131–140 of 415 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of the older hardware at least require some degree of hands on administration. Rebuilding an testing a new kernel on a VAX with no remote administration features would slow things down. Having stuff easily available makes a lot of sense to me.
Not likely. Everything of that sort has a simple serial console port.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenBSD's main value is high security standards. - Is there a significant amount of people with high security standards and an interest in SGI workstation hardware? - What about people who have high security standards and Sharp Zaurus hardware? If these groups aren't as important, as say, ARM and x86 users, perhaps it could be worth dropping some of these platforms?
Read further into the thread -- specifically the messages from asshat Theo. He is absolutely opposed to anything like that.
"I really love how we keep getting advice. Anyone want to suggest we hold a bake sale?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenBSD supports a number of odd and unusual platforms and does builds on them. See http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html . Older hardware can both use a significant amount of electricity and require much more hand-holding than is possible. Virtualization and emulation are not acceptable substitutes because they claim that doing builds on e.g. VAX is one of the best ways to ensure that the code works on VAX as opposed to…
OpenBSD's main value is high security standards. - Is there a significant amount of people with high security standards and an interest in SGI workstation hardware? - What about people who have high security standards and Sharp Zaurus hardware? If these groups aren't as important, as say, ARM and x86 users, perhaps it could be worth dropping some of these platforms?
On a regular basis, we find real and serious bugs which affect all
platforms, but they are incidentally made visible on one of the
platforms we run, following that they are fixed. It is a harsh
reality which static and dynamic analysis tools have not yet resolved.Earlier quoted context omitted.
As Bitcoin expands its adoption this will become less of an issue.
Maybe. Doing anything with bitcoin today is a giant pain in the ass. Which is easier? a) Typing in a credit card number + billing address. b) - Signing up for an account at a Bitcoin exchange. - Transferring money to them (by doing a?) - Waiting for them to exchange it. - Transferring it to the recipients' wallet (this one step is kinda-easy, I'll grant) - Hoping the price of bitcoin holds stable-ish so that my bitco…
- Send Bitcoin from bank to recipients' wallet
The last point won't be an issue once Bitcoin stabilizes after its growth phase.
So let's deal with the elephant in the room: the OpenBSD project is run by complete and utter jerks. Not just Theo, but he has set the bar quite low when it comes to friendliness and tolerance of questions from younger/less experienced contributors. Linus' rants on the Linux kernel lists are almost cookie cutter copies of Theo's. There is "opinionated software" and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious,…
the shortfall on the electric bill is inexplicably $20k Quick back-of-the-envelope: At $0.12/kWh, the shortfall is about 20kW of continuous power. Do they have significant HVAC requirements? I don't think I see 20kW of iron in the two racks that get pictured.
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If the maintainers of that page are around here, I suggest putting some visualization of how close you are to the goal on there. It's amazing how much of a psychological motivator a bar filling up is.
Somebody from the Foundation said on misc that they were going to do that.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
They could probably kill support and power for some of the "dead silicon" platforms they support. If the CPU hasn't been manufactured in the last decade or two, why support it?
From Theo's comments on the mailing list: "On a regular basis, we find real and serious bugs which affect all platforms, but they are incidentally made visible on one of the platforms we run, following that they are fixed. It is a harsh reality which static and dynamic analysis tools have not yet resolved. " "Regarding shutting them down, there other social problems. Yes, we remove about 10 of the architectures. We'd…
If the answer is "NetBSD", let's consider that the expenses in 2012 for the NetBSD foundation were $6k [0].
Either they don't support the architectures the same way or they are spending the money in a smarter way.
[0] http://www.netbsd.org/foundation/reports/financial/2012.html
A little bit off topic, but this reminds me again of how much the web needs an easy payment system (as easy as in-app purchases in mobile). EFF, wikipedia, I often see notices or news of things they're doing and think to myself that I should donate. But I'm usually in the middle of something and stopping everything to take out my wallet, get the CC, fill out a form, etc. is just too disruptive. So I try to remind mys…