OpenBSD Turns 10

Eh-Wire writes to tell us OpenBSD Journal is reporting that OpenBSD is officially ten-years-old today. After some confusion, it was decided that 10 years ago today marked the birth of OpenBSD when Theo de Raadt committed his makefile to CVS.

Comments

Slow development

[Just Some Guy]

After ten years, they've only made it to version 3.7. FreeBSD isn't that much older and I already have 7-CURRENT on my laptop. Even Windows progressed from 3.11 to 95 in a few short years.

Seriously, though, OpenBSD is simply amazing. Any reasonably experienced Unix user should be able to install it and know what every single running process on the default system does. There's nothing like logging into a multiuser system and seeing a "ps" listing maybe 15 lines long. Their devotion to doing things The Right Way is staggering -- who else bothered to randomize PIDs and TCP serial numbers and encrypt swap?

They treat every theoretical exploit as a practical matter, and the result is some of the most robust, elegant software to be found. I have my reasons for not running it on every system I admin, but that doesn't stop me from giving them my utmost respect. Kudos, Theo et al. Job well done.

I don't care about what people say re: Theo...

[SecureTheNet]

about his attitude or any of that. OpenBSD is a very good product, and it's leading-edge when it comes to security. They audit code, they take care of security issues, and they tackle even the so-called theoretical security issues. OpenBSD is the best example of how others should treat security. Happy Birthday OpenBSD!

Re:I don't care about what people say re: Theo...

[grub]

And Theo is the best example of how you should not treat others.

I've had a handful of email exchanges with the man over the years and he's never been less than 'to the point' and quite friendly.

New fork announced

[vuud]

Yes thats right, I am forking the OpenBSD tree.

My first release will be MyBSD2010. Note the large quasi futuristic number on the name - clearly it is a better product. Sure the code may be the same, and I may have no intentions of patching or improving, but I DO intend to re-release it in several months as MyBSD2030.

Note the 20 increment in there - clearly BIG BIG things have happened.

With the release of MyBSD2050 I plan on addind a large graphic and a pleasing startup sound my daughter shall compose on the toy keyboard she has.

This will clearly be a superiour product!

And if I feel particularly good, I may start to release hundreds of service packs each release... some of which shall just randomly change about lines of source code. If enough people run this, one of them has to randomly produce a code improvement (Following the million monkey theory). That person shall be slightly better off for the microsecond before one of the many bad mutations crashes the system.

Whoops, just accidentally release MyBSD2010 SP1

And BAH to a simple CD you can buy that comes complete with a full set of installation instructions! No, my new and improved (signifying nothing) distrobution will come in a very large box - very brightly colored, with no instructions, but a large legal document (also signifying nothing) and a hefty price tag because that - more than anything - is what the market demands!

Great OS

[Atlantic Wall]

I have been using OBDS for 5 years and it gets better every year. Congrats to Theo and his team. Great OS for just about anything that needs to be done right and secure. No complaints here, just wish my linux boxes would run as well as OBSD.