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There is nothing that every IT person _needs_ to know about OpenBSD. Most probably do not know it exists, and there is no consequence.

rewmie 3y ago
I agree. To underline the futility of this article, the factoid it leads with was how many years OpenBSD has been around. That bit of trivia is completely irrelevant and has no technical meaning or direct implication. No one ever asked during unscheduled downtime "quick, does anyone know how many years OpenBSD has been around for?"
- mmmrk 3y ago
  It does carry meaning, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect. It's not something to know during downtimes, but at the point in time where you decide which technology to use going forward. Contrast this with the lifetimes of popular Javascript frameworks.
- csydas 3y ago
  maturity of a project definitely matters; in larger businesses, the maturity of a product and how long it's had to "get past the teething stage" is very important, and for projects with public repos/issue trackers, you can get a nice feel for how the devs handle critical bugs going into it, or check if a major pain point for you has come up before and how they handled it. the article is a call to get you comfortable picking/using BSD, and from my point of view it's reasonable to advertise its maturity.
  - paulnpace 3y ago
    I'm not a professional in any of this, but just from reading comments it appears that devs seem to prefer the latest, greatest, coolest thing while admins seem to prefer the oldest, robustest, boringest thing.
    - themadturk 3y ago
      Can't speak for devs, but admins definitely prefer old, robust and boring. Smart devs prefer admins with these preferences, though they might not be conscious of it.
    - csydas 3y ago
      I can completely get that understanding; I'm not enough of a programmer to really make sense of a lot of low level code, but enough that I can understand the type of issues they've solved and how they did it. I suspect you are correct because newest and greatest typically solve a problem, and that's the focus for the devs. the more senior devs I know take an "optimistic but cautious" approach, while less experienced devs/non-devs typically just see an answer to their particular problem and want to use it, as defending the use and the few broken instances is typically easier than solving the issue without the latest and greatest. and I can get that easily admins probably like old and trusted because boring is exciting for them; for a few of the systems I admin, it's great to have a few on debian/bsd where they've proven that I don't need to babysit these systems; they're never fully out of the equation when troubleshooting, but it comes up rarely, and if worst comes to worst, a reboot on these systems is typically so fast and non-disruptive that it's an easy decision, which often helps and then the issue never returns. sure it's not good that I had to reboot, but a down time of 10 seconds while I boot and it never comes up again is appealing.
    - sbuk 3y ago
      Devs on Hacker News. You'll find many outside of this bubble that either don't care, don't know about it or are happy with their tools.
    - dale_glass 3y ago
      Code is maintenance heavy and tends to have interdependencies on other related code. Eg, I wouldn't use qt4 today because it's dead, so if something is wrong with it it's now my problem to figure out how to fix it. Meanwhile qt6 is under active use and development, so I'm much more likely to find help and bug fixes, and developer interest. And it's less likely to say, stop building because cmake deprecated some ancient feature, or uses some ancient and now incompatible library.
jamal-kumar 3y ago
It is a little weird seeing Peter N. M. Hansteen of all people use a clickbaity headline, but it's still not a bad thing to be aware of at least. The man will evangelize his favorite thing, he's a nice fellow. I think OpenBSD will still be relevant outside of its own OS realm as long as people are still using software that comes from the project (openssh, tmux etc).
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> There is nothing that every IT person _needs_ to know about OpenBSD. I absolutely agree. Such clickbait headlines are often strange. For a more macabre example, consider the headline "10 [things] you can't live without". This means that if you don't own these ten things, you will die.
abwizz 3y ago
> Most probably do not know it exists, and there is no consequence. i can relate with the first part, but the second seems rather far fetched
ladyanita22 3y ago
Every single time I see something related to BSDs, I think the same. How tiring... For more than a decade, every single thing related to BSDs has been largely irrelevant. Every. Single. Thing. Nobody cares about that, the only thing BSDs had was their license (vs. the GPL), and that's not entirely clear to have been good at all for the ecosystem (because, clearly, Linux has enjoyed a much greater development). Nowadays, even in embedded it's either Linux or RTOS, nothing like BSDs at all, so the GPL is clearly a non-issue.
- sturob 3y ago
  Do you use openssh?
  - ladyanita22 3y ago
    Yeah, I have used it happily on Linux
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
  There's a certain delicious irony in using the socket API to complain that the only thing BSD brought to the table was the license.
  - cempaka 3y ago
    I laughed, thanks. Do you think the parent also makes use of containers?
  - ladyanita22 3y ago
    *the only thing they bring to the table I'm not talking about past pros, but current advantages.
- timc3 3y ago
  You clearly need to learn more about BSD. They have a lot to offer, including the community of people that maintain and work with them.

rewmie 3y ago

I agree. To underline the futility of this article, the factoid it leads with was how many years OpenBSD has been around. That bit of trivia is completely irrelevant and has no technical meaning or direct implication. No one ever asked during unscheduled downtime "quick, does anyone know how many years OpenBSD has been around for?"

mmmrk 3y ago
It does carry meaning, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect. It's not something to know during downtimes, but at the point in time where you decide which technology to use going forward. Contrast this with the lifetimes of popular Javascript frameworks.
csydas 3y ago
maturity of a project definitely matters; in larger businesses, the maturity of a product and how long it's had to "get past the teething stage" is very important, and for projects with public repos/issue trackers, you can get a nice feel for how the devs handle critical bugs going into it, or check if a major pain point for you has come up before and how they handled it. the article is a call to get you comfortable picking/using BSD, and from my point of view it's reasonable to advertise its maturity.
- paulnpace 3y ago
  I'm not a professional in any of this, but just from reading comments it appears that devs seem to prefer the latest, greatest, coolest thing while admins seem to prefer the oldest, robustest, boringest thing.
  - themadturk 3y ago
    Can't speak for devs, but admins definitely prefer old, robust and boring. Smart devs prefer admins with these preferences, though they might not be conscious of it.
  - csydas 3y ago
    I can completely get that understanding; I'm not enough of a programmer to really make sense of a lot of low level code, but enough that I can understand the type of issues they've solved and how they did it. I suspect you are correct because newest and greatest typically solve a problem, and that's the focus for the devs. the more senior devs I know take an "optimistic but cautious" approach, while less experienced devs/non-devs typically just see an answer to their particular problem and want to use it, as defending the use and the few broken instances is typically easier than solving the issue without the latest and greatest. and I can get that easily admins probably like old and trusted because boring is exciting for them; for a few of the systems I admin, it's great to have a few on debian/bsd where they've proven that I don't need to babysit these systems; they're never fully out of the equation when troubleshooting, but it comes up rarely, and if worst comes to worst, a reboot on these systems is typically so fast and non-disruptive that it's an easy decision, which often helps and then the issue never returns. sure it's not good that I had to reboot, but a down time of 10 seconds while I boot and it never comes up again is appealing.
  - sbuk 3y ago
    Devs on Hacker News. You'll find many outside of this bubble that either don't care, don't know about it or are happy with their tools.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Code is maintenance heavy and tends to have interdependencies on other related code. Eg, I wouldn't use qt4 today because it's dead, so if something is wrong with it it's now my problem to figure out how to fix it. Meanwhile qt6 is under active use and development, so I'm much more likely to find help and bug fixes, and developer interest. And it's less likely to say, stop building because cmake deprecated some ancient feature, or uses some ancient and now incompatible library.

jamal-kumar 3y ago

It is a little weird seeing Peter N. M. Hansteen of all people use a clickbaity headline, but it's still not a bad thing to be aware of at least. The man will evangelize his favorite thing, he's a nice fellow. I think OpenBSD will still be relevant outside of its own OS realm as long as people are still using software that comes from the project (openssh, tmux etc).

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> There is nothing that every IT person _needs_ to know about OpenBSD. I absolutely agree. Such clickbait headlines are often strange. For a more macabre example, consider the headline "10 [things] you can't live without". This means that if you don't own these ten things, you will die.

abwizz 3y ago

> Most probably do not know it exists, and there is no consequence. i can relate with the first part, but the second seems rather far fetched

ladyanita22 3y ago

Every single time I see something related to BSDs, I think the same. How tiring... For more than a decade, every single thing related to BSDs has been largely irrelevant. Every. Single. Thing. Nobody cares about that, the only thing BSDs had was their license (vs. the GPL), and that's not entirely clear to have been good at all for the ecosystem (because, clearly, Linux has enjoyed a much greater development). Nowadays, even in embedded it's either Linux or RTOS, nothing like BSDs at all, so the GPL is clearly a non-issue.

sturob 3y ago
Do you use openssh?
- ladyanita22 3y ago
  Yeah, I have used it happily on Linux
inferiorhuman 3y ago
There's a certain delicious irony in using the socket API to complain that the only thing BSD brought to the table was the license.
- cempaka 3y ago
  I laughed, thanks. Do you think the parent also makes use of containers?
- ladyanita22 3y ago
  *the only thing they bring to the table I'm not talking about past pros, but current advantages.
timc3 3y ago
You clearly need to learn more about BSD. They have a lot to offer, including the community of people that maintain and work with them.