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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..."

5 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Theo's diplomacy by Outland+Traveller · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
  2. Re:Heh by honold · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Heh by Arandir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  4. Theo seems very Pro-SPARC by Hobart · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.
    --
    o/~ Join us now and share the software ...
  5. No obligation by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.