Re: software distribution criteria -- The OpenBSD case

[Richard Stallman]

    I personally think the  "through the ports system"  rationale is not right 
    because of, using as simile a Debian case,

      Debian does not offer an "opera_i386.deb" package,
      however opera.com offers it.

      The Debian project can not avoid others offer their own .deb packages.

They are not similar cases.

    That is to say, the OpenBSD organization can not avoid others offer to 
    download in theirs sites such non-free software.

That is true, but downloads like that are not what we are talking about.

      OpenBSD do not ship any non-free stuff, or have it on ftp mirrors,
      or have packages. All non-free stuff have is ports.

The ports system in a BSD distribution is a centrally maintained part
of the distribution.  For instance, the ports system of OpenBSD comes
with OpenBSD, and the developers of OpenBSD decide which packages to
include in it.  They explicitly put some non-free programs into the
ports system, which is why those non-free programs are included.

    Let me know if we can tag OpenBSD as a free software distribution.

No, you can't.

The same is true of all three variants of BSD.  None of them can be
treated as a free system.  It is sad that they come so close to
qualifying, and yet fall just a little short.

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However, if someone offers a sysadmin job for a free installation of a
BSD or GNU/Linux system, we can list that job, even if the
installation was made using a distro which includes non-free programs.