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.
Good. It was starting to bec
Good.
It was starting to become increasingly difficult to chose hardware that works with open-source software, especially laptop hardware, where WiFi is essential.
People depicted, freedom
On the lyrics there are some images. It looks like a fat, evil Richard S. Stallman is the "man behind the curtain"? Is Linus Torvolds the goofy looking ".org" king? What's up the the Penguin saying, "Behowd?"
Anyway, it's sad that some--allegedly in the FSF and Linux communities--not value freedom with regards to 802.11x drivers and NDAs.
I am up for buying two 802.11b cards soon (for Linux), and I will try to avoid the uncooperative vendor chipsets.
Andrew
But who is it refering to?
Who or What is that paragraph on their lyrics page about anyway.
They say:
I don't know about the Linux kernel hackers, but I do know the FSF values the OpenBSD hackers and free wireless support very much. Just look at:
http://www.fsf.org/news/fsaward2004.html
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html
And RMS confirms that in the following interview:
Freedom, Innovation, and Convenience: The RMS Interview
About the song...
The song itself was pretty funny and witty, tho' my favorite out of all OpenBSD release songs is "E-Railed".
I like this song alot, awesom
I like this song alot, awesome work... btw, i'll try the song you talk about, thanks for the tip ;)
neo2k
[EDIT]: I agree, E-Railed is awesome :) they actually did some really good songs.