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OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

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Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#341

Post by wfraser »

chrissmithuk wrote: post #259
marcosdumay wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Info pages are hypertext, and because of that they are better suited for a complete manual for a complex program than man pages. But we have other hypertext formats available. It'd be better if GNU started using some format that everybody already usees and knows how to write.

This fundamentally goes against the Unix philosophy though which is to provide small well-defined parts from which you can construct a complete solution from. If you need a complex manual for a complex program, something is wrong.

"GNU's Not Unix."

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#342

Post by Aqueous »

Perhaps it would be best to move all non-specialized builds into Amazon or Rackspace or some automated CI service, and to move the specialized builds to a differnet, less expensive place, or keep them where they are. At the very least your electricity costs will go down.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#343

Post by ThinkBeat »

A lot of the discussion so far revolves around whether or not Theo can be abrasive. Who cares?

I would rather have a non compromising, highly secure operating system available, with all the source code available for me to see (none of that binary blob business) than a mediocre operating system that was somewhat secure from a guy who was really chill.

Funding the OpenBSD project is not a decision about the personality of Theo, its a decision on the usefulness and and the quality of work that the OpenBSD community creates.

When I am setting up and configuring and relying on a server with OpenBSD, I could care less if Theo is eccentric or not. I am in awe of the technical brilliance of OpenBSD.

And yes I have donated and do donate to the project, and I encourage clients I have that are running on OpenBSD to do the same.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#344

Post by ThinkBeat »

A lot of the discussion so far revolves around whether or not Theo can be abrasive. Who cares?

I would rather have a non compromising, highly secure operating system available, with all the source code available for me to see (none of that binary blob business) than a mediocre operating system that was somewhat secure from a guy who was really chill.

Funding the OpenBSD project is not a decision about the personality of Theo, its a decision on the usefulness and and the quality of work that the OpenBSD community creates.

When I am setting up and configuring and relying on a server with OpenBSD, I could care less if Theo is eccentric or not. I am in awe of the technical brilliance of OpenBSD.

And yes I have donated and do donate to the project, and I encourage clients I have that are running on OpenBSD to do the same.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#345

Post by chrissmithuk »

rbanffy wrote: post #336
chrissmithuk wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually most can't be emulated because emulators don't exist and those which can typically can't be emulated correctly (Sparc emulators for example which are notoriously sparse and bad quality). Some of the architectures also have different endianess and incredibly complicated peripherals to the cost effective host machines as well meaning that it's actually more power efficient to run native. A headless 100MHz VAXs…

OTOH, the preservation of such historically relevant architectures would benefit enormously from emulation. This is an aspect that should get some attention and which could, possibly, open up another funding avenue to the project as a side effect.

Not really. The OS syscall interface, ABI and the fact everything is abstracted via your C compiler normalises the differences between the machines pretty well meaning you only end up dealing with portability issues.

Portability issues is where real hardware benefits. It's where you have battles of unusual register sizes, endianess, host/network order differences, different memory models and memory protection, different performance characteristics, different timings and different exploits.

Unless the emulation is 100% accurate, including timing, which is a really difficult thing to do (look at the effort MAME goes to), then the benefits over real hardware is moot.

Emulators are also expensive to write due to the above, have their own bugs and don't always recreate the bugs in the real hardware (which are sometimes exploitable).

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#346

Post by forgottenpass »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #50

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,…

There is "opinionated software" and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious, ego-maniac.

They're more or less the same thing, one is how you see people you like, the other is how you see people that rub you the wrong way.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#347

Post by chrissmithuk »

wfraser wrote: post #341
chrissmithuk wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This fundamentally goes against the Unix philosophy though which is to provide small well-defined parts from which you can construct a complete solution from. If you need a complex manual for a complex program, something is wrong.

"GNU's Not Unix."

Which is probably the greatest problem with it.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#348

Post by robot_t »

SwellJoe wrote: post #239
weland wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's an important point. The Linux manpages are a joke, they're half useless almost all the time.

The most offensive man pages are GNU project pages that effectively say, "for real documentation read the info page". Which, as someone that can never remember how to use info, is frustrating and just serves to piss me off...my first thought is "and a big fuck you to you, too". And then I look it up online so I don't have to read how to use info before I can read how to use the command I was looking for docs on. I do…

I was like you once, then I learned you could do e.g.: info coreutils|less

Now I no longer have anger management issues

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#349

Post by rbanffy »

chrissmithuk wrote: post #345
rbanffy wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, the preservation of such historically relevant architectures would benefit enormously from emulation. This is an aspect that should get some attention and which could, possibly, open up another funding avenue to the project as a side effect.

Not really. The OS syscall interface, ABI and the fact everything is abstracted via your C compiler normalises the differences between the machines pretty well meaning you only end up dealing with portability issues. Portability issues is where real hardware benefits. It's where you have battles of unusual register sizes, endianess, host/network order differences, different memory models and memory protection, differ…

I was thinking about MAME (more specifically, about MESS). If two groups benefit from a single effort, it seems to be an good investment, even if it costs nearly twice as much.

Also, using emulated hardware could cut down the usage of the real pieces, which could then be better studied and preserved. Doing less builds on vintage hardware is, actually, a good idea.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#350

Post by aaronem »

lobotryas wrote: post #152
sliverstorm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, clearly. But it's been a month since the initial ask, and this sort of "threat": the fact is right now, OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on. suggests the necessary $20k (cash) has not been forthcoming. P.S. I understand it's not a threat in the sense of ransom etc, but the most correct word is not coming to my mind.

I completely agree with your association. In my view OpenBSD is very plainly holding itself hostage for $20,000 cash and expecting everyone to accomodate them.

Oh, right, I've seen this movie before. [1]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_JOGmXpe5I

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