Conclusion of fortune(6) discussion

[Benno Rice]

Hi all,

First up I’d like to apologize for the length of time between my first
email and this. I wanted to wait for the various discussions to play out
somewhat and then I had a conference I needed to prep for. I should’ve
worked the timing around that better.

So now that the dust has settled somewhat, I feel that the consensus
decision is for fortune to remain in base along with freebsd-tips.

Some points I’d like to make based on the discussion:

Firstly, there were a number of suggestions that removing fortune et al
from base is some form of complete deletion. It’s not. It’s merely that
FreeBSD stops distributing it as part of our releases. The code is still
available in our Subversion history. Nothing in what I was proposing
precluded creating a port. I will however admit that not mentioning a
port at all left that unclear.

Which brings me to point number two: My discussion was about base, not
ports. It’s my firm belief that if I propose removing code from base the
onus shouldn’t be on me to create and thus, under the rules governing
ports, become the maintainer of a port for a piece of code I have no
interest in maintaining. That’s not fair to anyone involved. There’ve
been ongoing efforts to streamline and slim down base. fortune seemed
like an obvious thing to move out. There should absolutely be a
discussion whenever anyone proposes moving code out of base and that
should absolutely leave the option open for that code to move to ports.
If a port is created though it should be done by someone with an
interest in maintaining the code.

And my final point: This was never about political correctness. I am not
apologizing for making this move without discussion as any discussion
would’ve turned out exactly like the threads that showed up. There would
have been no consensus. There would have been accusations of bias, bad
faith and pointless bickering from all directions. The difference to me
is that by removing these files from base we never have to have this
argument again. If we kept the file we would’ve potentially had this
discussion every time the file was touched or looked at by a new pair of
eyes. I acknowledge the history that the fortune files embody but we’re
not living in that history any more. We’re living now. The world in 2017
is not the world in 1987 or the world in 1997. Like it or not we live in
a world where there is more expectation on everyone to acknowledge that
what is funny to them may be offensive to others and that the nature of
that offense may not be immediately obvious. Like I said in another post
FreeBSD is an operating system, not an encyclopedia. There are far
better projects for collecting humour, quotes, and history than ours. We
should let ourselves focus on what we’re good at.

Thanks,
	Benno.