Continuing a long standing tradition, OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt [interview] announced the availability of the official OpenBSD 3.6 [forum] song titled, "Pond-erosa Puff (live)". Each song has its own unique sound and theme different from the one before. For 3.6, it sounds to be inspired by the late Johnny Cash, and the theme is regarding software that starts out being free, then changes licenses. Three specific projects mentioned are XFree86, IPFilter, [story] and Apache:
"While not exactly bait-and-switch, this is something which has been causing the community continual grief, and therefore we decided to honour a few of the projects that have decided to go non-free. After all.. having gone non-free, noone is going to remember them in the end. This song is dedicated to a few worthy groups who have made this Free-to-Non-Free transition with their offerings in the last few years".
Following the above announcement, Theo warned that OpenBSD CD sales have dropped dramatically, "if this follows previous sales .. shall I say curves... that we have seen, this will make it difficult for us to make releases on CD in the future." The decrease in CD sales is partially attributed to an increase in FTP installs. OpenBSD 3.6 became available for preorder one month ago [story], scheduled for release on November 1'st, 2004.
From: Theo de Raadt [email blocked] To: misc Subject: 3.6 Song Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:30:32 -0600 The 3.6 song is available http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html We typically make the song available a little bit early to remind people that CD sales keep our project operating...
From: Theo de Raadt [email blocked] Subject: OpenBSD 3.6 Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:02:56 -0600 I think now is a good time to say that I am disappointed at the pre-orders we have received for the OpenBSD 3.6 CD, thus far. We know that increasingly people are moving to FTP installs (especially since we made it just as easy as the CD), but the donations which could balance out the loss in revenue are not coming in are not even close to balancing this out. If this follows previous sales .. shall I say curves... that we have seen, this will make it difficult for us to make releases on CD in the future. I thought I should say something. Of course, I don't know what there is that we can do about it. But please don't give me or the list suggestions. Suggestions will not get us anywhere.
I have an idea
Run a business, not a charity.
Great idea!
Wow! Why didn't we think of doing that before! Run the project like a business where we sell a product! Like, say, the Gaim project, or the Linux kernel project, or X.org!
Come now. OpenBSD isn't a "Charity" either. Theo has a personal commitment to free software (much like RMS) and sells a product (OpenBSD on nice, portable installable media) to fund the creation of a core aspect of that product (OpenBSD) just like FSF (who sells the whole GNU project on CD to fund the GNU project). It's just like giving away Fedora and selling RE 3. Having OpenBSD on disk is a value add to OpenBSD to encourage you to give money, which incidentally continues the growth of the project.
In exactly how many forums ha
In exactly how many forums have you posted that identical comment?
http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20040929130241&pid=12
Theo blows again
Theo really is a hotheaded asshole, isn't he?
For anyone to whom it isn't obvious: Theo's crap about Apache being non-free is just that, crap. He refuses to clarify his position or to even read the license, only saying "there is more stuff, it must be bad!".
not that simple
Theo has been right on these occasions before.
And regarding Apache's new license FSF has warned that it is not GPL compatible, which is usually a warning something is not right (that is enforces "additional restrictions").
So don't dismiss this.
have *you* read it? Some e
have *you* read it?
Some examples:
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suggestions
> But please don't give me or the list suggestions
If you want to have more customers then you should program for them!
I love OpenBSDs PF filtering system, but I only install OpenBSD for testing and seeing what's new. So I make a download via web because it runs only for some hours and then I delete it.
I can't choose for OpenBSD because lack of drivers: dvb-tv (for a videorecording-server), isdn-capi (for a fax2mail- and answering2mail-gateway) and/or bluetooth (for syncing my mobile phone)
That should do _one_ router/fileserver PC because energy for 2 or more servers becomes very costly here!
Another point: can't use OpenBSD as a desktop system because it's a bit slow.
Final short words: please do a _little_ bit for the "masses" and you will be happy with cd sales again.
I would like to switch more o
I would like to switch more of the servers I manage to OpenBSD, but
1) 12 months of security patches is not very much
2) applying patches is not that easy as apt-get dist-upgrade
Thus, most of the machines are running Debian woody.
(P.S.: ... and yes, I am buying the CD regularely)
If you love PF, you should us
If you love PF, you should use OpenBSD on your router/firewall. That's what I use it for.
I would buy it but...
I like OpenBSD and would buy a cd every release if BibleTime was ported to it. In what I do I need that program and the last time I looked it was not ported to OpenBSD. Some may say RTFM and do it myself. No thanks. For now I'm using FreeBSD.
http://www.bibletime.info/
What OpenBSD lacks
What OpenBSD lacks is a proper upgrade mechanism. When many Linux distributions and even other BSD flavors have easy to use reliable updates and upgrades, where it isn't necessary to reinstall all the OS every half years, OpenBSD isn't competitive enough alternative.
I guess that one reason why OpenBSD devs haven't wanted to develop apt-get/portage like upgraes, is precisely that they've hoped that people would buy each new release on a CD?, Well, wrong assumption. There are too many competitors offering better service in this respect.
Another thing that would increse selling would be better support for desktop usage. I know that something like 3D will probably never be important to server/security-oriented OpenBSd folks. But if there were better support for such things, quite a many people (including me) might consider running OpenBSD as the only OS for all purposes.
I like OpenBSD a lot, but it just lacks features I've come to expect from a modern OS.
Upgrades
I agree about the upgrades problem. It's *work* to keep an OpenBSD system up-to-date. I don't mind warming up a few brain cells on an initial install, but after that... ugh. Regardless of other factors, Gentoo and Debian are much easier in that regard.