On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 09:06:37PM +0100, Wilhelm Brandt wrote: > I was just reading the April's issue of the Communications of the ACM (the > flagship magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery), and noticed > that OpenBSD and its developers were mentioned in one article, in a rather > negative way: > > "Unfortunately, there is a segment of the open source community that > is > incapable of playing well with others, when those others don't play > the way > they want them to.
I don't want to play well with others. I love the OpenBSD way. You can play. You can contribute, maybe accepted, maybe not. Oh well, that's the way it goes. If my works sucks, I won't be in the corner crying. Maybe my work will improve. Maybe I don't care. I'm accomplishing my software goals for myself with OpenBSD. Hell, you can even sell it, change it, do whatever you want with it, leaving in the license and author information, of course. >For those who have not had to deal with these > people, it's > a bit like talking to a four-year-old. When you explain > checkers to your > niece, she might decide that she doesn't like your > rules and follows her own > rules. You humor her, she's being creative, > and this is amusing in a > four-year-old. If you were playing chess with a > colleague who suddenly told > you that the king could move one, two, or > three places in one go, you would > be pissed off, because this person > would obviously be screwing with you, or > insane.r Now who is throwing a temper tantrum here? The happy four year old or the stubborn do it my way only jerk? >Have I lost my mind?! What does this have to do with VRRP or network > protocols? The > OpenBSD team, led as always by their Glorious Leader (their > words, not > mine), decided that a RAND license just wasn't free enough for > them. > They wrote their own protocol, which was completely incompatible with > VRRP. Well, you say, that's not so bad; that's competition, and we all > know > that competition is good and brings better products, and it's the > glorious > triumph of Capitalism. But there is one last little nit to this > story. The > new protocol dubbed CARP (Common Address Redundancy > Protocol) uses the exact > same IP number as VRRP (112). Most people, and > KV includes himself in this > group, think this was a jerk move. "Why > would they do this?" I hear you cry. > Well, it turns out that they > believe themselves to be in a war with the > enemies of open source, as > well as with those opposed to motherhood and apple > pie. Stomping on the > same protocol number was, in their minds, a strike > against their enemies > and all for the good. Of course, it makes operating > devices with both > protocols in the same network difficult, and it makes > debugging the > software that implements the protocol nearly impossible." Who cares. I don't. > Here is the link to the article: > http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/4/147357-the-network-protocol-battle/abstr > act > > If you are not a member of the ACM, you can read it in ACM Queue, in which it > was published in January: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2090149 > > I somehow feel this is a very distorted view of what really happened. Perhaps > it would be good if somebody "official" wrote a Letter to the Editor > (Communications of the ACM publish them in every issue)? > > Wil.
