The future of fortune(6)

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday, November 22, 2017 03:01:17 PM Kurt Lidl wrote:
> On 11/22/17 11:29 AM, Benno Rice wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Of these options, only #2 is approximately correct.
> 
> I think just leaving the code as-is, and symlinking the freebsd-tips to
> be the default fortune datafile is the correct course of action.
> 
> Removing the offensive flag handling dictates policy towards users
> of the program.  If someone wants to add their own offensive datafile
> to their system, the code ought to allow them to select it.

Agreed.  I think removing the default datfiles so that someone can maintain
a port is fine, but we should leave freebsd-tips and the tool.  When
the -o database was moved out of base we didn't remove the -o option, but
instead extended the tool to work with string files in /usr/local.  The
current state is fine.  The drama and lost time has always been about the
4BSD datfiles, never about freebsd-tips or the tool itself, so the issue is
resolved.

-- 
John Baldwin