Quote:
Originally Posted by johnR
This is an unfortunate trend. I've used Debian for nearly two decades and have seen Linux go from an easily customised system for technically minded users to one aimed at those who want Windows but don't want to pay for it. Userland development has changed accordingly, with every new release from the major distros containing changes that seem to be driven by fashion rather than sound technical decisions.
I recently changed my desktop PC to OpenBSD to try it out. I liked it enough to start changing most of my other systems. I still have a couple of dedicated audio workstations running Debian as I need realtime privileges and ALSA drivers. That may change if systemd avoidance becomes too painful (FreeBSD and Dragonfly look promising, but I'd have to learn to write BSD drivers).
I know of quite a few long-term Linux users who have switched (or are thinking about switching) to *BSD. Those articles about the supposedly imminent death of *BSD don't tally with my own observations.
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I've been giving this some thought, and I don't think the premise of Ilja's position is based on BSD's user base, but in its developers. As in, the lack of them. Or the lack of new young(er) programmers who posses the same qualities as Theo and the existing OpenBSD community joining the ranks to contribute to the development of the OS. I don't think OpenBSD would have a very high attrition rate among its users. But I also don't think there are high numbers of newcomers either. That's not really as critical to securing the OS's future as an influx of capable coders though.
I could be way off the mark; I'm just thinking aloud here. Mostly I'm just concerned that without a new contingent that values security, simplicity, and stability as much as the original authors, the future's uncertain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by e1-531g
I don't think everything Ilja van Sprundel said is false. He is a professional pentester who looked at source code and found bugs. He said a lot of bugs were low hanging fruits and I can believe that general opinion has some merit.
A the same time I don't think he is competent enough to predict future of *BSD OSes. For example many think that being out of commercial enterprise market is the death of OS. OpenBSD is probably generally out of that market, but... so what? OpenBSD is now introducing oneself as research project and development continues  |
I, too, was divided on how much credence to give his claims. On the one hand he's well qualified to appraise the code but that doesn't necessarily translate to speculating on future development. But I think it's a valid argument, and it appears that even Theo concurs: when the workload > manpower there's a problem. The eventual outcome of that problem, though, is unclear.