OpenBSD Requests UltraSPARC III Documentation

An anonymous submitter writes "OpenBSD wants to run on all hardware. They've asked Sun for documentation on the UltraSPARC III processors over and over, but been stonewalled. Theo recently asked users to talk to Sun about this issue. A fairly complete thread archive can be found here. The real kicker is that Sun has released this documentation through an NDA to Linux developers..."

Comments

all hardware?

[tps12]

When will they port it to my bandsaw?

Re:all hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of NetBSD and 1.5.3 runs on your
bandsaw.

Their can be only one BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

And Sun Solaris won't share it's power.

Re:Their can be only one BSD

[iggymanz]

Sorry, in the mid 90's Sun switched from BSD with System VR4 extensions (a.k.a. SunOS) to a microthreaded System V R4 with BSD extensions (Solaris 2.5 & up). Of course, Solaris 2.5, 2.6, 7 and 8 are also called SunOS 5.5, 5.6, 5.7 (which is also Solaris 2.7), and 5.8 (which is also Solaris 2.8). Gotta love the way Sun's marketing power adds that zing by skipping version numbers. And they also do it with hardware, the Sparc 3 actually sold as the Sparc 5, and then the Sparc 4 introduced after the 5 (which should have been 3) And the marketing department ran out of steam after having Sparc, Hypersparc, and Ultrasparc and couldn't think of any more names so they just then went UltraSparc II, IIi, III

*pop* the overfed BSD troll explodes and gooey troll glop drips from the ceiling - wasn't that fun!

Re:Their can be only one BSD

[Guy Harris]

Sorry, in the mid 90's

I think SunOS 5.0 came out earlier than that - early 90's?

Sun switched from BSD with System VR4 extensions (a.k.a. SunOS)

More like "System V Release 3 extensions"; SVR4 didn't exist at the time. Actually, as of SunOS 3.2, a significant part of the userland code came from System V, and the fraction increased even more in 4.0.

o a microthreaded System V R4 with BSD extensions (Solaris 2.5 & up)

Try "Solaris 2.0 and up", although the early versions of Solaris 2.x weren't all that popular, so maybe 2.5 was the first version that started being used a lot.

Of course, Solaris 2.5, 2.6, 7 and 8 are also called SunOS 5.5, 5.6, 5.7 (which is also Solaris 2.7), and 5.8 (which is also Solaris 2.8)

Actually, it's the OS component of Solaris that's called SunOS; this item in the Sun Computer Administration FAQ has the mappings for releases prior to Solaris 2.5 - the mapping continued along the lines you mention until Solaris 7, when they stopped pretending that Solaris 3 would come out any time soon and got rid of the leading "2.". There's also the window system and desktop component (OpenWindows, at least until they abandoned the OPEN LOOK desktop in favor of the Motif+CDE desktop that they're now abandoning in favor of GTK+GNOME).

"Solaris" was a marketoon idea; when the SVR4 project started, we figured it was just going to be "SunOS 5.0". I guess (I left Sun in 1988) they decided to come up with the "Solaris" name for the OS+window system stuff; they retroactively applied it to SunOS 4.x, but there had been 4.x releases previously - there were no 5.x releases before the "Solaris" name was introduced, so people didn't get used to the idea of "SunOS 5.x" to the same degree, and that plus the changeover to an SVR4-derived code base probably got people to think of "SunOS" as the BSD-based versions and "Solaris" as the SVR4-based versions.

And the marketing department ran out of steam after having Sparc, Hypersparc, and Ultrasparc

Actually, the "HyperSPARC" name was Ross Technology/Cypress's marketoons idea, not Sun's marketoons idea; at the time, Sun were doing SuperSPARC, so I guess the Ross marketoons had to go one better.

and couldn't think of any more names so they just then went UltraSparc II, IIi, III

Yeah, where do you go from there? "MegaSPARC"? "UltimoSPARC"? "CosmoSPARC"? "SuperHyperUltraHumongoSPARC"?

Theo's diplomacy

[Outland Traveller]

Theo de Raadt writes:

> PS No, I don't work for Sun, and I'm not in bed with them. But
> working for a LARGE company has taught me many things about
> Bureaucracy, and two of those are: 1) Assume a lack of action before
> an action (i.e., things tend *not* to happen in a bureaucracy), and 2)
> if you can, pointing to a thing is almost always better than asking
> for an unknown.

No, you misunderstand. We've tried so hard; that is no excuse.
Perhaps this will teach them to be less opaque.

I think there are some times when Theo's style is dead on, like with the ipf filter. However, in this case it may not be the most constructive way to effect a change.

slashdotting the phone number...

[dk379]

I have just read Theo's pledge to users and looks like there is a person's name listed who appears to be a sole decision maker on this issue.

I wonder how many phone calls it would take for him to get it ;-)

Re:Heh

[honold]

Maybe if the OpenBSD guys could get SMP working or something, someone might take them seriouesly

someone like sun?

openssh, created by the openbsd project, is a standard part of solaris 9. gripe about smp all you want - i would prefer they focus on security and crypto - but your bias isn't applicable on this point.

while sun should provide this kind of documentation anyway, it's absurd that they don't provide it to the very people that freely provided them with tools they have rebadged as their own (sunssh) and tout as a feature.

Re:Heh

[Arandir]

Even Sun knows where the future lies.

Yeah, in the buzzword bandwagon. Linux is good press. People will write article about Sun moving to Linux. But no one outside of a small community has even heard of BSD. It won't play well in the press. Since Sun is a publicly traded company, they NEED good and constant press. Since Linux is the current tech media darling, it only makes sense to latch on to Linux.

I'd rather have the OpenBSD guys auditing linux code instead

I wish SOMEONE would audit the Linux code. And I wish someone would audit the GNU code that typically surrounds it. But OpenBSD is a separate project. There are at least ten times as many Linux developers as OpenBSD developers. Surely one or two of them are capable of auditing their own project.

Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[Hobart]

From the thread:

From: Theo de Raadt <deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org>
Date: 2002-11-26 9:15:45

> Would you go BUY a $7000 single CPU Sun because it ran OpenBSD?

I intend to replace cvs.openbsd.org with just such a machine when the
time comes, precisely because sparc64 is the highest performance
architecture supporting per-page X bit protection.
And when you guys think this through, and realize what I mean by that,
you'll want one too.

You'd think Sun would be nicer to him.

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[peripatetic_bum]

Ok, I've look but I cant find it

What is "per-page X bit protection"

thanks

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[gunpowder]

try this: How can I guard my system against stack buffer overflow exploits?

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

R=read, W=write and X=execute. So, "per-page X bit protection" means the OS can specify for each memory page whether the bytes on that page can be executed as machine code. IA-32 has execute permissions for entire segments only, not for individual pages.

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

Theo was one of the guys who ported NetBSD to sparc.

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD supports non-executable stack, no-exec data (heap) and bss on sparc64. This is no-exec data and bss is not possible on i386.

This makes stack and heap overflows very difficult.

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[TheLink]

The main reason for this issue is C or C++.

This sort of feature won't help as much for many other popular languages and scenarios.

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but 99.9% of software written for UNIX is written is C or C++ so this security feature would be very useful.
(God help us if someone creates a Java-based operating system - there's not enough RAM in the universe.)

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you're not using C, your compiler or interpreter is probably written in C so it still indirectly affects you.z

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[zdzichu]

Kernel is written in C, most apps too. This bit is very helpful.

Don't try to troll about irrevelance of C.

Re:Theo seems very Pro-SPARC

[TheLink]

Yah, but only the experts who can always allocate enough memory, always remember to deallocate at the right time, etc, should be writing in C or similar 'minefield' languages (e.g. Forth[1]). The smart obsessive compulsive paranoid sort I suppose.

Better for the rest to create their apps using programs created by those experts.

Most of us crap programmers don't need to deal with all the layers and it's blindingly obvious from Bugtraq we can't.

Clear separation of roles and responsibilities. The different programmers do what they are capable of or better at.

So you have one bunch doing stuff in perl/python/etc, not worrying about buffer overflows, malloc, pointers, but just worrying about the high level correctness of their applications (SQL injection, logic, who can see/update which bank account). While you have another bunch closer to the hardware, concentrating on making sure perl/python/etc work correctly. There's already plenty to worry about in the different domains.

Seems more scalable and manageable. Sure performance suffers. But hey if the experts have time or are cheaper than faster hardware, we'll get them to rewrite the critical bits.

Link.

[1] AFAIK Forth is just as buffer overflow prone as C. Forth may be worse too since data==program which was how I crashed a Forth webserver recently. First time I noticed a Forth webserver, type stuff, press enter and poof. Wonder how things are for Lisp esp when they do the data==program stuff.

Hmmm

[Ashran]

What about this thing?
What else would you need to port a kernel to it? It descibes about everything you want to know about the UltraSparc

Re:Hmmm

[gunpowder]

Did you read the mailing list? Obviously not.

Re:Hmmm

[dolmant_php]

If you would have taken the time to read the messages from Theo in the thread, he says very clearly that they don't have enough documentation to write a kernel or an OS. Also, the type of documentation they need is nothing you can find on Sun's website.

Jawn! You tell them Theo ;)

[Carl]

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=103 830199306037&w=2

> I'm sorry you don't yet believe that we are striving to be a traditional
> company that works well with the Open Source community. Most of our
> efforts to date have been in the software arena, and I think some of
> what you ran into was the trailing edge of Open Source awareness (in the
> hardware business).

The other contributions from Sun are entirely irrelevant.

I don't care about Jinu, Jxta, Jboring, Jawn, or any of that
stuff.

I care about running on ultrasparc III.

But...

[CableModemSniper]

What does Sun have to with BeOS?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot more than beos does, solaris's roots go back to BSD.

Re:But...

[CableModemSniper]

It was supposed to be a joke.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of lies...

How's your model girlfriend doing? Still haven't got that "proof" yet... (photon317chick@hotmail.com)

Re:Heh

[batobin]

Does trying to get Linux press forbid Sun from releasing the code to OpenBSD? Isn't it possible to send it to both parties?

Last I checked, supporting Linux doesn't null and void also supporting BSD.

Re:Heh

[cpeterso]

Sun borrowing OpenSSH is one thing, but Sun giving hardware docs to OpenBSD is another. Perhaps Sun is afraid their hardware support would not be safe with the BSD license. That would be ironic.

No obligation

[0x0d0a]

it's absurd that they don't provide it to the veyr people that freely provided them with tools that they have rebadged as their own (sunssh) and tout as a feature

Okay, it may not be a good idea for Sun, but I don't see why people are bashing Sun for it.

First, the OpenBSD people choose to release openssh under a BSD license. Sorry, but you *cannot* "expect" anything in return, not even morally (IMHO) -- the BSD license is not a "nicer sounding" closed license. Sun isn't obliged to do jack in return, any more than the BSD people are obliged to do jack in return for Sun donating personnel and resources to the GNOME Usability Project.

Second, Sun makes their money from hardware, not from selling Solaris. This is much more of an issue to Sun than the OpenBSD people. I can't understand why the OpenBSD people even care -- if Sun doesn't want the OBSD people to further increase the value of Sun hardware, that's a Sun issue, not an OBSD issue. Leave it.

Third, this article was fairly obviously designed to start a *BSD-Linux flamefest ("But those bad ol' Linux developers, *they* got the documentation"). I'd just ignore falling into the trap the article author laid for you, Slashdot posters.

Re:No obligation

[Arandir]

Sun isn't obliged to do jack in return

And neither are the BSD obliged to sit back and say "please sir, may we have some more?"

Re:No obligation

[JulianD]

So the solution to this problem is to whine publically about Sun not coughing up the docs. I don't see how this really helps matters. As if Sun wasn't already reluctant enough to hand out docs to anyone developing for !(Linux) (trust me I know, I work with Jake Burkholder, one of the FreeBSD/sparc64 developers, and he's already gone through this rigamarole with Sun and their damn NDA).

Look, probably what will happen is that EVENTUALLY, someone who's smart enough and has enough time will read the source of the Linux kernel, figure out how things work, and recreate them in *BSD. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Re:No obligation

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a complete idiot. Have you ever tried to write up some code for a hardware? I don't mean an OS. Even just a controller program for the gadget hooked up to your USB (or whatever) port ?

If you do not have the whole documentation, you're alone. Looking at someones code does NOT resolve the problem.

And again, if OpenBSD project borrowed brain dead Linux code in the past, it wouldn't be in this position.

A simple comparison for you. Count the lines of TCP/IP stack implementation of both OSes (OpenBSD and Linux). Which one has less code ? Yes! the one that's faster and secure.

You can not do good things with codes of Linus and David Miller. Let these poster boys play in their sandbox. Let the baloon get bigger.

Re:Heh

[Arandir]

Nah. Releasing that same information to OpenBSD might make some Linux people think Sun was two-timing on them. There's nothing worse than a Linux kernel developer scorned...

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not! But the media sure in hell thinks it is! Go read a story about Mozilla or OpenOffice and it will say that they're Linux applications. Go read a story about some company dumping Windows and it will say they're moving to Linux. I recall one story touting Linux as the new wave that cited FreeBSD uptimes at Netcraft as proof!

Linux is here to stay. But it isn't the radical hippie ever-so-slightly rebellious operating system that the media makes it out to be. Contrary to the SJ Murkey News, CTOs don't get laid for switching to Linux.

Re:Heh

[batobin]

I hope you're joking. :)

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

> it's absurd that they don't provide it to the very people that freely provided them with tools they have rebadged as their own (sunssh) and tout as a feature.

It's not absurd, BSDL people *choose* to be abused, I say well done Sun !

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well howabout that, a "BSD is dying" troll bares all. We find that he's just an idle consumer who has the gall to think it's his duty to tell some talented developers what they can do with their spare time. Reminds me of this idiot I met in a job fair who had this brilliant idea for "digital speakers" and was looking for someone to employ in order to design and implement his "vision" because he unfortunately didn't know shit about electronics.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD, having been around longer than SysV, DOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux.... yes, I suppose we do.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Sun isn't sucking up the Linux developers per se, but the RedHat sales people..

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Linux developers audit their own code? Bah! Did Ed Wood ever film a scene in more than one take?!!!!

Re:Heh

[photon317]

Troll and Flamebait moderations from the peanut gallery. Is anybody metamodding this crap? If you don't agree, post, don't abuse your mod provs. Everything above is either dead-on fact, or my arguably relevant opinion. It's not a troll, and it's not flamebait.

jack some source

[iggymanz]

I can certainly understand why Theo would want Sun to show support to the BSD world as they have been for Linux, but....as a practical matter, couldn't the OpenBSD kernel developers look at the Solaris 8 source (which Sun was allowing download of) and the Linux code to get a pretty good idea of how to do UltraSparc-III specific kernel space optimizations?

As an aside, it'll be awhile before I get to run OpenBSD on an Ultra-III, my 70MHz Sparc 5 is doing just fine serving my domain with OpenBSD 3.1....you could almost here it breath a sigh of relief when the slow, load-heavy Solaris 2.6 was removed

Re:jack some source

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Please provide link to free Solaris source download. ;-)

Re:jack some source

[iggymanz]

Alas, Sun is not doing that anymore, but over 2,000 people took advantage of the ability to download the source code to Solaris 8 about 18 months ago (required Sun's compiler to actually COMPILE the thing, of course).

http://www.itworld.com/Comp/2377/IDG010628solaris/

Unless....you're asking *me* to put it in a public place...sorry, had to give my written word I wouldn't do that to get access to it.

And yes, I did send e-mail to "Denasse" at Sun in the linked discussion thread, mentioning my over $700K procurement of Sun server and workstation gear at places I've worked in the past 11 years, and my desire to see Sun give some support to the Open Source BSD's as they have with Linux for the UltraSparc III processor line.

Re:jack some source

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they ever did. They announced it and collected names, but I haven't found anyone yet that actually got to download it. I sent in that huge signed FAX form three times, and they never got back to me. The offer was more PR than substance.

Re:jack some source

[sean23007]

Um... wouldn't looking at the code for something that isn't released under the BSD license taint any developer who plans to release code under the BSDL? I mean, once they look at the code, they wouldn't be allowed to include it in OpenBSD. Unless, of course, they had one team of people reading the code and writing documentation for it, and another team taking that documentation and coding on their own. If I recall correctly, that's how Compaq had to do it to reproduce IBM's BIOS.

I can see it being against a lot of rules to just look at the source to other projects and then writing your own. Especially if you plan to use a different license.

Re:jack some source

[iggymanz]

haha! You're saying they can't look at source of similar projects to learn and then write very own implentation of something. I have news for you, the BSD people often look at Linux device drivers (GPL or similar non-BSD) and write THEIR VERY OWN IMPLEMENTATION of device driversfor same device for NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.etc. And other things too! Should those people should have thrown up their hands and cried "I'm TAINTED.....TAAAAAINTEEEEEED! "...kind of like lepers in Old Testament yelling "UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN!" ??? Get Real!

Re:jack some source

[sean23007]

First of all, wow. You need to calm down a little bit. Second, it seems rather immoral to me that they would be allowed to do that. I wouldn't do that.

Re:jack some source

[iggymanz]

Matt Dillon, of FreeBSD kernel/VM: "There is constant borrowing going on between the BSDs and even between BSD and Linux, especially in regards to driver code." http://www.osnews.com/printer.php?news_id=153

Stealing or copying code or even algorithms (without proper credit) would be wrong, but it seems these developers don't think it is wrong to look to learn, like say learn additional new SCSI command a newer model controller might support.

Would it be wrong to look at Sun's code to see how atomicity on SMP UltraSparcIII system is done? I wouldn't think so, as long as one didn't cut & paste their code

The educational value of Open Source of whatever licensing should be open to all, to use for whatever constructive purpose.

P.S. Exuberqnce of last post due to 2nd day of Thanksgiving celebration, was feeling fine. And it may happen again sometime!

Re:jack some source

[Anonymous Coward]

get your mouth of linus's cock, fatbody. that street goes 2 ways.

someone pretty much did a cut/paste of fbsd's ata driver for linux, and stripped out the copyright notice. using the code would have been fine (the bsd license permits it), removing the copyright is not.

Re:jack some source

[Bert64]

openbsd outperforming solaris on a sparc machine? last time i tried openbsd (2.8) that was exactly the opposite of what happened, it was far less performant than solaris, and crashed several times.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything's dead-on fact - like your model-girlfriend story? Still waiting for my proof... You know where to send it.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

who knows what might happen. were Sun to release ultrasparc III docs under BSD license, then even MS would be able to port their OS to Sun processors.

detailed Sparc docs are impossible to find on web

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew this from trying to code a small assembly code fragment in GCC for sparc. I had to resort to looking at the GCC assembly output to "figure out" sparc assembly. This is insane. Doesn't Sun - a hardware company - want people to write software for their grossly overpriced machines?

Re:Heh

[Mhrmnhrm]

Actually, my profile states something quite similar to this. IIRC, it reads something like "If you modded an on-topic post as a troll, no matter how dumb/lame/clueless it was, you will be marked unfair."

Now here's the thing. The metamod process takes *much* longer to work through than the primary mod process (as it should), and I don't believe that points are added/subtracted to the post itself for an 'unfair' mod, only that the moderator's karma is adjusted accordingly (though I may be wrong about this).

remember the openssl/sun thing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

theo was very open in basically telling the openssl project they made a bad move. for those that don't remember, sun gave the openssl project the rights, or whatever you want to call them, to use a sun-patented algorithm. the problem was the license was viral in nature.

theo was very vocal on this subject, rightfully so. perhaps this is sun exacting some revenge?

countdown to triptophan od: 13hrs 16mins 42secs

Re:remember the openssl/sun thing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse... When there were holes on OpenSSH and they advised everyone to upgrade, Theo would not disclose to Sun what the actual problem was. He did tell 'em that they needed the upgrade. Later on it turned out the Sun package was not affected. But Theo had claimed credit for "saving Sun from blah blah"... Maybe Theo should learn to be humble...

Re:Heh

[photon317]

No, I don't know where to send it. Honestly I can't believe you're still hung up on it. Hurry up a post soe identifying info then jerkoff.

Re:Heh

[sean23007]

I think what he means is that there's nothing worse than a Linux kernel developer. Whether or not he is scorned is largely unimportant...

Re:Heh

[evilviper]

Maybe if the OpenBSD guys could get SMP working or something, someone might take them seriously.

When yahoo adopted FreeBSD, they had no SMP support. For quite some time, Linux didn't have SMP support. SMP is more a buzzword than feature. It is incredibly rare that users ever need SMP at all. When someone needs it, there is nothing stopping them from adding it, or employing one of the current OpenBSD developers to add it.

but I'd rather have the OpenBSD guys auditing linux code instead, it would be effort better spent.

You know, the OpenBSD developers don't agree with you, and the large group of OpenBSD users don't agree with you.

Just because Linux is the buzzword of the day, doesn't mean there is anything wrong with any other systems. BSD has been around long before Linux was first concieved, and it will be around long after the media forgets about Linux.

Re:Heh

[batobin]

*sigh*

Silly Linux people. BSD is my only friend.

Except for OpenBSD. I could do without that.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

>Except for OpenBSD. I could do without that.

Good, you're not wanted, be gone.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

photon317chick@hotmail.com. I made an account just for you.

NOT incredibly rare

[Gothmolly]

I'm a user, and I need SMP. Why? Here's why:

When Netscape or Mozilla or IE barfs on some lame Shockwave applet, and hogs 100% CPU. I have another CPU usable to kill off the bad app.

I want to rip CDs, play Oggs, and start a bloated MS app all at the same time without making a coaster, or hearing skip on my Oggs.

I want my system (Win32 or Linux/X) to respond smoothly and gracefully to spikes in load.

I NEED SMP. I would not use an OS without it. I BOUGHT an SMP box just for the above reasons. Once you go dually, there's no going back.

Re:NOT incredibly rare

[evilviper]

It's only on Windows that a single app makes the system unresponsive. On OpenBSD, you can ALWAYS kill off an unresponsive task, and it's incredibly rare that an OpenBSD task really freezes up anyhow.

I've used SMP... I've gone back. 'Nuff said.

Re:NOT incredibly rare

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't beleive how stupid this post is, those are NOT reasons to use SMP at all. You're a joke at best. Go back to your Wincrap system.

Theo's Conversation?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

OK, I'm karma capped, lets some good ol' flaming start...

Theo de Raadt: (calls up Sun) Hello, I demand some documentation.
Sun Guy: Who the f*** are you?
TdR: I'm Theo de Raadt.
SG: Which Theo de Raadt?
TdR: The one that is incredibly smart and productive and gets real pissy when I don't get my way; the one that forked OpenBSD because the NetBSD folks didn't like how pissy I got and drove users away.
SG: Oh that one. What documentation do you demand because you somehow infer a right to having?
TdR: On the UltraSparc III processor.
SG: Oh, the one that you spent no R & D money on, that you spent no manufacturing money on, but you feel you have an absolute right to have it and if you don't get it you get pissy?
TdR: Yeah, thats the one.
SG: OK, here is our link.
TdR: This isn't enough. I want more.
SG: What other documentation are you demanding?
TdR: I don't know. It is your job to figure out what documentation I don't have and to get it to me when I demand it.
SG: If you don't even know what to ask for, how are you demanding more?
TdR: Those other guys get more.
SG: Which guys?
TdR: The Linux guys.
SG: You mean the ones that we kind of work with because we have an Intel distro and we should really appease the guys that kind of put it together?
TdR: Yeah, I want what they have. I deserve it.
SG: Why?
TdR: Because I want it to make a server.
SG: Using what OS?
TdR: A free one, that will put no money in your pocket for OS licenses, no money for support, that will most likely not sell any Sun software because it usually runs as a fairly stripped down firewall box, and won't even sell any of your real expensive hardware where you make the real money from since we don't support SMP. Since you lost a lot of money when the dot-com bubble burst, and your stock is now close to historic lows and have had a couple rounds of layoffs, you must be real enthused about doing some work which probably won't get your company any money at all?
SG: Ahh, so you demand we get some internal engineers for you who luckily will be really eager to stop their real work fending off fierce competition from IBM Windows HP and Linux, gather all our UltraSparc-III stuff for you, run it through our lawyers who luckily enough will drop all work involving our lawsuits about Microsoft and Java (and possible shareholder and wrongful termination lawsuits) sanitize it for you because from your reputation for getting pissy over things (witness ipf) you won't take kindly to an NDA and rush it to you on your schedule not ours.
TdR: If you don't, I'll get pissy. Yes, and make sure you get that NDA stuff out. We're opensource, and we don't like NDAs, and since we're always right your NDAs should go away because we say so.

I know why Theo would want this, but I can't see the Sun guys dropping everything and making this their number one priority. Though childish, if I was a Sun person, I'd release this stuff first to FreeBSD and NetBSD, knowing it would eventually trickle down to OpenBSD, just to piss off Theo.

Re:Theo's Conversation?

[mshlimov]

Shouldn't every owner of a CPU be able to have access to it's manual ?

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

I contacted Sun

[mshlimov]

I just talked to Ahmad Zandi from Sun and he told me that they expect Version 2.0 of the documentation to be released 2 weeks from today (The 18th of December). He said he was "waiting for some final signatures" and unless "someone drops dead" it should be available by then. We'll see if this holds. He also claimed that no private documentation has been released to Linux developers under a NDA and that any documentation which is released will be made available publically.

Re:detailed Sparc docs are impossible to find on w

[Bert64]

Sparc is a pretty open architecture, see www.sparc.org, sun arent the only sources of information, fujitsu produce sparc based machines too

Re:detailed Sparc docs are impossible to find on w

[Guy Harris]

see www.sparc.org

...which finally has the SPARC V8 manual and the SPARC V9 manual online (online manuals appears to be what the original poster wanted), although they only seem to have the V9 manual online as compressed PostScript, not PDF. In the past, that documentation wasn't online; I heard a claim that it was due to copyright issues with whoever produced the printed versions (Addison-Wesley?).

See the SPARC Standards Documents Depository for the standards documents at sparc.org.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux won't ever fade away :-)
they're too crazy with the stuff they're trying to ever really be obscured. also, it's kinda of like the joy of communism without the... communism of communism. everyone wins! with BSD one guy can work hard so everyone else can rip him off and give nothing back to the creator.

Re:Heh

[evilviper]

with BSD one guy can work hard so everyone else can rip him off and give nothing back to the creator.

And that's different from Linux how? Sure, you have to release changes to linked source, but there's plenty of other ways to make GPL'd software propritary without breaking the GPL. Just look at Microsoft's Unix compatibility package... It uses GPL'd code. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/

If you think the GPL forces anything to be open, you are just lying to yourself. If anything, the GPL just makes things more difficult for those not trying to completely rip off the source.

If you think GPL'd software hurts Microsoft, or even prevents them from using it in their own products, you are completely wrong. You'd be FAR better off using a BSD license with a clause that says it may not be used by Microsoft in any way...

As you said, Open Source is without actual communism. That means, someone using BSD-licensed code doesn't take anything away from the author. Why do you think I'd be hurt if the software I release makes someone's Mac OS X box more secure?

The GPL trying to force the release of modified software just hurts it's own popularity for the sake of pushing RMS's ideals upon the world like a virus. Just look at what standards have sprung up... TCP/IP, IPSec, NFS, Kerberos, LPD, SSH, etc. All of which had viable, BSD-licensed implimentations. If you think the GPL'd CUPS is going to catch on, you're dead wrong. Now, if it was under the BSD, you might see network printers supporting whatever protocol CUPS uses. The GPL
actually keeps the software restricted, guaranteeing it will never catch on outside of a few Linux users. In the mean time, just about every BSD-licensed advancement has become adopted far and wide.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

anyway, it's absurd that they don't provide it to the very people that freely provided them with tools they have rebadged as their own (sunssh) and tout as a feature.
Well that's what you get when you use that "superiour" BSD licence, if someone uses it, don't complain, you should have GPLed....