The future of fortune(6)

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 9:38 AM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:

> 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.
>

I like this plan. Let's call it consensus and implement.

Warner