Re: Wanting opinions...

["L. V. Lammert" <lvl@omnitec.net>]

At 11:15 AM 6/17/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>1.
> >  De Raadt says his crack 60-person team of programmers, working in a 
> tightly
>focused fashion and starting with a core of tried-and-true Unix, puts out
>better code than the slapdash Linux movement.
>
>There are a lot more than 60 full time Linux programmers out there(and 
>getting
>paid for it), and the ones that make it to the top are truly the cream of the
>crop.

Sorry, deRaadt is the chief mucky-muck of OpenBSD - the 60 programmers are 
the core OBSD team. Can you imagine what it would be like to put 60 people 
in a room (albiet a big one) for a week doing team programming? Happens 
every year for the OpenBSD team (last month, actually).

Some NEAT stuff has come out of the hackathons - PF, for example, .. this 
year was Interface Groups (allowing you to apply PF rules to an interface 
without using PF rules, rather the interface group is declared with ifconfig).

>2.
> > As for Linus Torvalds, who created Linux and oversees development, De 
> Raadt
>says, "I don't know what his focus is at all anymore, but it isn't quality."
>If you believe this, try to hack something together and submit it to vger, 
>see
>how far you get without massive clean ups and testing. I admit that there is
>some old weird stuff in there for legacy reasons, but quality standards for
>new code submission are pretty high.

That's great! It doesn't account for the millions of lines of possible crap 
in the base, however, .. OpenBSD has been audited for *EVERY LINE* in the 
kernel system - Linus could never even start a project like that.

One advantage of fanatical core developers - no way you're going to get 
crappy code past them.

> > De Raadt says their beloved program is starting to look a lot like what
>Microsoft puts out. "They have the same rapid development cycle, which leads
>to crap," he says.
>I'd like to see some evidence of this "crap" or some evidence of how Linux in
>any way resembles Microsoft.

Fast development cycle, get it done, lack of central heiarchy (Remember 
'Catheral & the Bazaar?'). Big shops like Red Hat & Novell are getting it 
done right, but the 'anarchy' of many distros is problematic. Also , when 
was the last Debian release? That's the *OTHER* extreme! (might be called 
paralysis <g>!)

> > Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment
>further.
>Amen to that, if only I had his restraint.

Yep, but you don't have audited software either. Linux is one marketplace, 
.. BSD is one, .. and Microsoft is another. It's quite astounding, when you 
think about it, that an OS like OpenBSD **HAS** risen to a competitive 
status compared to the 'other' big environments. 60 Programmers? Linux 
probably has 60 programmers just INPUTTING code into the kernel! Certainly 
between SuSE & RedHat.

If I want to put a server on the 'Net, I use OpenBSD. Never had to worry 
about getting rooted (one RedHat box from a customer was on THREE DAYS 
before getting rooted).

If I want a machine that is a workgroup server or desktop system, I use 
Linux; if I want a bootable CD to diagnose a Windoze machine, I use Linux.

Differnt tools for different applications, each with it's own strengths and 
weaknesses.

         Lee


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