As with FreeBSD’s ports and NetBSD’s packages, OpenBSD’s ports system is a compelling reason to use the system. Its designers and maintainers are, too often, unsung heroes. That’s one reason Federico Biancuzzi sat down to interview OpenBSD’s Marc Espie. Along the way, they discussed security, licensing, and future plans for the system.
An Interview with OpenBSD’s Marc Espie
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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If today, I had to switch to BSD, it would be OpenBSD. Their paranoia about stability and security is perhaps the only reason I prefer OpenBSD’s development process over most Linux development processes. Great interview overall.
One problem with OpenBSD… it doesn’t scale worth a damn. OK for a small box circa 1999, but it doesn’t cut the mustard today. FreeBSD 5.x and NetBSD current do, though.
Hi
OpenBSD values security over performance. its just a trade off they have consiously done.
regards
Jess
Scalability is becoming one of those words that is losing meaning. Sort of like horsepower — you can tell me your car has 300 horsepower, but I’ll show you a tractor with half the horsepower that would easily beat it in a pulling match. That’s because horsepower doesn’t equate to “strongest and best”, contrary to what many people believe.
My point? Scalability does not necessarily equate to best. As for OpenBSD’s scalability — yes — it isn’t that great, but many applications (uses) that would push its scalability would have other bottlenecks that would take effect first. For example, maybe your webserver running X_OS can’t scale up to Y_many connections — well this doesn’t really matter if your pipe to the net doesn’t have the bandwidth to support Y_many active connections in the first place.
I think it’s time to quit beating the scalability drum. Yes, under some circumstances it’s important, but it’s not going to save the world.
Hi
I could tell the same about security or robustness or looking good or just about anything
Its a worthless poing to make
regards
Jess
I could tell the same about security or robustness or looking good or just about anything
Its a worthless poing to make
Not really, because scalability and performance pops about all the time in all forums pretty much everywhere while security is overlooked. Probably because people “expect” things to be secure and don’t wanna hear that security is ALLWAYS a lot more difficult than that.
I guess it’s related to benchmarking, how do you actually benchmark security in a good way which is more of a philosophy?
Guess it’s the same reason why people tend to understand economy more than Mazlov…..
Security IS underestimated today in comparison to performance. HW that can manage a serious amount of load is cheap in comparison to what a good admin who can handle securing a platform…
The OpenBSD team understands a thing : you can’t be excellent at everything. A swiss knife can be helpful, but it’s not as good as a specialized tool. OpenBSD is good at many things, but of course its main strengths are its security features. It’s also a really clean, stable and coherent operating system.
Whe sould think about using the right tool at the right place instead of wasting our time to find out which OS is the best at everything.
I wish there was an interview with a different developer every week.
I have to second the motion of the anon user about more developer interviews. The more *BSD the better.
Although it is not my favorite BSD, every time I use OpenBSD I am impressed. For a system with no kernel threading, no SMP and so few developers, it still manages to be pretty damned fast on a UP system under moderate load.
I also liked the fact that out of the box sound is enabled unlike under my prefered FreeBSD/DragonFly. There was also an option during X setup that asked if I wanted to set up a wheel mouse, again, something that my prefered BSDs don’t do. I also like the fact that with so little installed out of the box, combined with their obsessive auditing and snazzy new security features (ProPolice, W^X, privilege separation etc.) leave me with a feeling of safety that I admittedly don’t have anywhere else.
Sure I can enable ProPolice on DragonFly (and I do) but as Matt said in his recent interview, he’s too busy right now just implementing basic infrastructure to focus on implementing or integrating too many (or far reaching) security features at the moment.
OpenBSD will also be the first and probably only BSD to ‘ship’ with it’s very own X implementation, based on ex-free86 4.4-RC2. KDE has always seemed snappy to me on my play box running OpenBSD, and I’d only expect it to get better.
These guys do good work, and the open source and free software world is better for their existence.
i guess security oriented places like Defence, Banks….. might start to switch to OpenBSD. that will increase their security and also OpenBSD’s advancements.