Why aren't more secure download options offered?

[Pollywog]

On Monday 31 December 2007 04:25:05 abi at e-arroyo.net wrote:
> Hello FreeBSD representative,
>
> I am new to the FreeBSD community. In the past I have typically installed
> a linux variant in my home systems, but recently decided to give FreeBSD a
> try since I could not find a distribution that fit my needs.
>
> I believe that fbsd is a good platform, but have found some areas that I'd
> like to point out. They are both rooted in the idea of a secure file
> transfer and file validation.
>
> Why isn't checksum information provided for packages? These are found in
> this directory:
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/6.2-RELEASE/packages/

There are checksums for the ISO images.  For example:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2  has the 
checksums.

>
> I can't seem to find any documentation anywhere. 

You are looking for documentation for FreeBSD?
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/  is a good place to 
start.  I have only been using FreeBSD for a few months, so I ordered the 
book Absolute FreeBSD and I got it over the weekend.  It has a lot of 
information useful to new users.  If you don't know if you want to spend the 
money, you might find the first edition in your local library.  The second 
edition was released recently.

> These are for all of the 
> .tbz packages. The information is provided for every file except for
> these. Also, instead of the ftp protocol, why don't you offer download
> options like https? I am sure that many people are interested in such an
> option.

I don't know the answer to that question.