Quote:
Originally Posted by jggimi
Few OpenBSD developers -- Project members -- visit this forum. Since your question is aimed at them, you have a better shot at reaching them via official channels. Approximately half of the developers follow misc@, which is where such questions should be posted.
However, I think I know what some of the answers you would receive are likely to be, were you to reach out to the Project. The most polite comments you might receive may be:
- "You are thinking of the most popular architectures only. We have 17 architectures to support in production, and another 8 architectures in development. We are only able to provide a limited set of install media choices with our limited resources, and as well we provide a limited set of tools for Windows users to aid their transition, as long as they have access to install media or a virtual machine. The latter are freely available."
- "Good idea. Do the work, submit it, and we'll look at it and see if your application might be added to the /pub/OpenBSD/<release>/tools directory."
You are likely to get less polite comments, also.
Keep in mind, the OpenBSD Project do not include pleasing us. The members don't see the user community as a market with unmet needs. Instead they write what they need for their own use, and we lucky users go along for the ride.
Patches and new modules the community at large produce are reviewed and graciously included in the base if acceptable. (If not accepted, usually advice is given as to what can be done to improve the code or to make it acceptable, if possible.) Feature requests are ignored, unless they include hardware, funding, or both to meet the needs of the effort.
This is all my opinion about the culture of the Project, of course. But it comes from watching the rough-and-tumble of discussions on the mailing lists ... and making my own share of mistakes there.  |
Thanks for your candid reply.
All I can say is the cat is out of the bag: someone is already offering memstick images via Sourceforge. So users who are not OpenBSD developers are going to get the images, one way or another.
Another thing I did mot mention- curiously, OpenBSD does not include makefs. That is a very useful utility in making bootable images. It's been accepted by all the other BSD's. The decision not to include it is an interesting one.
There's really no "development" needed to offer memstick images. It's simply a matter of including them in the routine builds. NetBSD has more arch's to support and they have memstick images. Hence those canned mailing list replies are nonresponsive.
OpenBSD developers are users too. They have little control over the often seemingly irrational decisions of hardware manufacturers. In time, I'm certain OpenBSD will offer memstick images because I'm sure some of them will eventually find themselves using computers without CD drives, and having to jump through too many hoops just to install OpenBSD.
Meanwhile there is probably a way to write OpenBSD bootblocks using another BSD.