Re: [TCLUG:14215] using OpenSSH

["Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.mn.org>]

On Sat, Mar 04, 2000 at 10:22:00AM -0600, Thomas Veldhouse wrote:
> 
> I wasn't going to respond ... but my post said nothing against Linux.
> Absolutely nothing.  I did defend the right of an OpenBSD developer to
> extend software (in most respects they rewrote it) to work the way
> they want it to on their platform of choice.  The license of the
> software allows this, I might add.  They achieved that goal.  Now, I
> hear complaining from you that they didn't do the work for you on your
> platform of choice.  Better yet, you make it an obligation of theirs
> to do so.  Although, it is nice of them to do so, they certainly are
> not obligated.  So, as you see, I made no BSD -vs- Linux comments and
> I did not even advocate either OS (although I did defend the
> popularity of FreeBSD).  Just to be clear here.

	I could care less what platform they work on.  And they
certainly have no obligation to do anything, much less make sure it
works on my favorite platform.  I just think it's highly annoying that
they take a perfectly good piece of platform independent software and
make it no longer be platform independent.  In my opinion, it is
downright rude of them to have done this.  Nobody has an obligation to
be polite, but as a software developer, it's not something I would
willingly do with even a commercial package, even if I were re-writing
the whole thing from scratch.

	If you can't see why this rudeness annoys me, and reflects badly
on the BSD community, I'm sorry.  I would rather they have simply been
upfront about their intent and called it 'BSD only SSH, go away you
stupid Linux freaks'.  Then I then could've promptly ignored their
effort, and gone off and done something similar myself that WAS designed
to work on all platforms.

	I repeat, nobody has an obligation to be polite.  I imply no
obligation for anybody to do anything.  Politeness is a choice.  I feel
perfectly free to speculate as to the underlying root causes of rudeness
if I so desire.

	Perhaps, from now on, I should write all my software to have as
many checks for BSD as possible, and error out in the compile with
little razzing messages about running a stupid elitist OS, and tell them
to get a real OS that actually has a future, like Linux.  I think it
would have about the same effect.  After all, it's my choice to be rude.

Have fun (if at all possible),
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --

PGP signature