For those of you not on openbsd-announce, the following may be of
interest (see end for my commentary).

----- Forwarded message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----

Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 11:00:06 -0700 (MST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Sun to ship OpenBSD on its Intel-based workstations
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

April 1, 2003, 10:50 AM MST

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), in a surprise announcement, has
stated that it will offer the OpenBSD operating system as the default
operating system for its Intel-based workstations.  The move came
shortly after Sun announced the death of its own Linux distribution,
internally known as "Mad Hatter Linux".

This new direction comes on the heels of a strategic partnership
between Intel and Fujitsu, long-time Sun partner and manufacturer
of Sparc chips, to build competing Linux-based servers and mainframe
computers.

"Our polling shows a strong demand for Sun-branded Intel workstations
running OpenBSD" said head of Open Source Solutions Brad S. Downey.
"Customers who wish to run Solaris generally do so on our
enterprise-strength UltraSparc-based machines.  Anyone can sell a
PC running Linux, here at Sun we strive to differentiate ourselves
and produce a product with superior hardware and software.  With
its dedication to industrial strength security OpenBSD allows us
to do just that."  Both OpenBSD and Solaris have their roots in a
version of Unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley.
Downey stated "Sun engineers are more comfortable inside the OpenBSD
kernel than they are inside Linux.  Furthermore, Sun has shipped
OpenSSH, an OpenBSD spin off project, for the past several releases
so we already have good contacts within the OpenBSD leadership."

When asked about the recent tiff between OpenBSD lead Theo de Raadt
and Sun regarding hardware documentation for the UltraSparc III
CPU, Downey said "We have a good rapport with the OpenBSD team.
Our assistance in gaining access to hardware documentation has been
invaluable to them regarding the continued development of their
UltraSparc port."  When asked whether he was worried about OpenBSD
on the UltraSparc taking market share from Sun's one Solaris (tm)
operating system, Downey had the following to say: "We don't see
ourselves as being in direct competition.  While it's true that we
both give away operating systems that run on the UltraSparc CPU,
Solaris has a much higher version number and our customers appreciate
that.  Now, if OpenBSD were to release a version 10 tomorrow we
might have a problem."

----- End forwarded message -----

Perhaps the last sentence explains why Red Hat decided to jump to 9.0.

-- 
Soren Harward
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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