On Apr 5, 2006, at 1:01 PM, Daniel Ouellet wrote:
Donald J. Ankney wrote:
.... Vendor support is a sometimes criteria.
Well, if the Vendor support is so critical, then you will be better
served with OpenBSD for what they provide in their default system
and that's second to none! By far!
For what is provided, I'll agree. Sometimes I need things that are
outside of that. For example, about 9 months ago, we needed a
solution for video editing and collaboration on G5 workstations
running OS X. The cheapest solution I could find for a fibre-channel
SAN was Apple's XSAN. I'm not a fan of OS X Server as an operating
system (it's too reliant on clumsy GUI management and customizing
configuration files by hand tends to confuse it), and while I
probably could have found a product that would use the same low-cost
hardware in OpenBSD, I didn't want to end up having to debug code
myself. As it turns out, yes the Apple code had bugs, but I had a
patch about 2 weeks after reporting the bugs.
If I'm running an Open Source product (which is most of the time), I
generally compile it on OpenBSD. This is where OpenBSD is strong.
Sometimes, though, my needs push me towards a commercial solution
(XSan, VMWare, etc). I'm not going to try and implement it in an
unsupported environment; even if the problem is in the product code,
they aren't even going to take a bug report from me if I'm running
OpenBSD.
It is strange to me that ALL the open problem I have ARE with
product I do have maintenance and software support WITH Vendor, but
ALL that I run on OpenBSD runs without problem!
I'm also going to agree that the "bazaar" development practice
produces stabler, more secure software. Ideally, I'd have the
resources to develop my own solutions when I can't find an
appropriate open source product, but it doesn't always work that way
and I end up recommending a software purchase.
So, the argument of "Vendor support is a sometimes criteria."
really doesn't mean ANYTHING to me anymore and real life example
proved it many times over!
Again do as you see fit and run what you like, but DON'T think
using OpenBSD is a mistakes and that it is NOT supported! That's
where many not using it for that argument are wrong big time.
I think you're misunderstanding me here -- I wasn't ever claiming
that OpenBSD lacks support as on OS. I've never had trouble finding
answers when I need them. Commercial products that may be able to run
on OpenBSD are generally unsupported. Even many open source product
won't necessarily take bug reports if it's running in a BSD instead
of on a "supported" kernel.
Again, let me stress that nothing is wrong with OpenBSD. I love
OpenBSD. The problem is in a marketplace that values features above
security/stability and thinks time to market is more important than
writing clean, portable code.
