are a few good reasons to use ports over packages in some cases: - Distribution rules prohibit OpenBSD from distributing a package. - [ ... snip three other uncontroversial reasons ... ] However, for most people and most applications, using packages is a much easier, and definitely the recommended way of adding applications to an OpenBSD system." Thus, *if* somebody is really determined to use non-free software on OpenBSD, using ports is officially recommended, though certainly not in any prominent way. I think the recommendation makes sense the way it is. Thus, the project recommends *how* to install non-free software, not sure whether the project *suggests* to install non-free software, probably the project does not recommend using non-free software. Using non-free software under OpenBSD is considerably more difficult than using free software. But note that these difficulties are not artificially constructed in order to scare people away from non-free software. These difficulties just arise naturally as some of the inherent downsides of non-free software; other downsides, no doubt, will be less obvious to the casual user. I understand that many people deem the right to keep the product of one's own work to oneself an essential part of freedom, even people contributing huge amounts of work to free software. By contrast, I certainly hope for a world where *everybody* enjoys sharing the products of her/his thought freely; yet, currently, i do commercial software development to earn a living. Completely coherent human beings are hardly imaginable: If i understand correctly, Emacs Windows binaries might serve as another example. Either way, i don't feel like pointing fingers at port Makefiles supporting non-free software right now. > With two exceptions (which look like they're marked in error since > their licenses do indeed allow source code redistribution), where we > provide a binary package, we also provide the source distribution > files used to build them.
