> My support for Stallman isn't necessarily > permanent or unconditional though -- if he does something that I consider > to be improper or crazy, or whatever, I will say so. So please tell us > more. Do a search for the following quoted string "Real men don't attack straw men" and you will see an enormous email thread on an OpenBSD mailing list that RMS initiated. To save everyone from the endless torrent of messages on that thread here is my take on the overall summary (note: I have not read every message either but I generally read all of the ones from people of authority like the developers). RMS believes non-free software is evil. You can look up his definition of non-free on your own if you are not familiar with it. He started the thread with a "I cannot endorse OpenBSD as a recommended OS to people because it contains non-free software". It was strongly criticized (lots of emotional non-developers replied - ignore many of these) but many of the developers and even the principal leader of OpenBSD, Theo, also contradicted RMS's statements. The primary concern by RMS was mis-communicated by himself with regards to the ports system which allows one to download, compile, and run non-free software, though he mis-communicated this in many highly visible interviews and what not. With OpenBSD if you download from the FTP, purchase the official CD-ROMs, etc you will get no non-free software at all but you will get ports which is a "scaffold" to allow you get non-free software. RMS is against any organizations officially sanctioned recommendation of non-free software by way of documentation, official website links, code such as the ports, etc. The ports system is 100% free software as it is mostly just makefiles and similar with an occasional patch file. RMS view is this action indicates OpenBSD legitimizes non-free software and is thus not on his very short list of OS's that meet his criteria. If OpenBSD removes all makefiles and references to non-free software from their core system and websites then he is fine with OpenBSD. Theo and others have pointed out that his own code for GCC and Emacs have OS specific code for non-free OS's and even pre-compiled binaries. This has been viewed as a hypocrisy by RMS as he is essentially promoting the use non-free software himself since they went out of their way to make non-free software work with his "ultra" free software. They cited GNU/FSF URLs and code snippets directly. Aside from the apparent hypocrisy above, RMS's general point of view was called into question as it may be debatable as to whether or not it truly is the best method of achieving his goal of zero non-free software in the world such as this found in this post http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119758671318727&w=2 While I agree with the general stance of "free software is better morally than non-free software" I also accept and understand that there are certain things that cannot be done without non-free software currently. While I would advocate for free software, I for sure want the non-free software running on things important to saving lives which. There are tons in the medical world like MRI machines, as one single example. Does he drive a car with non-free software? Ride airplanes? Some non-free software helps drive advancement and innovation. If a viable free software replacement became available I would certainly be interested in checking it out but if we scrapped all non-free software many people's quality of life would drop to near zero. Let's not let fundamental extremism rule us; a modicum of reality mixed in with your ideology is probably not a bad thing.