The Zen of Python (PEP 20, aka "import this") comes to mind.

"There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."

That's a lovely sentiment, and a great one to base a language that has an emphasis on instruction and readability on.

But unless you also wish to argue that "there should be preferably only one programming language", it also follows that there are other sentiments upon which to base languages.

Here's one that seems to fit the continuing analogy: TMTOWTDI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_more_than_one_way_to_d...

Now, you may not like that one, and that's fair. I frankly like Python less the more I use it, but it still has its place in my toolkit.

The world has room for multiple philosophies, and that's a good thing. I happen to prefer PEP20 to TMTOWTDI, and Python to Perl, as might be expected.

I wasn't trying to say that there should only be one programming language, and I don't think it follows from the statement I quoted. I take it more like this: You use the correct tool for the job, and if there are inferior tools then just get rid of them.

In the context of the discussion, I happen to think that one packet filter/firewall in an OS is the correct number, unless each has significantly different uses. Such is not the case in FreeBSD.

Oh the irony of that statement, needing Python 2 and 3 on our systems for years.

Totally relevant for programming and irrelevant for a general purpose OS.

Why? It makes perfect sense to me. For something that should be shipped by default with an OS there should be one preferred option. It not like you can't install another after installation.

Different machine different uses different machines it should accept packets from and send packets to remotely.

What has this got to do with default OS configuration provided by the vendor (in this case FreeBSD team)?

My take-away from that sentence was not that having 3 firewalls was the poor default, but that having none of them enabled by default was, instead.

Well there's one problem that immediately arises: pf is years out of date.

On the plus side they avoided breaking everybody’s firewall configs by importing the “new” pf rule syntax from OpenBSD.