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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..."
Even Sun knows where the future lies. Maybe if the OpenBSD guys could get SMP working or something, someone might take them seriously. I still use OpenBSD for a firewall, but I'd rather have the OpenBSD guys auditing linux code instead, it would be effort better spent.
11*43+456^2
When will they port it to my bandsaw?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
And Sun Solaris won't share it's power.
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.
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
o/~ Join us now and share the software
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
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
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.
What does Sun have to with BeOS?
Why not fork?
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.
May we never see th
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
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?
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
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.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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 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.
Sparc is a pretty open architecture, see www.sparc.org, sun arent the only sources of information, fujitsu produce sparc based machines too
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
...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.