I am not sure if your question regarding 'fetchmail' was answered (I saw it only last night, since I was away in Mexico City). If not: FreeBSD should have nothing to do with 'fetchmail'. AFAIK 'fetchmail' does not use 'rlogin' or 'ftp' but the usual mail access protocols like POP and IMAP.
> Most people are not interested in developing that background, and
> yet they
> believe in some vague democratic idea that all knowledge should be
> accessible---then proceed to resent the specialist as forming some
> kind
> of anti-democratic elite. <snip happens>
> Such a resentful attitude is completely misplaced.
Who do you think is resentful in this manner? I know of a different kind of resentment against elitism: the understandable variety where public funded and acquired expertise and results, their use and interpretation at higher levels ("knowledge"), are held to be only accessible to experts ("specialists").
[What, you didn't expect me to rise to this one? ;-)]
--ravi