"When you buy from Apple, you do not get what you paid for. Instead you get exactly what you got suckered into buying."
"Development is really fast right now, because of the hackathon in Edmonton. We are testing as much as we can before we commit, but as always during these hackathon processes we really depend on our user community -- to track our changes and help spot the occasional bug we accidentally introduce. We are developing really fast and hard; please help us by testing really fast and hard too."
"If you can't use strcpy and strlcpy correctly, then you should not be a programmer."
"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.3," began OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt. "This is our 23rd release on CD-ROM (and 24th via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install." He added, "as in our previous releases, 4.3 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system". Four platforms were listed as new or extended, including: sparc64 gained SMP support, "this should work on all supported systems, with the exception of the Sun Enterprise 10000"; hppa K-class servers are now supported; mvme88k gained SMP support on a couple of systems, and support for the 88110 processor was added. Numerous drivers were listed as new or improved, including a huge list of network drivers:
"The bge(4) driver now supports BCM5906/BCM5906M 10/100 and BCM5755 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet devices; the cas(4) driver now supports Cassini+ 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet devices; the em(4) driver now supports ICH9 10/100 and 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet devices; the gem(4) driver now supports the onboard 1000base-SX interface on the Sun Fire V880 server; the ixgb(4) driver now supports the Sun 10Gb PCI-X Ethernet devices; the msk(4) driver now supports Yukon FE+ 10/100 and Yukon Supreme 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet devices; the nfe(4) driver now supports MCP73, MCP77 and MCP79 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet devices; the ral(4) driver now supports RT2800 based wireless network devices; the cmpci(4) driver now supports CMI8768 based audio adapters; the it(4) driver now supports ITE IT8705F/8712F/8716F/8718F/8726F and SiS SiS950 ICs; new bwi(4) driver for the Broadcom AirForce IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network device; new et(4) driver for the Agere/LSI ET1310 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet device; new etphy(4) driver for the Agere/LSI ET1011 TruePHY Gigabit Ethernet PHY; new iwn(4) driver for the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN IEEE 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N wireless network device; new upgt(4) driver for the Conexant/Intersil PrismGT SoftMAC USB IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network device."
A more complete list of changes can be found here. ONLamp also recently posted an interview titled, "Puffy and the Cryptonauts: What's New in OpenBSD 4.3". Theo noted, "profits from CD sales are the primary income source for the OpenBSD project -- in essence selling these CD-ROM units ensures that OpenBSD will continue to make another release six months from now."
"Quite honestly poll() is a better select(), even if it came out of AT&T."
"Twice a year I get to release the song & lyrics, and write a little commentary on something the project dealt with other [than] the release. Hope you guys enjoy," said OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt, including a link to the latest OpenBSD song. The OpenBSD project maintains a six month release cycle, with the upcoming 4.3 release officially scheduled for May 1st, 2008. Each release includes a song relevant to issues faced by the project during the past six months. The song for the upcoming 4.3 release is titled, "Home to Hypocrisy", with scathing references to some recent postings on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list by Free Software Foundation creator Richard Stallman. In his commentary, Theo explained, "we release our software in ways that are maximally free. We remove all restrictions on use and distribution, but leave a requirement to be known as the authors." He continued, describing the recent confrontation on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list:
"We have a development sub-tree called 'ports'. Our 'ports' tree builds software that is 'found on the net' into packages that OpenBSD users can use more easily. A scaffold of Makefiles and scripts automatically fetch these pieces of software, apply patches as required by OpenBSD, and then build them into nice neat little tarballs. [...] Richard felt that this 'ports tree' of ours made OpenBSD non-free. He came to our mailing lists and lectured to us specifically, yet he said nothing to the many other vendors who do the same; many of them donate to the FSF and perhaps that has something to do with it. Meanwhile, Richard has personally made sure that all the official GNU software -- including Emacs -- compiles and runs on Windows.
"That man is a false leader. He is a hypocrite. There may be some people who listen to him. But we don't listen to people who do not follow their own stupid rules."
"It is kind of strange to us to have Sun suddenly be the perfect example of openness."
"Since you did it three times so rapidly, I am calling you a liar. And since you refuse to undo your commercial support in Emacs and GCC, I am going to call you a hypocrite."
"Firmware (if not stored in a seeprom in the device) for the uticom(4). This was compiled by someone from the full source code published by TI under a surprisingly free license (which is probably not even actually enforceable in any way, since they forgot to put the phrase Copyright above it... where do they hire their lawyers?? Anyways, everyone benefits.)"
"There are people who write diffs, and people who _don't_ write diffs."
"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.2. This is our 22nd release on CD-ROM (and 23rd via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install," Theo de Raadt announced. In addition to a lengthy list of new features and improvements, the release announcement includes a dedication:
"We dedicate this release to the memory of long-time developer Jun-ichiro 'itojun' Itoh Hagino, who focused his life on IPv6 deployment for everyone. Without his BSD and IETF participation, IPv6 would not be where it is today. Only now people are becoming aware of his numerous contributions because he took credit for much less than he accomplished. The developers in our project will all miss him."
"Overall, I doubt that all of our security technologies add more than about 2% of a performance hit."
A thread on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list began by discussing whether or not XEN had been ported to OpenBSD, "is it planned at some point to release a paravirtualized xen kernel for OpenBSD 4.3 or 4.4?" Later in the discussion it was suggested that virtualization should be a priority for security reasons, "virtualization seems to have a lot of security benefits." OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt strongly disagreed with this assertion, "you've been smoking something really mind altering, and I think you should share it." He went on to describe virtualization as "something on the shelf, [which] has all sorts of pretty colours, and you've bought it", explaining:
"x86 virtualization is about basically placing another nearly full kernel, full of new bugs, on top of a nasty x86 architecture which barely has correct page protection. Then running your operating system on the other side of this brand new pile of shit. You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes."
Later in the thread, Theo went on to note, "if the actual hardware let us do more isolation than we do today, we would actually do it in our operating system. The problem is the hardware DOES NOT actually give us more isolation abilities, therefore the VM does not actually do anything what the say they do." He then suggested that companies marketing virtualization should soften their claims to something supportable, such as, "yes, it [increases] hardware utilization, and the nasty security impact might be low".
"You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes."
"That code is not free enough for us to use, and therefore we don't use it."
