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OpenBSD 3.7 Reviewed

Posted by Hemos on from the good-stuff-to-read dept.

busfahrer writes "Jem Matzan has written a review of OpenBSD 3.7 for Newsforge. He talks about their licensing issues, network features, upgrading packages and the new supported architectures."

6 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    You have issues with BSD licensing? How much freeer do you want it?

    RTFA. The issue mentioned is that OpenBSD folks object to the Apache 2 licence, and so OpenBSD won't get Apache 2.
    In fact you won't even find Apache 2, because its license is more restrictive than its predecessor. OpenBSD 3.7 includes a heavily modified version of Apache 1.3.29 instead.
  2. Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fact 1: BSD license isn't free enough to allow merging in GPLed code.
    Fact 2: GPL isn't free enough to allow merging in BSD licensed code.

    No, the modified BSD licence - which everyone uses nowadays - allows you to mix BSD and GPL code. The result is always GPL.

    But that's not the issue here - RTFA.

  3. Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? by compass46 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The drivers are open source. The board firmware is closed source. They got permission to distribute the blob for the card firmware to make wi-fi setup easier for users so they didn't have to jump through hoops to get their cards to work.

  4. Re:Declare your bias, why don't you? by Caligari · · Score: 4, Informative

    Who said anything about closed source wireless drivers?

    The whole point of the recent OpenBSD wireless developments are that the drivers are completely free!

    Stallman gave Theo de Raadt the 2004 FSF award in Febuary as recognition for crying out loud!

    --
    The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
  5. FUDster. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know this is slashdot, but please stop spreading FUD.

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=127944&cid=106 91304

  6. Re: That's it by ulib · · Score: 3, Informative

    I simply told you which one I like better and why (i.e. what you asked for). I didn't tell you what are the differences between them, so your deduction is wrong.
    In fact, the main differences are technical, in their very goals: while FreeBSD focuses mainly on features and i386 performance, OpenBSD focuses mainly on code correctness and security.

    >Do these two share between each other?

    Sure they do - and massively.
    For example, one little jewel that came from OpenBSD to the other *BSDs is pf (packet filter), that has an excellent reputation for its being very clean and easy to use.

    >Is there a common BSD kernel or anything like that?

    No.
    The *BSDs are developed like OSes, not "distros". So, while they massively share code, they maintain their own kernels.

    To better understand the differences, it helps to notice that OpenBSD was born as a NetBSD fork, 8 years ago - and even today, it shares more code with NetBSD than with FreeBSD.

    But to understand even better, well.. FreeBSD and OpenBSD are renowned for their excellent documentation, that is well worth having a look at.
    http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/index.html
    http://openbsd.org/faq/index.html
    --
    Requiem for the FUD