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I'm always so surprised that OpenBSD seems to have a much smaller/tighter group of people working on the core[1]. Yet they seem to keep up and not only that, bu
by janvdberg 11y ago
I'm always so surprised that OpenBSD seems to have a much smaller/tighter group of people working on the core[1]. Yet they seem to keep up and not only that, but also lead the way in some case (e.g. LibreSSL).
([1] Especially compared to the Linux kernel. Looking at maillist activity or number of different people, the Linux kernel seems to have a lot more people working on it).
- gecko 11y agoIt's worth remembering that OpenBSD does less--by design. There is no ZFS/Btrfs; there is no LVM; there is no SEOpenBSD, there is no support for mobile phone drivers, and so on. Linux can do many, many things that OpenBSD cannot do, and is making no effort to try to do. But this is a good thing. It's why you're seeing OpenBSD "keep up": they've decided to keep things as simple as possible to enable them to be as secure as possible while still being a real unix, and what you're seeing is the fruit of that decision. The small team can now keep itself incredibly relevant, and can relatively easily stay on top of things in that space. The simplicity means fewer bugs and better security design, and more time to focus on third-party ecosystem support (e.g., LibreSSL, SSH, and so on). In other words: it's not that OpenBSD is truly keeping up with Linux in general. In a very real sense, it isn't. What it is doing is keeping up, and even surpassing it, in a few very important, very key areas, and that in turn is keeping OpenBSD incredibly useful and incredibly relevant.