The beginning was this interview to RMS at BSDTalk. He said:
“I am unhappy with the various distributions of BSD, because all of them include, in their installation systems, the ports system, they all include some non-free programs. And as a result I can’t recommend any of them.”
Some people wrote about it in the OpenBSD misc list. Then RMS replied in the same mailing list starting a flame with a email entitled “Real men don’t attack straw men”.
It was a fun thread until it forked in some absurd sub-threads and flooded a technical mailing list with pseudophilosophy, Draconian debates and insults. It’s very sad and ashaming for people like me that support both GNU and OpenBSD projects. I wish they stop and they get aware how childish is their behaviour.
Or maybe we must lock Theo de Raat, Richard Stallman, Jörg Schilling, Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond (do I forget anybody?) in a 2×2 m. cube that we don’t open until they stop shouting or we see enough blood under the door.
Eric Raymond’s never made any usable code, so I’ve never understood why anyone listens to that dipshit. At least Theo was in the right this time, it really looks bad on him when he does this stuff and he’s wrong.
I think Theo was right too. But it is not impotant now. GNU nor OpenBSD projects (and most of people involved in them) don’t deserve this ashaming show.