OpenBSD Gains Commercial Support

Dave Brooks writes "It looks like a company called Network Security Technologies, Inc. will be providing commercial support for OpenBSD Integration. This is a huge step for the OpenBSD community." Good to see. Theo, in an impromptu interview, said that he is happy others believe in OpenBSD, and that the project has a much better financial situation these days, though it is still supported entirely by CD and shirt sales.

Comments

BSD is higher up the learning curve

[digitalboy]

BSD is less well-known than Linux (or GNU/Linux if you prefer) but it is a slightly more reliable OS and since it is binary compatible with Linux, there is no major shortage of apps for it (although I'm not sure if KDE and GNOME will run on it). My point, however, is that once people become familiar with Linux, it is relatively easy to switch over to one of the BSD variants. I think that once Linux has completed it's transition to a 'mainstream' OS, BSD will recieve more publicity.

Re:BSD is higher up the learning curve

[um... Lucas]

I've been interested in trying OpenBSD for quite some time, but haven't because I'm still climbing the Linux learning curve... I think I've read somewhere that *BSD installs are much more difficult than Linux. Is this true?

I mean, with Redhat, I pop the CD in the drive, change my BIOS to book from the CD, format the disk, choose my packages, configure X windows and the network, and (poof!) ... about 15 or 20 minutes later I'm all done.

Is there more to it with OpenBSD?

Is it LILO or BootCommander friendly?

What about hardware support?

Or should I just go over to their website and see if they can answer those questions? :)

Re:BSD is higher up the learning curve

[wozz]

Linux may have MORE documentation, but its most certainly not better documentation. Compare the collective man pages of the two for a prime example. OpenBSD's are actually usable. There's very little need for HOWTO's and the like, because the documentation included with the OS is more than sufficient

Re:BSD is higher up the learning curve

[Guy Harris]

GNOME and KDE will run on it just fine.

In fact, the FreeBSD ports collection has both ports and binary packages for KDE 1.1.2, and binary GNOME packages as well.

The KDE news page also announced the availability of KDE 1.1.2 packages for NetBSD (as well as for Solaris - interestingly enough, the announcement said that Solaris x86 was available, and that SPARC would be available shortly; x86 first?).

The OpenBSD ports status page mentions KDE; I don't see any mention of GNOME other than the libghttp GNOME HTTP client library

Re:BSD is higher up the learning curve

[Lazaru5]

Yes, of course GNOME and KDE *COMPILE* on FreeBSD. Do you not realize what having source means?

Someone recently said in #FreeBSD/Undernet, "I thought they only made X Windows for Linux."

Linux isn't the end all and be all of Unix. I like Linux as much as the next guy, but your /average/ Linux user doesn't seem to realize this. The above quote is a perfect example (If a bit extreme).

If there's source, there's a way.

So, not only can you compile GNOME and KDE yourself, you can also use the Ports System:

$ make search key=kde | grep Port | wc -l
43

$ make search key=gnome | grep Port | wc -l
42

I know you meant nothing by it, but some potential BSD user out there will read your post and take your comment for truth. Please post responsibly.

Re:Will it make it?

[drachen]

"Geeks don't see it as 'cool' enough?" That's crap. I would venture to say that most "geeks" who check out BSD will (as myself) believe it to even be "cooler" than Linux. (I can see this comment being moderated down right now...) I've used Linux since around 1994 and BSD since around late 1995. Right now I am using BSD on all my computers. Why? Well first of all BSD provides everything for me that Linux provides. It is an extremely stable (even more stable than Linux) platform, and is highly secure and robust. Code throughout all three BSD projects are constantly being sifted through to make them better. Their developmental models are much to be praised. Things are very organized within the projects. The ability to have seperate "versions" (i.e. a -STABLE or a -CURRENT branch) is also nice. Sure I see there are also developmental versions of the Linux kernel but often they are not as seamlessly integrated with the rest of the operating system and sometimes can be quite unstable. (Yeah yeah.... I KNOW NOT ALL OF THE TIME...)

To say that BSD is waning is just not true. As Linux's popularity increases, so does the popularity of the BSD's. Many BSD users are FORMER Linux users. A question to you... have you even used BSD? Have you checked out with what versatility you can compile to kernel and so forth? Have you checked out the nicely formatted and standardized configuration scripts for BSD? Have you tried to do a cvsup or make world with it? I would guess that most people who have used BSD will see it as "cool." I began a popular linux channel on Efnet (and still frequent it) and even in there many of the ops use *BSD. (no not just FreeBSD I mean NetBSD and OpenBSD) I personally see this commercial support as a giant step forward for BSD. Look at what happened to Linux when it got those big name sponsors... BSD is up and coming. Whatever you base your argument on that BSD is "waning"... you've got to show me more evidence than it's not "cool" enough.

James Crawford
drachen@thepcmaster.com

Niche market

[jabbo]

OpenBSD is great for firewalls, DNS servers, and other applications where you *really* do NOT want any chance of an intrusion. It is heavily audited, tightly locked down by default, and perfect for these applications (both because of the security and because of the license).

It isn't meant to replace Linux or FreeBSD, it can't even run on multiprocessors yet (AFAIK)! But it does its stated job very well.

Contrast this with NT or Linux and you'll better understand this. You don't tell the CIO or CTO "I'm setting up a Linux firewall", you say "I'm setting up the most secure firewall on the market" and they gratefully fuck off.

One Geek's experience with BSD

[Effugas]

I've been playing with BSD as of late, and I must say, I'm enjoying the experience.

I have alot of trouble understanding where the angst between Linux and BSD derives, particularly among the hacker cores. My guess is that the semi-infamous bad attitude of BSD developers was directed against Linux in its growth years, and after years of having their work called immature and unstable(even when it began being much less so), Linux developers and users completed the "circle" of mutual distrust.

I wasn't around back then, so I'd like some better perspective.

Regardless, BSD has been quite the experience. OpenBSD, with its security-centric design, is something I plan to play around with for the specific reason that existing Linux Distributions run wayyyyyy too many network services by default, and the idea of an OS I can slap on a box and trust to be secure is very appealing.

Hearing that Theo's baby, OpenBSD, now has commercial support behind it is something that I am proud to hear. Theo's focus on security is making Linux better, and many of the apps that run on BSD were originally developed on Linux.

Congratulations to everyone involved.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:One Geek's experience with BSD

[kijiki]

A better answer is to edit out everything in /etc/inetd.conf that you don't explicitly need. Also, check your init scripts (/etc/rc.d/*) for things you don't need (There are pretty little graphical tools to help you here). Now keep an eye on whatever distro/os you use's security page. If they don't have a security page, switch to one that does.

Of course, these suggestions apply equally to Linux or OpenBSD; The reasons for OpenBSD's security have little to do with its default install, and a lot more to do with careful code auditing.

Re:One Geek's experience with BSD

[Aviast]

As far as I can see, there is no "angst" between
the hacker cores of Linux and *BSD. Don't confuse
the narrow-minded "advocates" who regularly post
to slashdot as being representative of either the
Linux or the *BSD community.

The core members of each of the projects have
acknowledged that the other projects are very
useful resources, and they use ideas from each
other regularly.

> many of the apps that run on BSD were
> originally developed on Linux.

And vice-versa.

If the BSD's succeed

[konstant]

Then what does that do to the elaborate castles of theory people have been building on the "Open Source Movement". Pundits from the credible (think ESR) to the credulous (think Jon Katz) have been pounding their shoes on the pulpit about the unstoppable force that is community code. More than one reputation is now founded on the premise that open source is "unique" and provides marvellous, unheard of benefits that tightly controlled products never could enjoy.

But the BSD's are not nearly so open, as I understand it. Yes, much of their codebase is contributed, but the maintainers carefully vet submissions and frequently reject code they feel will contrast with their envisioned implementation. If I'm correct in that interpretation (and I might not be - please correct me) the BSD's are much more like Netscape's model than Linux's model.

So if the BSD's succeed in gaining considerable market share, doesn't that mean most of the rhetoric we've been reading about open source is mostly hot air? Wouldn't it imply that, really, strict central control is a good idea for a software project?

Just a thought.

-konstant

Re:If the BSD's succeed

[tweek]

Strict central control is not the issue with closed vs. open source. It's the ability to modify code on your own if the need arises. Linux has a fairly strict central codebase as well. It's up to the distro/*bsd controllers to decide which direction they want. The nice thing is that, if i don't like the direction that freebsd is taking, I can create my on version in the direction I want. As long as I adhere to the license that the codebase was created under, I am well within that right. If I am not mistaken, openBSD spun off of freebsd because of security issues. It is now almost entriely it's own OS with no ties to it's predecesor save the BSD in the name. THAT is the real joy of opensource.

Re:If the BSD's succeed

[Lord of the Files]

I think this very much depends on the project. With open BSD tight control is important. An awful lot of people go "oh look I found a cool new way to make foo more secure" and actually end up making things worse instead. This happens frequently with patches on bugtraq. Linux is trying to grow rapidly, and support a lot of options and platforms. This requires a more open development model. More people are needed to make it work. In addition it's accepted in linux to include drivers that may or may not be stable. When you want to supprt cutting edge hardware this is a good idea. You might as well take drivers from anybody with functional drivers. If you're worried about security you probably don't want to do that. You want to make sure they're safe before their ever included.

Netscape probably needs tight control at least until version 1 of mozilla is released. It was suffering from bloat, and flakiness, and too many features. With no tight control everyone and their brother would have started adding little bits to it and only made things worse. Once the netscape code is better planned out and stable the development model may become more open.

I don't think that there's a magic formula for software development. What model works best depends very much on the project. Some software will probably never be developed in an open source environment (who's going to volunteer to help write statistical software for insurance companies for instance?)

Re:If the BSD's succeed

[SEE]

Well...

1. Both *BSD and Linux let anybody read the source code.
   
2. Both *BSD and Linux let anybody distribute and use the code.
   
3. Both *BSD and Linux let anybody fork their own code.
   
4. Both *BSD and Linux, for the last few years at least, let anybody propose changes to the "official" system.
   
5. Both *BSD and Linux, for the last few years at least, have a small group of people who allow/deny changes to the "official" system.
   

The big difference is really that the *BSDs give you a whole unified distro, while Linux has no established official distro.

But an entire distribution is outside of the scope of the catherdral/bazaar paradigm anyway, especially since outside the a central core the BSDs and Linux use the same software anyway.

Re:If the BSD's succeed

[JordanH]

...Then what does that do to the elaborate castles of theory people have been building on the "Open Source Movement". Pundits from the credible (think ESR) to the credulous (think Jon Katz) have been pounding their shoes on the pulpit about the unstoppable force that is community code.

I don't know about Jon Katz, but in ESR's case, he was frankly amazed at the "Linux phenomenon." ESR could simply not understand how Linux could be stable and usable without a lot of central control, design, testing, etc. etc. He wrote The Cathedral and The Bazaar in an effort to come to grips with the phenomenon.

More than one reputation is now founded on the premise that open source is "unique" and provides marvellous, unheard of benefits that tightly controlled products never could enjoy.

This is a strawman. Who says that tightly conrolled products never could enjoy the benefits of what Open Source projects have? Well, except the obvious benefit that all changes are accretive and are guaranteed to benefit all of society. Open Source projects benefit projects like *BSD, while *BSD projects may be a duplication of effort of another *BSD project.

So if the BSD's succeed in gaining considerable market share, doesn't that mean most of the rhetoric we've been reading about open source is mostly hot air?

Of course, the BSD's already have held considerable market share. Before Linux, BSD/OS and FreeBSD probably powered more ISPs than any other system. I know of a number of companies that use *BSD "under the hood" to power appliances. Anything like this that's done in Open Source goes to make the rolling Open Source snowball bigger and bigger, while these efforts in BSD tend to fork off into closed backwaters. It seems that Open Source advocates only need to observe a few historical facts to point out the clear dangers of free-but-not-Open Source. Has (Open/Free/Net)BSD benefitted from the fork that occurred when BSD/OS was created? Open Source advocates believe it's the accretive nature of Open Source that has fueled Linux's unparalleled growth and popularity. To what do you attribute Linux's recent successes? Hype and personality culture? Yes, Linus is a powerful, magnetic personality.

The various BSD flavors languished in near obscurity since 1993. So, come 1999, suddenly there's all this excitement around Linux, the hot new thing that might unseat Microsoft and take over the computing world. Big vendors like Oracle, IBM (including Lotus), SGI, Compaq, Dell, Sybase, Informix, and Corel all get behind it. Wall Street approves, makes Linux startup guys paper billionaires.

Some guys in the *BSD community have built a Linux emulator. Some segment of this new marketplace that Linux is rapidly building sees that there might be advantages to a similar, but different Free Code operating system called *BSD. This difference might be an especially agressive, ground up security model (OpenBSD) or something else. And, after all, they all run all the Linux code, so there's little risk. The *BSD flavors prosper like never before, and why not? Now, finally, there's the promise of a BSD that has Office Apps, and advanced Window Managers like Gnome and KDE and a whole wealth of other goodies that have suddenly become available.

So, you would draw from this that the "rhetoric we've been reading about open source is mostly hot air?"

I would draw that it's good to ride the coattails of a winner.

If I'm correct in that interpretation (and I might not be - please correct me) the BSD's are much more like Netscape's model than Linux's model.

Ironic that you would invoke Netscape's model as being equivalent to BSD's model. Supposedly, Netscape was inspired to open up Mozilla based on the writings of one ESR. Seems that some people have drawn different conclusions from The Cathedral and The Bazaar than have you.

In any case, any success that *BSD has is, in not small part, due to the availability, reliability and quality of gcc. Last I checked, gcc is Open Source. Thus, the lesson to be drawn from BSD's success is that Open Source is a powerful force.

Wouldn't it imply that, really, strict central control is a good idea for a software project?

Another strawman. Others have pointed out that Linus maintains strict control over Kernel mods as do the *BSD leaders. Almost every successful GPL'd software has a set of core developers (sometimes serially) behind it that drives and guides it.

Besides, I don't recall anyone in the Open Source community suggesting that the only good software comes from Open Source projects. Cathedrals are beautiful, after all.

Re:If the BSD's succeed

[Guy Harris]

Besides, I don't recall anyone in the Open Source community suggesting that the only good software comes from Open Source projects. Cathedrals are beautiful, after all.

As others have noted, "closed source" vs. "open source" is orthogonal to "tightly controlled" vs. "loosely controlled" - unfortunately, "www.opensource.org" appears to be unreachable from here right now, but I have the impression that the BSDs (other than BSD/OS) would qualify, given that you can get full source to them and you can freely distribute changes to that source. The non-commercial BSDs (i.e., all but BSD/OS) make their source available by anonymous CVS, and probably won't reject all changes sent to them.

Excellent.

[Capt Dan]

Excellent. Regardless of your opinion of BSD vs Linux, OpenBSD support is a win for both camps and the Open Source movement as a whole.

Hopefully, with OpenBSD starting to pick up steam, a beneficial competition will develop between the two systems that envolves more coding than arguing.

Anyways, score one for the home team. Begin the happy dance of your choice.

Re:Excellent.

[Guy Harris]

One of the "problems" with Linux is that there are forces trying to make it all things to all people.

Does "Linux" here refer to the kernel, or to the various distributions? If it's the latter, there is no "it" - there's a pile of different distributions, some of which, arguably, specialize in something they're intended to do really well.

(And even if it does refer just to the kernel, not all useful kernel stuff is in the Official Kernel Source - that's another place where different distributions could do different things.)

Re:Excellent.

[JordanH]

Does "Linux" here refer to the kernel, or to the various distributions? If it's the latter, there is no "it" - there's a pile of different distributions, some of which, arguably, specialize in something they're intended to do really well.

(And even if it does refer just to the kernel, not all useful kernel stuff is in the Official Kernel Source - that's another place where different distributions could do different things.)

I'd say it's both the kernel and the distributions.

While the kernels may have flexible options, there may just flat be things that a BSD kernel does better than any Linux kernel. Of course, this may be seen as a sore point to Linux kernel developers who will attempt to address it in various ways, just as BSD developers may attempt to address things that Linux kernels do better than BSD kernels.

At the end of the day, there will still be differences. Even the perception of difference will lead to specialization in the marketplace.

Any specialization that occurs will lead to a certain market using it heavily which will lead to more experience with the product being used in that way which will lead to further specialization.

The existence of so many "easy to install" distributions implies specialization in the marketplace for Linux vs. BSD. I'm not sure the distributions help that much in ease of installation, but I'd be surprised if there weren't some Linux distributions that were easier to install than most BSD systems. Again, BSD folks might put together "distributions" and this would lead to competition and again, there would be a reputation for one being more for the Geek and the other being for the newbie based on their relative successes.

I'd be very surprised if there is a Linux system that is an exact superset of all of the attributes of a BSD system or vice versa. The only way I could see this happening is if one completely marginalizes the other, which I don't see happening.

Just the fact of GPL leads to some specialization. Linux will be used by GPL advocates, for their purposes and BSD will be used in commercial products for their purposes. This will tend to move the products in different directions.

It is odd to talk about something that's Open Source as a "product". What Linux or BSD are is really mostly perception. Either can be many things to many different people, based on what you have on your system.

This is a good thing because:

[Ded Mike]

1. It offers another flanker to "the Boyz in Redmond." With enough (including Be, FreeBSD, Linux, Apple, etc.) targets showing up on their radar screen, with the trial closing, with the issues that they will have with Y2K, and with the rather obvious problems they are having with W2K; World Domination (for whomever) moves forward. The more platforms/technologies to take aim at, the more clueless the FUD-throwers will prove themselves. Maybe it will even cause the corporate version of a nervous breakdown/meltdown or some other implosion-type event (we can hope, can't we?) Commercial support hastens this process. Doubt it? Re-read some of the defenses contained in the Halloween documents, and some of MS's biggest worries listed there.



2. Theo's code devtree is not THAT different from Linus' and Alan's. It concentrates (differently) on issues having to do with security and the stability/performance of the network. We all learn much from the *BSD hackers (and they from us). Also, the exercise of "ports" to the various platforms (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, etc.), besides being intellectually challenging, gives us practice in what WILL lead to eventual World Domination (and the hoped-for demise of the Evil Empire) in the shorter term: ports of OSS apps (under whatever license-flavor) to more commercial Unices, such as HP, Sun, and IBM. Effective (and clueful) commercial support can only improve this process, and continue the merging of the devtrees for app developers. It also affords more jobs for us (hey, we all gotta eat).



3. Finally, anything that encourages knowledge sharing; helps to educate developers and users alike; AND encourages the corporate types to "experiment" is a VERY good thing. Commercial support hastens this result, since no CIO in his or her right mind wants to "own" the source code (for personal, as well as business reasons); ESPECIALLY without commercial support. We are still a long way away from a time when source is the rule, rather than the exception (if ever)in the corps...but we can hope those days come soon. Credible commercial support helps move us in this direction.

Re:Will it make it?

[Lazaru5]

Waning? Hardly. FreeBSD anyway is nearing critical mass.

Any "geek" worth anything would choose their OS based on more than it's "coolness." Anyone else is a poser.

Are you a poser?

OpenBSD

[NickHolland]

Warning: The comments contained here are from a very new OpenBSD user... (Operation system in place for about a week. Got interested in it about three weeks ago).

No, OpenBSD's install is not as friendly as the new Linux installs. The disk partitioning is really exciting. Hint: Start with a totally empty disk. When you manage to get partitions where you want them, put a small DOS partition on and work around it. Another hint: If you don't grab a calculator or at least a piece of paper, you are either very good at memorizing numbers and doing math in your head or you just nuked that partition you were trying to work around. The first time I installed it on a Compaq (with the configuration partition), I wiped the disk completely clean. Not even the OpenBSD partition survived the install! I think it took me two or three additional attempts (i.e., reloads) before I got it right. Suddenly, it becomes easy, even logical 8). I'm *very* serious about practicing on a "spare" hard disk first.

I found the FTP install actually worked very nicely with OpenBSD, something I could NOT get to work with the otherwise more friendly FreeBSD.

I will dispute any claims that documentation is better on Linux than *BSD. The Linux documentation is certainly BIGGER, at least on mall store shelves, but hardly better. You see, Linux is a rapidly moving target. The details of every distribution change every release, and in fact, some of the products might even be perceived as completely different OSs by a non-X familiar person. While I have been playing with Linux for YEARS (key word: Playing. I'm not yet a Linux master), I've been pleased that OpenBSD seems to be more "familiar" quickly based on my Unix experience. *BSD is much more standard Unix than Linux is. A book on RedHat v5.2 will not do much to help you get RedHat 6.0 up and running.

This is good from a learning perspective. Unix books cover both OpenBSD and FreeBSD much better than they do Linux. On the other hand, I really miss 'bash'. HOWEVER, *I* will impliment bash, I will know how it got there, I will know how to remove it or change it or whatever. You loose this in the modern Linux distributions. It is all done for you.

Another problem with Linux documentation is the quality. Everyone sees it as a cash cow, everyone is writing a book. Most of them stink. Several years ago, I bought a book on Linux. Durring my first five minutes with the book, I spotted THREE blatent FACTUAL errors (Linus wrote Minix then improved it to Linux was one of them). A few are good. Most are obsolete.


As far as I can tell for multiple booting, to boot OpenBSD, set the partition active. Therefore, it will probably work with most boot management software.

Hardware support: Well, OpenBSD seems to support "standard" stuff. IDE, main-stream SCSI. Haven't played with the sound. It recognized every network card I threw at it (at least four totally different cards). Forget USB for the time being, and I wouldn't wait up.

A *BIG* comment: I know a lot of people (I do it myself once in a while) seem to think the magic of a new system is installing it. This is not true. Not at all. As long as you think installing it is the major hurdle, you haven't really learned the product. The magic is what you do ONCE it is installed. How you set it up for efficient use. How you back it up. How you recover it when you woof a hard disk (or a few strategic files). How you recover it when you woof or upgrade a main board. I clean up a lot of networks set up by people who didn't understand that installing the software is just the very, very tip of the iceberg.

Try it. On an empty hard disk at first. 8)

Nick.

Linux vs. BSD: One User's Experiences

[peterb]

First off, let me say that I am not posting advocacy or flamebait. I have used both Linux and *BSD for years and like both a heck of a lot.

I have worked at a commercial ISP that used BSDI's BSD/OS, and at home I have run Free, Net, and OpenBSD. I liked all of them. The differences between them are fairly minor, IMHO, and which one to run generally depends on which hardware platform you're using. Sometimes you have some obscure card that FreeBSD supports but NetBSD doesn't, or vice-versa, and you install whatever supports it. From an operational perspective, they are nearly indistinguishable.

I've just recently switched back to Linux because I'm developing for that platform now. I like the hardware support. I like the packaging job RedHat has done. I kinda like RPM's (although I think FreeBSD's ports/package system is a little better).

There is one thing about Linux I don't like: the lack of usable system documentation. I have a very simple definiton of "usable documentation". When I see a file in /etc -- let's say its called "veryimportantfile" -- I should be able to type "man veryimportantfile" and get an explanation of the file format, and pointers to related documents.

I can do that on *BSD. I can't do that on Linux. I can't begin to describe how much this irritates me. Searching the net, while fun, may not always be a solution -- what if I'm installing a new server on a site without a net connection? Should I really need a telephone line to read crucial documentation? Sure, I can read the source, but it would be nice to not have to.

I appreciate the HOWTOs and FAQs on the net, but I'd personally love to see the LDP concentrate on simply documenting, via man pages, the system configuration files.

But my summary of this is that I use both Linux and BSD whenever possible, and hope that I never have to stop using either! -Peter

Predictions of comments being moderated down (OT)

[Guy Harris]

I can see this comment being moderated down right now...)

We often see statements about how *BSD-positive comments are routinely moderated down, but it's funny, they usually are moderated UP, especially if they aren't just taunts.

I'm curious how many comments that start with "I'll bet this gets moderated down" or whatever get moderated down, how many don't get moderated at all, and how many get moderated up.

Perhaps "I'll bet this gets moderated down" is usually just a (sometimes a bit whiny) rhetorical comment, rather than a genuine prediction that the comment will be moderated down to Flamebait Hell.

Re:Misinformation

[Arandir]

BSD IS OPEN SOURCE AND FREE SOFTWARE!

I don't know who's been feeding you these lies, but stop listening to them. BSD code is "freer" than Linux code, and more "open". BSD is community code.

Where you may be confused is in the development structure. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Open Source, but who is in charge of the project. Linus and Alan let most of the submitted "good" code into the kernel. The BSD's on the other hand only let in good code that conforms to the current vision. BSD, Linux, Apache, Sendmail, KDE, Gnome, etc., all have their unique development styles, but they are all equally open source.

But a lot of this is largely perception, however. BSD is very mature and needs few additions or fixes outside of drivers for new devices. Linux, although now grown up, is still an adolescent with plenty of additions and fixes needed. Which would you rather work on, something that doesn't need work, or something that does?

Re:Slashdot support of BSD - Questionable

[Lazaru5]

We often see statements about how *BSD-positive comments are routinely moderated down, but it's funny, they usually are moderated UP, especially if they aren't just taunts.

It's clear to me that Slashdot covers BSD a great deal and for the most part this coverage is warmly greeted by the community here. The Open Source community continues to prove that it's very Open.

1999-10-01 18:28:20 FreeBSDCon '99 Program verview (articles,bsd) (rejected)
1999-10-04 15:45:09 FreeBSDCon '99 Schedule of events (articles,bsd) (rejected)
1999-10-06 21:20:58 FreeBSDCon '99 Schedule of Events (articles,bsd) (rejected)

And these are just mine. At least 5 other people have submitted this at least twice. (The FreeBSD-Advocacy mailing list archive is updated weekly.)

It's clear to me at least that some of the /. reviewers would just as soon ignore BSD stories if they aren't Linux related. Quite surprising in light of a certain future /. Section.

Here it is though, since it'll apparantly never make it on the main page:

The FreeBSDCon '99 (Oct 17th - 23rd) website now has a complete Schedule of Events. The two "FreeBSD Internals" tutorials by Kirk McKusick are sold out, but it looks like it's not too late to register for the conference itself.

Re:Slashdot support of BSD - Questionable

[dennisp]

this site has the slides accompanying Barry Caplin's FreeBSD@USWest talk to be presented at FreeBSDCon. I found them rather interesting.
----------

Re:Slashdot is NOT a BSD advocacy site, Understand

[Lazaru5]

And what should Slashdot do to protect itself against bogus "news"? A recent thread on the FreeBSD advocacy list suggested flooding Slashdot with BSD press releases in the hopes that they would get on Roblimos nerves and force him to post them as "News" just to shut up the malcontents. Isn't that dishonest?

That HAPPENS to be Roblimo's suggestion. But you left that little tidbit out didn't you?

Before I go further let me assure you that my post was not meant to be hostile. I was bringing to attention the fact that the FreeBSDCon story was apparantly being rejected simply because it was BSD, and it seemed odd considering what's to come.

Slashdot was founded as a site for Geek news. Linux is predominant because that's what Rob uses, and it's his site. Still, BSD has it's place here. Slashdot apparantly thinks so too, or the soon to be announced new section wouldn't be forthcoming. Surely you saw reference to that while you were in the -Advocacy archive eh?

I wouldn't expect to see Linux stories on BSD sites(Daemonnews, FreeBSDRocks, FreeBSDZine, FreeBSD Advocacy, etc) any more than I would see BSD stories on sites such as Linux.com.

There was a FreeBSDCon story on Slashdot when it was first announced. It's NOT too much to ask to follow up on that when a full schedule of events is released.

When participants tried to register for the FreeBSD event, the hotel manager didn't know what the heck they were referring to.

Funny, I had no trouble whatsoever.

The behavior of WC CDROM is exemplary. They are the primary financial backer of the FreeBSD Project, and there's nothing shady about them booking the room. All such Conferences have Sponsers, and you see their names all over them. Why would this be any different, and why should they try to conceal their identity?

And no one who reads your comments will go read the archives for themselves. A Shame.

Have you ever worked for Microsoft? Maybe in Marketing?


- Avid Linux User and BSD Advocate.