On 1/1/08 8:42 PM, Paul Greidanus wrote:
Aparently difficult and interesting questions don't get answers until they're posted to a list..
I believe your questions were not very interesting for OpenBSD, that is about a code base with absolute freedom, no strings attached.
For most OpenBSD liking people it is no problem to ask money for whatever, no problem to use proprietary software, no problem to use proprietary hardware.
Just one thing is clear: OpenBSD as a project doesn't accept unnecessary attached strings, neighther signing "non disclosure documents" nor code with silly licences (GPLvX, DBJ, etc).
OpenBSD is not a church and best compared to science, individuals are doing their best to donate better code, openness and free are important aspects of it. If someone uses proprietary software tools to find buffer overflows, no problem with that as long as the OpenBSD code itself remains free.
I'm still waiting for a reply of Richard to a private remark: "If I repair your garbeled hard disk myself with GPL tools I presume that's OK, but if I send you a proprietary script that does the same it's morally wrong?"
Richard's church, like any church, clearly has some interesting goals, clearly met best by what the OpenBSD project produces. So the easiest way for Richard to get his "gNewSense" project meeting the church's goals is by each half year stripping the OpenBSD tree of a few links with a GPLv3 script. (Richard likes GPL, the average OpenBSD supporter thinks it's morally wrong to build a GPL shell around BSD but doesn't really mind!)
Now he untruthfully says to his followers that gNewSense meets his goals while as far as I know most of the quite large driver list that Theo sent in today has no blob-free Linux equivalents. I presume that gNewSense users will have a lot of trouble to find hardware to work with. Really far less work for his followers to meet the churches goals by installing OpenBSD and delete just a few directories or use the files in them with some care.
+++chefren (Who always asks people talking about GPLv3: And what will be in GPLv4?)
