On 06/17/2012 12:31 PM, Peter J. Philipp wrote:
Having followed OpenBSD for quite some time I noticed that good developers come and go. They come in, make something great happen, and disappear again. Also there have been forks and I also noticed that no fork gets a light judgment. Rightfully so. And then I always appreciated the permanent element in OpenBSD that guides our attention to areas we as users and sideliners don't always see immediately. I'll keep buying CD's when available and I do donations here and there when I feel like it, and I don't regret it.
ditto. I almost always remain silent in political matters, (relating to OpenBSD that is). I will list some reasons why I am not going anywhere soon for a "free" OS. I have been using, donating hardware and purchasing CDs since 3.0. Reason 1: Legacy Architectures I have many "legacy " machines in service because they can be acquired for next to free (sometimes just free). These legacy machines are very good at exposing subtle bugs not found by compiling and running on Intel/AMD hardware. Since these legacy architectures are "strange" in the i386/AMD64 context, exploiters are unlikely to bother with them. None of my Internet facing machines are on popular architectures. I have seen attackers come and leave as soon as they figure out what they are up against. The combination of OpenBSD and uncommon architectures is a very tough nut to crack. Reason 2: Security This is an unknown. All FOSS claims to be free, fast and secure. Even Microsoft claims to be secure. Maybe the new team will be as fanatical as Theo, likely not if their FAQ is to be believed. Their reputation for security will be revealed with the passage of time. Reason 3: Crypto I don't know where the new project is located, but they seem to have a server in Southfield, MI USA and another in Denmark. I hope none of the developers is subject to US export laws regarding cryptography and that the code is maintained on servers also not subject to those laws. Just look at the recent MegaUpLoad case. That case is reportedly about a bunch of ripped off movies. I have googled a bit and have not found a physical location for the project or its code. Reason 4: Stability The new project FAQ states they intend to be "less restrictive with the codebase when it comes to experimenting with features." Maybe in the long run some of the new features may be introduced into OBSD, but in the near term I expect much instability given the broad range of deeply embedded things they intend to change. Reason 1 is a big problem for me and my crusty old war horses. Reasons 2 & 3 may be unfounded, the secrecy here (there are no developer names listed on the project web site) is not very confidence building. As to reason 4, I am only mildly interested in fast. I want correct and stable execution above all else. For this reason I expect to continue with OBSD for a long time. I do have considerable sympathy for clearing GNU out of the code base though. Now going back into lurker mode. Regards, Ray
