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NetBSD Status Report January - March 2005
jschauma writes "The NetBSD Foundation published its first quarterly
status report in 2005, covering the months January through March of 2005.
Among many other things, this status report covers the addition of TCP/SACK
and PAM support, the opening of the Foundations Online Store, the new stable
pkgsrc branch and various port-specific items."
arrgh, it's flamebait no matter what I say.
huh?
Now, I'm perfectly willing to believe that PAM is crap, provided good evidence (which you didn't). I've written a PAM module myself, and didn't see anything majorly wrong with it. So, please tell me what exactly is wrong with PAM and why, as I'm very interested.
However, I strongly disagree with the closed source part. Why exactly should the authentication system a closed thing, and what's the good in it? Unix has a well designed mechanism - it's perfectly well known, the password database can be left readable, and still (provided passwords are good) it's safe. That's good design.
What exactly are those closed source modules, and what's that great about them?
OpenBSD - Supposedly "secure out of the box" via large amounts of code review for security holes. Eh. The biggest thing with OpenBSD is Theo's ego. Yes, I'm kinda partial to NetBSD.
Funny. I've been using OpenBSD since 2.5 and just recently started using NetBSD 2.0 quite heavily. NetBSD is fast. However it's documentation (user guide and man pages) are nowhere near as clean and complete as OpenBSD's.
I have found myself checking OpenBSD man pages for hints that I just don't get from NetBSD man pages.
If you sum OpenBSD's merits up to "Theo's ego", them you are a liar. It is a fantastic system. I also very much like NetBSD and think it is also a fantastic system, but please, don't piss on a great project just because you don't like the leader. Love him or hate him, he has done some great stuff for OSS.