Beastie

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith]

It is with a little intrepidation that I ask this question, because I 
sense that what I am about to ask might push some buttons, or perhaps 
bring back some unpleasant memories of those who have asked what I am 
going to ask in a less tactful manner.

I find that the beastie that appears at boot time with FreeBSD 5.3 
mildly bothers me.  It is possible for me to edit boot/beastie.4th, but 
this gets put back each time I do make installworld.

Would it be possible to add a variable "show_beastie" to be put in 
/boot/loader.conf, which would default to "YES", but users could add in 
show_beastie="NO" if they didn't want it, but only want the menu.

I am sure that this is a sensitive subject with you guys, because I know 
that you have no intention of associating FreeBSD with satanism or 
anything like that.  It is not my intention to apply any kind of label 
of evil to you guys, indeed I find FreeBSD to be a very fine operating 
system, and I use it all the time.  But the symbol which is commonly 
associated with the devil does cause me some discomfort, and for 
example, if I were to install some kind of server for my church, I think 
that it would bother them as well.

I know that the the symbol of the beastie is strongly associated with 
FreeBSD, and that it would be grossly unfair for me to ask for it to be 
removed just because of my personal discomfort.

That is why I am proposing the solution above.  I think that it would be 
easy to implement by anyone who knows Forth (presuming that the 
loader.conf variables are known to the beastie.4th program), and that 
this would not interfere at all with those who don't mind or enjoy the 
beastie, but it would also help people like me in an unobtrusive manner.

Best, Stephen