Why OpenBSD's Release Process Works

An anonymous reader writes "Twelve years ago OpenBSD developers started engineering a release process that has resulted in quality software being delivered on a consistent 6 month schedule — 25 times in a row, exactly on the date promised, and with no critical bugs. This on-time delivery process is very different from how corporations manage their product releases and much more in tune with how volunteer driven communities are supposed to function. Theo de Raadt explains in this presentation how the OpenBSD release process is managed (video) and why it has been such a success."

Comments

Re:No Bearded GNU Freaks Why BSD Is So Good

[Hatta]

No foaming at the mouth tantrums that someone is using your code and not kissing your fat ugly ass in reverence.

Oh, really?

Re:It works?

[timmarhy]

explain the difference between an operating system and a distribution? oh i c there isn't any.

and redhat still calls itself redhat LINUX you spastic.

Re:Netcraft confims: *BSD is Dying

[floodo1]

7000 users? WOW, thats terrifically small :(

Re:Netcraft confims: *BSD is Dying

[Auxis]

I did a quick google and found an 8 year old /. article saying how BSD is dying. If it's dying, how long is it going to take to finally kick the bucket?

Re:Netcraft confims: *BSD is Dying

[trytoguess]

Well, Windows has been dying for much longer, so who knows?

Re:Netcraft confims: *BSD is Dying

[Anne Thwacks]

If it's dying, how long is it going to take to finally kick the bucket?

The most reliable estimate to date is

(remaining life of BSD) = (expected total life of Microsoft) * 2 years.

Sick of Debian fanboys

[petrus4]

The Debian fanboys are really out in force in the comments on this article.

I'm tired of the refusal to acknowledge just how chronically Debian sucks. It is the worst Linux/BSD distribution in existence, by a mile; the over-engineered garbage they try and add to virtually every application/package they get hold of is beyond belief. I was wrestling with adding configs to both vim and apache in Ubuntu the other day, when I finally realised that the Debian idiots have tried to make their own conf hardwired in, and then have another file somewhere else (with God only knows what name, in most cases) for "user" changes.

The answer isn't simply to use another distribution if I don't like it, either. Debian offends me to the point where I want it stopped. The horrible mess of perl glue that they refer to as their custom kernel build framework is yet another example. Good luck trying to compile a custom kernel in Ubuntu; there's just so many minor perl snags that it can fail on, that it is virtually impossible.

I savagely, passionately hate Debian, and even more, I hate the system's developers and users continuing to insist on how wonderful it is, because as long as they continue to do that, the system's problems will not get solved.

Debian is suffering from the same fundamental issue that most alcoholics do. You need to be willing to acknowledge that a problem exists before you can begin solving it.