很久， 很久， 以前， 一天， 在某个地方， 一个有关stall man , straw man 和 real man的故事......

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全部内容在这里，后面节选一些......

http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/openbsd-misc/2007/12/10/486713/thread

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From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Monday, December 10, 2007 - 8:18 am

It looks like some people are having a discussion in which they
construct views they would find outrageous, attribute them to me, and
then try to blame me for them.

For such purposes, knowledge of my actual views might be superfluous,
even inconvenient. However, if anyone wants to know what I do think,
I've stated it in various articles in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/.
In particular, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html.

One question particularly relevant for this list is why I don't
recommend OpenBSD. It is not about what the system allows. (Any
general purpose system allows doing anything at all.) It is about
what the system suggests to the user.

Since I consider non-free software to be unethical and antisocial, I
think it would be wrong for me to recommend it to others. Therefore,
if a collection of software contains (or suggests installation of)
some non-free program, I do not recommend it. The systems I recommend
are therefore those that do not contain (or suggest installation of)
non-free software.

From what I have heard, OpenBSD does not contain non-free software
(though I am not sure whether it contains any non-free firmware
blobs). However, its ports system does suggest non-free programs, or
at least so I was told when I looked for some BSD variant that I could
recommend. I therefore exercise my freedom of speech by not including
OpenBSD in the list of systems that I recommend to the public.

I could recommend OpenBSD privately with a clear conscience to someone
I know will not install those non-free programs, but it is rare that I
am asked for such recommendations, and I know of no practical reason
to prefer OpenBSD to gNewSense.

The fact that OpenBSD is not a variant of GNU is not ethically
important. If OpenBSD did not suggest non-free programs, I would
recommend it along with the free GNU/Linux distros.

[ message continues ]

From: Nick Guenther
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Monday, December 10, 2007 - 10:12 am

Um, OpenBSD is the only common OS that is actively against blobs. See
http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39

Sir, it was brought up that the linux distributions you do suggest do
often include in their ports systems non-free software. See e.g.
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119726055819074&w=2
What do you say to that? Was that a lie or a mistake?

Respectfully,
-Nick

[ message continues ]

From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 12:01 pm

Um, OpenBSD is the only common OS that is actively against blobs. See
http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39
We're on the same side here.

That is good. (gNewSense and Ututo are also against blobs.)

Sir, it was brought up that the [GNU/]linux distributions you do suggest do
often include in their ports systems non-free software. See e.g.
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119726055819074&w=2
What do you say to that? Was that a lie or a mistake?

What they have told me is that they do not.

I will send mail to try to fetch the page at that URL and see what you
are talking about.

From: Marco Peereboom
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Monday, December 10, 2007 - 9:59 am

What you recommend is quite boring what is not boring is your lack of
research into this topic. It's ok to not know what you are talking

OpenBSD is by far the most free OS in the landscape. Everything that
ships with it is free or else it won't be distributed with it. There is
not a single open source OS out there that is more careful than OpenBSD
on licensing, copyrights and frivolous patents. We actually have

Unlinke linux OpenBSD does not contain proprietary firmware blobs in the
distribution. Unlike linux OpenBSD does not have a HAL. I can go on

Here is one, the code isn't bloated and doesn't mostly suck. I find it

Speaking of strawman arguments; this is such an insult to ones
intelligence. You are basically saying: "you are retarded if you don't
let me tell you what you want".

[ message continues ]

From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 12:00 pm

OpenBSD is by far the most free OS in the landscape. Everything that
ships with it is free or else it won't be distributed with it.

Yes, that's what I was told. I was also told that OpenBSD's ports
system includes non-free programs. Is that accurate too?

There is
not a single open source OS out there that is more careful than OpenBSD
on licensing, copyrights and frivolous patents.

Maybe that is true, but it's not the issue I'm talking about. I'm not
a supporter of open source anyway; I fight for free software.

Ututo and gNewSense have the policy not to include non-free programs,
not even in a ports system. Thus, they don't do anything that
contradicts the philosophy of free software. That's why I can
recommend them.

Unlinke linux OpenBSD does not contain proprietary firmware blobs in the
distribution.

Torvalds' version of Linux is not free software, for this reason.
Ututo and gNewSense include a version of Linux which remove the
firmware blobs, in order to make it free software.

[ message continues ]

From: Jason Beaudoin
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 1:47 pm

While I completely understand this point of view - and (more
importantly) the motivation behind such decisions - what I am hearing
from you is that an individual's (or project's) actions in fighting
*against* proprietary and the closed-source mentality (whether it's a
blob, no documentation, not considering NDA's etc..) is *less*
important than whether or not users are allowed the *freedom* to add
in software, that might possibly not follow these other goals..

This I simply don't understand.

We are fighting for the same thing.

And you cast the OpenBSD project out because there are users that
invest the effort to provide other users ports that may or may not
follow the *projects* goals and work?

Mr. Stallman, it is with great respect that I say these things, as I
believe your noble efforts in these areas are commendable and have had
a great influence on our communities, but I do not understand the

that's awesome, can users add these back in if they choose? is your
project worthless because of these users 'actions?


kind regards,
Jason

[ message continues ]

From: William Boshuck
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 2:25 pm

Strictly speaking, no. If you unpack ports.tar.gz
you will find a bunch of makefiles, packing lists,
& c., all of which are free. OpenBSD's ports system
depends on programs in the base system which are free.
On a modern UNIX-like operating system it possible,
even easy, to use free tools like awk, make, perl,
sh, and so on, directly or indirectly, to facilitate
the installation and maintenance of (free and non-free)
software. Your asking the question indicates that you
might have done better to exclude OpenBSD from the
scope of your remarks. When one does not know, the
most appropriate statement is 'I don't know.'

Loosely speaking, you can get away with saying
pretty much anything that suits you at the time.

Loosely speaking is the problem.

[ message continues ]

From: Theo de Raadt
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 2:47 pm

William is right.

The OpenBSD ports tree is just a scaffold, and that scaffold is 100%
free. It contains no non-free parts.

It contains URL's to non-free software, and free Makefiles that
knows how to build that non-free software. But the entire ports
tree has no non-free software in it at all.

Does that make it non-free?

Are all operating systems non-free then, because they can be used
to write free Makefiles which compile non-free software?

Richard -- you spoke out of line. You are wrong.

[ message continues ]

From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 3:52 pm

In the end, the only way to prevent users from running non GPL
software

Is there anyone here who actually proposes to prevent users from
running non-GPL-covered software? Not I. I frequently run OpenSSH,
whose license is not the GNU GPL, and is incompatible with the GPL (if
my memory serves). It is free software, so why not use it?

Is there anyone here who actually proposes to prevent users from
running non-free software? Not I. I think that software is
unethical, and I refuse to install it, or suggest it to anyone. But I
have not proposed that systems actually block its installation.

If no one is in favor, why argue against?

[ message continues ]

From: Theo de Raadt
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 4:28 pm

Yet you were in an interview where you argued against using OpenBSD,
because it permits users to run non-free software.

Your argument was that OpenBSD contains non-free parts in it's
ports tree.

This has been proven to be false.

Here, go have a look

ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/poerts.tar.gz

It's just an entirely free scaffold of Makefiles and little patches.
Nothing more. It is 100% source, and it is 100% free.

If you are going to go around making pronouncements from your pulpit,
you might want to go educate yourself.

But once again, you failed to educate yourself before you opened your
big fat mouth on a talk show and stated utterly uneducated and false
statements . You have had ample opportunity to say "I was wrong", yet
you have not done so yet.

You keep argueing, and that is because you are a coward.

[ message continues ]

From: Martin Schröder
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 4:32 pm

Richard,
please stop spreading lies (or looking like a fool) by not doing research.

The license of OpenSSH is here:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/LICENCE?rev=HEAD
According to
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
this is GPL-compatible (modified BSD license or better).

Best
Martin

[ message continues ]

From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Friday, December 14, 2007 - 1:50 pm

> running non-GPL-covered software? Not I. I frequently run OpenSSH,
> whose license is not the GNU GPL, and is incompatible with the GPL (if
> my memory serves).

Richard,
please stop spreading lies (or looking like a fool) by not doing research.

The license of OpenSSH is here:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/LICENCE?rev=HEAD
According to
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
this is GPL-compatible (modified BSD license or better).

Thanks for correcting me about that point. I was not sure about it,
which is why I said "(if my memory serves)" in the text you quoted.

What puzzles me is why you think this mistake was a lie, or that it
might make me "look like a fool". People normally don't call someone
a liar, or a fool, because of a little (and tangential) mistake like
this.

[ message continues ]

From: Martin Schröder
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Saturday, December 15, 2007 - 4:12 am

Richard,
you might have noticed that this discussion is mirrored on a public
mailing list, where a lot of people are grilling you. :-) You should
try very hard to be precise then. And I'm surprised that you don't
know the license of OpenSSH, which you probably use daily. Please stop
this "if my memory serves". It makes you look as either incompetent or
malovelent.

Best
Martin

[ message continues ]

From: Travers Buda
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 7:10 pm

So you support the freedom to install whatever the hell you want?
However, the OS should not suggest that to the user?

I guess everything is fine unless the secret gets out...
Especially since it's pretty easy to add new repositories on many
ports systems.

I think that if you do get what you want,
Stallman, it's going to be because the user wants that too. It's
their choice, and _I don't see how operating systems should be
incharge of morality._

The people who ought to be incharge of morality are people themselves.
Every person needs to make a conscious decision to act in such and
such a manner. You can certainly advise them, but heavy-handed
action such as gNewSense is a bit too much for me.

It also seems silly to me this idea between "tainted" and "clean"
oses, such as Open and gNewSense, respectively. Take for example
a user that runs Ubuntu Linux but proscribes to your free-only
philosophy. They don't have to install the adobe flash plugin
(which I believe is still a binary of sorts.) They can choose not
to. If they are choosing not to do it because of ideological
grounds, they are probably well-informed. The only difference in
the end is choice. It's the choice that matters, not what the
distribution ships with. Hell, still on this example user, adobe
flash could even come installed and they never use it, what's the
difference between that and gNewSense? Is it the orientation of
the bits on their hard drive that matters? How about their neighbor's
hard drive?

Where do you draw the line?

--
Travers Buda

[ message continues ]
[view original message]
From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Friday, December 14, 2007 - 3:09 am

It also seems silly to me this idea between "tainted" and "clean"
oses, such as Open and gNewSense, respectively. Take for example
a user that runs Ubuntu [GNU/]Linux but proscribes to your free-only
philosophy. They don't have to install the adobe flash plugin
(which I believe is still a binary of sorts.) They can choose not
to.

The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not
install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists.
That Firefox offers to install it is a very bad thing.

I've been trying for a couple of years to get going a modified version
of Firefox that won't offer to install any non-free plug-ins, but we
don't have enough people to make this work very well. If you would
like to help, please let me know. It is an important project.

[ message continues ]

From: Eric Furman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Friday, December 14, 2007 - 8:31 am

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:09:46 -0500, "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>

It's only a "Very Bad Thing" to nutjobs like you.
Now please go away and spew your nutjob nonsense somewhere else.
Give it up Richard, your 15 minutes is over.

[ message continues ]

From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 9:52 am

Do you believe that The Pirate Bay is guilty of copyright infringement?

That is a legal question, not an ethical question. I do not know what
the law of any given country would say about the Pirate Bay. You
would need to ask a lawyer.

Instead of that legal question, we could ask an ethical question: is
The Pirate Bay's activity right or wrong?

In general, I think people have a moral right to share copies of
published works, so I see no reason to criticize the Pirate Bay in
general. However, I would not recommend that as a place to look for
software, both because some of the software might be non-free, and for
security reasons.

If OpenBSD could spin off the ports system (perhaps people could put
it on the Pirate Bay), and break off connection with it, then it would
cease to convey any message from OpenBSD to the users. Then I could
recommend OpenBSD while not recommending its ports system. Currently,
that option does not exist.

[ message continues ]

From: Rafael Almeida
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 12:17 pm

I have OpenBSD running on my machine, but I do not use the ports tree.
Therefore the option of having OpenBSD without ports exists. You could
still recommend OpenBSD except for its ports tree.

I realise, though, that the reason for you recommending something or
not is rather subjective and discussing it usually doesn't lead to
anything useful. What I oppose is to say that OpenBSD "recomends"
nonfree software.

When you say "OpenBSD recommends non-free software" it leads people to
think that the project tries to convince people to use non-free
software. That's not true at all. The project doesn't support it and
it doesn't try to tell the user he should use it. OpenBSD's port
system merely acknolowdges the existence of non-free software and
makes it easier for the people who chose to install it. That's hardly
recommendation. Moreover, and this is subjective highly subjective, I
think we all should try to make people's life easier and acknowledge
others efforts, even if we think differently. Letting people maintain
non-free packages is giving space to people who think differently than
the OpenBSD developers. And that's a positive thing.

[ message continues ]

From: William Boshuck
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 2:36 pm

This thread has gone off-track. (I don't mean Theo.)

It is extremely important for a very large number of
reasons, some of which I understand well and some of
which I understand hardly or not at all, that what
software is included in, and distributed by, OpenBSD,
is free software. This is well-known. It is a
serious consideration for many of OpenBSD's current
and potential users.

About twenty-two minutes and ten seconds into the
bsdtalk interview, Richard Stallman says of the BSD's:

"... all of them include, in their installation
systems---in some cases I believe it's called a
ports system, I don't know if they all use that
term---they all include some non-free programs,
and as a result I can't recommend any of them."

It has been pointed out to Richard Stallman, more than
once, that this is not a correct statement about OpenBSD.
(See Theo's confirmation, above.) Whatever the practical
convenience of not telling the truth, it is not ethical to
aver that OpenBSD includes non-free software when it does
not. (Ignorance is not at issue here. Just as one can
say "I don't know" about the CDDL, one can say "I don't
know" about OpenBSD.)

Since Richard Stallman has chosen to pronounce on the
matter, and to include OpenBSD in his pronouncement,
the ethical thing for him to do now is to acknowledge
clearly and unambiguously that OpenBSD does not include
non-free software. Full stop.

The question of inclusion and/or distribution is clear,
precise and unambiguous. OpenBSD neither includes nor
distributes non-free software. This is not about Richard
Stallman's recommendation. This is about the truth.

Questions that concern mention, naming, suggestion,
lending legitimacy, and so forth, and attempts to
persuade Richard Stallman to recommend OpenBSD,
form the material of another discussion.

[ message continues ]
[view original message]
From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 9:52 am

> > Yes, that's what I was told. I was also told that OpenBSD's ports
> > system includes non-free programs. Is that accurate too?
>
> Strictly speaking, no. If you unpack ports.tar.gz
> you will find a bunch of makefiles, packing lists,
> & c., all of which are free.

I should more precisely have said that the OpenBSD ports system
includes instructions for fetching, building and installing specific
non-free programs. I usually simplify that to "includes" because I
figured anyone who knows about the ports system understands those
details, and because they don't change anything.

It contains URL's to non-free software, and free Makefiles that
knows how to build that non-free software. But the entire ports
tree has no non-free software in it at all.

Does that make it non-free?

Even giving the URLs has the effect of referring people to those
non-free programs. It gives those non-free programs legitimacy,
and thus contradicts the idea that "software should be free".

Are all operating systems non-free then, because they can be used
to write free Makefiles which compile non-free software?

No, that's a totally different question.

Q1: could your system support a port to install non-free program FOO.
Q2: does your system come with a port to install FOO.

The answer to Q1 is always yes. I'm concerned with Q2.

[ message continues ]

From: William Boshuck
Subject: Re: Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 11:48 am

Yes, that would be the truth. What you did say, however,


It does change one thing (at least). Namely, it changes a true
statement about OpenBSD into a lie about OpenBSD.

Don't confuse my aims with those of others with whom you are
exchanging messages.

I am not trying to convince you to recommend OpenBSD.

I want you to tell the truth.

[ message continues ]

From: Theo de Raadt
Subject: Re: : Real men don't attack straw men
Date: Friday, December 14, 2007 - 12:20 am

RMS has been on our lists before, spouting the same basic shit. He
hates what we do.

If he really hated what we do, he should stop using OpenSSH. He says
he uses it. He should not. We are horrible people; he should not use
our software.

The only way to make it clear to him that he should not come here to
our lists in the future, is to teach him a hard lesson, and that is
done by continually re-adding cc's back to him -- because the mails
talk about him -- even when his friends come our mailing lists and delete
the his address from the cc list.

Like this message, which adds him hack in.

Richard, you are a lying cheating hypocrite.

[ message continues ]