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" OpenBSD simply does not have enough developers to influence the direction of projects like X.org, GNOME, or KDE. " I, and several of my colleagues, have been

" OpenBSD simply does not have enough developers to influence the direction of projects like X.org, GNOME, or KDE. " I, and several of my colleagues, have been running dozens of OpenBSD systems for about 10+ years. In particularly, OpenBSD had an elegant IPv6 Firewall/failover mechanism about 5 years before Cisco finally decided to port Active/Failover to their ASA platform - so we were forced through sheer necessity to deploy OpenBSD in what was otherwise an all Cisco shop. Further to that, OpenBSD's ability to track several hundred thousand shortlived UDP sessions state fully on inexpensive x86 systems saved us several 10s of thousands of dollars over the equivalent Cisco systems. At one point, all of HPs internal infrastructure was transitioned off of the Cisco ASA onto OpenBSD firewalls - OpenBSD is reliable, and industrial. Needless to say, I'm a fan of OpenBSD and consider it critical to the various infrastructures that we deploy. I've never been tempted (nor, to my knowledge, have my colleagues) to even consider installing X-Windows on an OpenBSD system. So the entire thesis of this article is beyond silly to me.

thaumaturgy 14y ago
Well, the question is how long OpenBSD will continue to survive without a modern desktop version. Linux has been enjoying a remarkable growth of support over the last few years thanks primarily to its slow incursion of the desktop market. Can OpenBSD continue to live only as a server / router / network service operating system for the long term? I don't know. And, even in the server market, it's falling behind in terms of support. The VPS market has gotten really big really quickly; the OpenBSD team has legitimate concerns about trying to run a "secure by default" operating system in a virtualized environment, but unfortunately that point of view has resulted in OpenBSD being completely unavailable on Linode, prgrmr, EC2, Slicehost/Rackspace, etc. I have no idea if OpenBSD's installed user base is growing or shrinking overall. But, I expect that it's rapidly shrinking relative to the amount of support that Linux is currently enjoying, and that's going to lead to OpenBSD getting less and less upstream support, which is eventually going to strangle the project. The small OpenBSD development team simply won't have the resources to rewrite all of the big upstream packages. (And I'm not talking about Gnome here; OpenBSD already has its own httpd and its own smtpd, for example.)
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  > Linux has been enjoying a remarkable growth of support over the last few years thanks primarily to its slow incursion of the desktop market. Please provide a source for this.
- hazov 14y ago
  The question is, like the parent post said, for networking OpenBSD is actually better in my experience. This has little to do with user base, a startup that I was working on had a firewall cluster made of OpenBSD systems using CARP and pfsync we tried using Linux and conntrack, since the admins are Linux guys, but the OpenBSD solution was more stable for us. In this regard I think OpenBSD worked better, for everything else, including workstations, Linux was well above anything that OpenBSD could offer.
- agumonkey 14y ago
  Desktop would be a waste of energy. Already too crowded of a market, and the single point of success would be hardware support.
  - thaumaturgy 14y ago
    Perhaps my comment was too long. 1. I posit that without desktop support, OpenBSD will continue to lose upstream support, including support for packages related to network services, 2. and that this might eventually kill OpenBSD, because they don't have the resources to continue reimplementing their own version of everything, as they have with e.g. httpd and smtpd, 3. and that OpenBSD already has nearly nonexistent support in a new, rapidly growing server market (VPS).
    - agumonkey 14y ago
      My bad, I thought this was a separate point.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  "Well, the question is how long OpenBSD will continue to survive without a modern desktop version." How long will Cisco IOS continue to survive without a modern desktop version? Even our most die-hard OpenBSD "everywhere" fanatics (and we have a number of them) don't run it as their Desktop OS, and have never suggested you should. OpenBSD is a server/router/network service OS. OpenBSD has found it's sweet spot. It owns the market for stable, well defined, well documented, consistent, x86 Firewalls and secure servers. People need to realize that trying to shove OpenBSD onto the desktop is the ultimate case of square peg/round hole.
TheGateKeeper 14y ago
Given your anecdotes, what do they have to do with the statement you're quoting? It really seems out of context.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  I was trying to make it clear that discussing the future of OpenBSD as a function of how much upstream support for Desktop Performance it has, it as meaningful as discussing the future of Cisco IOS as a function of how many video cards it supports. Not meaningful at all.
ajross 14y ago
The linked messages from Marc Espie are specifically about desktop software. And the impetus for the discussion was the fact that upcoming Gnome versions are moving towards requiring systemd. None of the server-focused elements of OpenBSD are in any immediate danger of "linux pollution" (especially the network stuff), so you don't have to worry. Many other people involved in the OS do, apparently.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
>...saved us several 10s of thousands of dollars over the equivalent Cisco systems. If companies donated even 5 to 10% of the savings to the projects(if they're able to i.e), then the open source projects wouldn't have such trouble with lack of manpower.

thaumaturgy 14y ago

Well, the question is how long OpenBSD will continue to survive without a modern desktop version. Linux has been enjoying a remarkable growth of support over the last few years thanks primarily to its slow incursion of the desktop market. Can OpenBSD continue to live only as a server / router / network service operating system for the long term? I don't know. And, even in the server market, it's falling behind in terms of support. The VPS market has gotten really big really quickly; the OpenBSD team has legitimate concerns about trying to run a "secure by default" operating system in a virtualized environment, but unfortunately that point of view has resulted in OpenBSD being completely unavailable on Linode, prgrmr, EC2, Slicehost/Rackspace, etc. I have no idea if OpenBSD's installed user base is growing or shrinking overall. But, I expect that it's rapidly shrinking relative to the amount of support that Linux is currently enjoying, and that's going to lead to OpenBSD getting less and less upstream support, which is eventually going to strangle the project. The small OpenBSD development team simply won't have the resources to rewrite all of the big upstream packages. (And I'm not talking about Gnome here; OpenBSD already has its own httpd and its own smtpd, for example.)

jeremyjh 14y ago
> Linux has been enjoying a remarkable growth of support over the last few years thanks primarily to its slow incursion of the desktop market. Please provide a source for this.
hazov 14y ago
The question is, like the parent post said, for networking OpenBSD is actually better in my experience. This has little to do with user base, a startup that I was working on had a firewall cluster made of OpenBSD systems using CARP and pfsync we tried using Linux and conntrack, since the admins are Linux guys, but the OpenBSD solution was more stable for us. In this regard I think OpenBSD worked better, for everything else, including workstations, Linux was well above anything that OpenBSD could offer.
agumonkey 14y ago
Desktop would be a waste of energy. Already too crowded of a market, and the single point of success would be hardware support.
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  Perhaps my comment was too long. 1. I posit that without desktop support, OpenBSD will continue to lose upstream support, including support for packages related to network services, 2. and that this might eventually kill OpenBSD, because they don't have the resources to continue reimplementing their own version of everything, as they have with e.g. httpd and smtpd, 3. and that OpenBSD already has nearly nonexistent support in a new, rapidly growing server market (VPS).
  - agumonkey 14y ago
    My bad, I thought this was a separate point.
ghshephard 14y ago
"Well, the question is how long OpenBSD will continue to survive without a modern desktop version." How long will Cisco IOS continue to survive without a modern desktop version? Even our most die-hard OpenBSD "everywhere" fanatics (and we have a number of them) don't run it as their Desktop OS, and have never suggested you should. OpenBSD is a server/router/network service OS. OpenBSD has found it's sweet spot. It owns the market for stable, well defined, well documented, consistent, x86 Firewalls and secure servers. People need to realize that trying to shove OpenBSD onto the desktop is the ultimate case of square peg/round hole.

TheGateKeeper 14y ago

Given your anecdotes, what do they have to do with the statement you're quoting? It really seems out of context.

ghshephard 14y ago
I was trying to make it clear that discussing the future of OpenBSD as a function of how much upstream support for Desktop Performance it has, it as meaningful as discussing the future of Cisco IOS as a function of how many video cards it supports. Not meaningful at all.

ajross 14y ago

The linked messages from Marc Espie are specifically about desktop software. And the impetus for the discussion was the fact that upcoming Gnome versions are moving towards requiring systemd. None of the server-focused elements of OpenBSD are in any immediate danger of "linux pollution" (especially the network stuff), so you don't have to worry. Many other people involved in the OS do, apparently.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

>...saved us several 10s of thousands of dollars over the equivalent Cisco systems. If companies donated even 5 to 10% of the savings to the projects(if they're able to i.e), then the open source projects wouldn't have such trouble with lack of manpower.