A month before the official release of OpenBSD 3.7 [forum], OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt [interview] anounced the availability of the official release song titled, "Wizard of OS". Each release of OpenBSD has its own song with a unique sound and theme [story], each available for download in ogg and mp3 format. The Wizard of OS is ten minutes long and inspired by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, a playfully appropriate matchup. Theo describes the theme as relating to "something big we have been dealing with over the last 6 months of the release -- our fight to get programming documentation and redistributable firmwares [story]." He goes on to suggest:

"Want to help us? Avoid Intel Centrino, Broadcom, TI, or Connexant PrismGT chipsets. Heck, avoid buying even regular old pre-G Prism products, to send a message. If you can, buy 802.11 products using chips by Realtek, Ralink, Atmel, ADMTek, Atheros. Our manual pages attempt to explain which vendors (ie. D-Link) box which chipsets into which product."

From: Theo de Raadt
To: misc AT openbsd.org
Subject: 3.7 song
Date: Mon, 04/18/2005 - 21:24

I have just made available the OpenBSD 3.7 song at

	http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html

Please be sure read the commentary I have written next to the lyrics
of the song.  The artwork and lyrics for each of our releases relate
to something big we have been dealing with over the last 6 months of
the release -- our fight to get programming documentation and
redistributable firmwares.

Normally the song is released about a month before the CD distribution
gets into full swing.  We would appreciate if people can buy some of
our CDs and tshirts and such, so that we can continue doing this;

	http://www.openbsd.org/orders.html

We've got the passion to keep doing this; but we do depend on you guys
to supply some of the resources :)

ps.  Thanks for those of you who were very helpful at communicating to
the vendors about why open documentation for stuff is good.  We have
had some successes, and we will have more in the future.  All closed
vendors open or fail, eventually.

• Archive of above thread
• KernelTrap interview with Theo de Raadt