On Wed, 11 Mar 2009, patric conant wrote: > I've repeatedly been in a position where we weren't making direct use > of OpenBSD, but were using OpenSSH, and if there were a recurring > cost associated with it (like purchasing a semi-annual CD) it would > have been relatively painless to get a rubber stamp approval of such > a cost, whereas purchasing an OS we weren't using would've been a > much more difficult sell. Since there is already regular ssh art, > (that could be used for the next several releases), how much further > effort/money would it take to release OpenSSH on CD? Also of the > people on misc@ how many would think they'd have an easier time > convincing bosses/clients/others to buy a single CD for say $25 then > they would getting an OS purchased. Just a thought, for these trying > economic times and whatnot.
Thanks for the voice of support, but I think that most people get OpenSSH from their OS vendor. Furthermore, for a CD to be worthwhile, we would need to provide binary releases for a number of operating systems. The infrastructure and effort required to build and verify binary releases across even a few of the popular platforms (also: how do we choose? whatever we do, we would offend someone) would make a slightly onerous release process a complete impossibility given our current pool of active developers -- like building OpenBSD release CDs, it isn't something that can be outsourced to the community. The best way to support OpenSSH is through donations to OpenBSD. For those who are concerned about the money so donated not actually benfitting OpenSSH, I offer the number of commits to OpenSSH made at the last two OpenBSD hackathons (n2k8 and c2k8) as proof that such donations do improve OpenSSH. -d
