On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 06:25:53PM +0200, MJ wrote: > > I have long held the opinion that Theo is probably the best coder on this > planet. That?s not any sort of ass-kissing, either, it?s my objective, > unbiased opinion. And I know Henning personally, as in ?live and worked > together with him" - one hell of an expert. > > However, the dilemma that the project has found itself in now very clearly > demonstrates that Theo is not a businessman and that there isn?t any other > businessman at the helm, either. Imagining that people will suddenly start to > pay for something that they have constantly been getting for free is absurd - > their belief is that somebody else will surely step up first or somebody will > fork in the name of fame. No business on this planet is going to allocate > budget to paying OpenBSD?s electricity bills, let alone anything else, > without 1) a detailed itemisation of the electrical bills, 2) a detailed > justification of said line items, and 3) a satisfaction of their own business > interest. It?s just not sexy for a philanthropist to support a relatively > unheard of operating system when cancer is still left uncured.
Define sexy. Some people will say it's having flash running full speed on their web browser while streaming 3 youtube videos. For me it's being able to trust my operating system to behave in a way that keeps me in the loop and able to fix it. As for the legalese, some people said "You'll never get anywhere without a protocol number for CARP!", yet some ciscos support CARP nowadays. > > It?s not good to be removing coders from their tasks; the project needs a > businessman or two. One who will handle the corporate feature requests and > charge dearly for them. Things like routing technology and high-speed packet > forwarding - things that can replace the exorbitant costs of maintaining > cisco routers. This is the key. With the FBSD 10GB wire speed packet > forwarding incorporated, OpenBSD would be ready to challenge Cisco in a very > serious way. Completely free as always, but with paid support for this edge > cases that make life what it is. > I don't know what is your background with corporate IT, but my experience is that most of the time what the suits are looking for is the assurance they will have resources to fix arising issues, or in layman terms, a tech support to yell at. I do not see OpenBSD providing such a support. However there are quite a few companies that provide such service for their OpenBSD-based appliances. Does that mean OpenBSD roadmap should be based on what will sell with these companies? The answer (which is "no") has already be given many times on misc@, and I will let Theo add another layer of p[ao]int if he deems it necessary. Lastly, you suggest having a businessman in the project. That is, someone who gets a commit bit by doing something else than coding. It's not even about what this says to the world or the example it sets. It is just plain rude towards the developers. I am not downplaying the skills of businessmen; but you simply can't just say that contributing code the OpenBSD way is the same as selling the product, however tough that may be. This is not a race; this is about doing things right. regards, -- Vincent
