[rjcz]

Why would they? It's not needed - '-F', '--retry' and the like are redundant. IMVHO, OpenBSD's '-f' behaviour should have been the default elsewhere, too. How many times in the past have you deliberately followed the file descriptor (coreutils' default '-f' behaviour) instead of its name? Every single time I used it in the past on Linux, this is what I thought:

    "For f***** sake! I should have used '-F'! Arghhh...!"

Obviously, I'm paraphrasing ;^)

[acdha]

I'm not saying that the OpenBSD behaviour is wrong but that compatibility is a worthwhile goal. Adding a simple -F alias for their existing behaviour would allow people's habits & shell scripts to just work without changes.