Why I support BSD software

Ralf Mardorf silver.bullet at zoho.com
Sat Jun 6 10:08:30 UTC 2020


All operating systems and licenses have got pros and cons.
If you want to compare operating systems and licenses you should list
pros and cons of the mentioned operating systems, excluding untruth.
If you just want to mention pros of an operating system and
licenses, don't add comparisons at all and list the pros and the cons,
excluding untruth.

If you mention things that could be considered different
regarding the point of view, such as 'spyware', underpin it by
providing facts/links.

Indeed some phone home options off FLOSS could be considered as
spyware, but FreeBSD as well as Linux maintainers and users could
decide to build with disabling phone home flags and don't need to use
data collecting software at all. Some users even consider some phone
home options as not being spyware, but a good tool for developers to
improve FLOSS software.

An example:

[rocketmouse at archlinux extra-x86_64]$ grep python2\ waf\ configure
PKGBUILD -A7
  python2 waf configure --prefix=/usr \
                        --configdir=/etc \
                        --with-backends="jack,alsa" \
                        --libjack=weak \
                        --optimize \
                        --docs \
                        --cxx11 \
                        --no-phone-home

Even while the ardour developers are unlikely spying, the phone home
flag could collide with security measures, e.g. at a given time ardour
provides useful data for development, not over a tor network and at the
same time a browser is used for Internet research. Under some
circumstances this might be unfavourable.

Ardour is the only professional DAW available for FreeBSD as well as
Linux. It's GPL'ed without any side effect. It's free as in beer, but
the developer makes living out of it.

Controversial software such as (another example) Ubuntu's 'shopping
lens' aren't Linux as a whole, it's some software provided by a Linux
distro, that nobody is enforced to install in the first place.

However, your blog is nothing else, but good for redirecting it to
/dev/null.

It's bogus. It neither satisfies a good description of the pros and cons
of FreeBSD, neither of Linux.

-- 
“Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.”

― Charles Ives


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