The future of fortune(6)

[Benno Rice]

Hello, all!

With the removal of the fortune datfiles I think it’s time to have a discussion about fortune(6).

fortune now defaults to using a fortune file that no longer exists:

$ fortune
No fortunes found in /usr/share/games/fortune:/usr/local/share/games/fortune.

fortune is still used in the default .login/.profile to show entries from the still existing freebsd-tips:

$ grep fortune /usr/share/skel/*
/usr/share/skel/dot.login:if ( -x /usr/bin/fortune ) /usr/bin/fortune freebsd-tips
/usr/share/skel/dot.profile:if [ -x /usr/bin/fortune ] ; then /usr/bin/fortune freebsd-tips ; fi
$ fortune freebsd-tips
If you need a reminder to leave your terminal, type "leave +hhmm" where
"hhmm" represents in how many hours and minutes you need to leave.
		-- Dru <genesis at istar.ca>

fortune also still has flags for showing offensive entries and the like.

I would like people’s opinion on which of the following two paths we should take:

1) Complete removal of fortune and freebsd-tips, remove its usage from the default .login/.profile files.

2) Reworking fortune(6) to remove the offensive fortune flag and make freebsd-tips the default, possibly by symlinking it as /usr/share/games/fortune/fortunes.

Personally I lean towards the first option.

Thanks,
	Benno.