@benjamineskola @aesthetikx I’ve read your posts elsewhere and you’ve been consistent on this, and I think you to be an honest interlocutor: but you will grant CFCs and lead based paint and petroleum are legally PROSCRIBED outside certain contexts, no?

I will agree, that if LLM clients are proscribed no OS should support them at all.

So this is closer to banning cars (not illegal) and therefore is largely a question of economics and personal agency; or perhaps sustainability-motivated vegetarianism.

@sgharms @aesthetikx I think you have it slightly backwards. CFCs aren’t bad *because* they’re banned; they’re banned because they’re bad. Before they were legally banned, they were still a bad idea, and it was a good idea to avoid using them.

I don’t think ‘it’s not literally illegal to use LLMs’ is a good enough reason to support their use.

@benjamineskola @aesthetikx

We agree that (1) LLM tools + infra are not proscribed and (2) that the badness of CFCs was due to physics not law.

But, should FreeBSD decline to advocate for a given software(s) to be available on its system? I think no. It is a stable, general-purpose OS, and it should ensure that it hosts at a level that rivals the other OS'. It ships with technology that could do bad things, but we leave it to users to not do them.

So I'm advocating that FreeBSD be supported as a first-class platform for ollama and for Claude Code.

@sgharms @aesthetikx I don’t think I’d necessarily say that the FreeBSD project should *ban* such software from being available for its users. (Undecided on this point. If they refused to accept it into ports, I’d be happy; but if they accepted it, I don’t think I’d blame them.)

I just don’t think anybody need make an effort to make it available. I think the fewer people who have access to it, the better.

Basically: what good is actually done by this being available? What is actually achieved by advocating for it to be available on more platforms? etc.

@benjamineskola @aesthetikx

Great. It seems we agree that a ban is not the answer.

As for what actual good is happening, I made you a blog [post] with my experience.

I hope you see why I want AI tools on FreeBSD: porting a desktop package; reporting/resolving driver issues; helping maintain the ports tree. Thoughtful use of AI tools can help.. Advocacy for Claude Code on FreeBSD may help me do more for FreeBSD!

There's also a visibility problem. I don't want *nix culture to treat BSDs as has-beens where they don't get tools/builds (ghostty, claude code, ollama). I was [mocked] on FreeBSD forums for suggesting such lack of toolchain / insularity could lead to irrelevance among the new blood who are used to such tools.

I got into FreeBSD thanks to the Changelog podcast with @allanjude and a desire to avoid the drama of FSF. Given changes in Linux-land, and the ongoing 'laptop' project for FreeBSD, it may yet be the free OS we deserve.

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[post]: https://stevengharms.com/posts/2026-03-09-my-successes-with-ai-augmented-code-as-of-march-2025/

[mocked]: https://stevengharms.com/posts/2026-02-06-the-positive-case-for-ai-assisted-development/#avoidance-of-condescension