Talk:OpenBSD

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	OpenBSD is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 10, 2006.
Article milestones Date Process Result October 21, 2005 Peer review Reviewed December 17, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted January 21, 2006 Featured article candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured article

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[edit] Request for BSD/OpenBSD artwork (for Portal:Free software)

Hi. Wikipedia rules do not allow "fair use" images on non-article pages, so this means that Portal:Free software cannot use logos, mascots, etc. without explicit permission. I have some usable GNU art, and some usable Tux, but I don't want to add those until I have something else to balance out the GNU+Linux tilt that that art would give to the portal. Portal:Free_software will be applying for Featured portal status soon, and one thing is lacks is art.

I saw this page: http://openbsd.org/art4.html but the actual licence/permission terms aren't specified, and looking at Image:Paintedpuffy1000X907px.gif, it seems that commercial use is not allowed, which is an unacceptable restriction for use in non-articles on Wikipedia.

AFAICT, the only acceptable terms are:

• public domain
• revised-BSD-style permissive licence
• GNU FDL

So, can anyone point me to some BSD or OpenBSD pictures which are under one of those licences? Thanks. Gronky 00:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

You can use this image:

It isn't an official picture of Puffy, but it has a sufficiently acceptable license for Commons. : )

— Armed Blowfish (talk|mail) 01:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The above picture is from http://art.gnux.info/, which has unofficial pictures of both Puffy and Beastie. — Armed Blowfish (talk|mail) 01:50, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Creative Commons by 1.0 is indeed acceptable IIRC. Gronky 02:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Market share percentages add to over 100%

Article says: "The nascent BSD Certification project performed a usage survey which revealed that 32.8% of BSD users (1420 of 4330 respondents) were using OpenBSD,[10] placing it second of the four major BSD variants, behind FreeBSD with 77.0% and ahead of NetBSD with 16.3%.[11]"

32.8 + 77 + 16.3 > 100 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.101.68.207 (talk • contribs).

People were allowed to pick multiple options. NicM 19:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC).

You can read a more detailed explanation at Image:Bsdusage.gif#Explanation_of_chart.  : ) Armed Blowfish (talk|mail) 20:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this right

NetBSD (the oldest of the three most popular BSD-based operating systems still active today, with FreeBSD being the third)

I thought FreeBSD was the oldest and then NetBSD and then OpenBSD —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.135.112.43 (talk) 03:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

NetBSD's first release in April 93 was a few months before FreeBSD's in December. NicM 08:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

FreeBSD started out as a bunch of patches, if I remember correctly, which makes this a bit more complex. — Armed Blowfish (talk|mail) 11:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Both of them came from patchsets to 386BSD. NetBSD was the first to make a formal release, which is good enough for me, but it may be best just to strip out "oldest," this article isn't the place for that kind of fact. Nor is it really the place for lists of the most popular BSDs (people occasionally try to add DFLY), although its nice to mention FreeBSD and NetBSD in the first paragraph. Maybe we should just get rid of the whole section in parentheses. NicM 15:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

Sounds good to me. History and popularity can be discussed in more detail elsewhere. For readers, the parenthetical version of the lead can be found here. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 01:58, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A lot of crap

Just sorta added to it, but I think perhaps there should be a sub-page made, like the archives and todo which holds the assessment stuff, just having a link to it instead of the many templates repeating the same thing. All the stuff that mentions FA should probably be put there if it were to be done, but that ould probably mess up those templates' inner workings, how they add to various lists and whatnot, so I won't do any such thing myself. But I will leave this comment here, to fester in the minds of any who read it. 74.13.60.113 07:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

At least the small ones are now out of the way a bit, and if we do something special we have extra maintenance and people adding them back in the wrong place. NicM 08:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] "At present"

It's probably best not to use phrases like that, in case there isn't someone maintaining the page, if it does fall out of step with what presently is happening, would it not be best to have it state a date? Not that the people working on the article will disappear, but if they did, it would probably be for the best if everything was linked to a time, no? 74.13.57.76 23:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely right. The preferred form is "As of (year)". I've fixed this here. Feezo (Talk) 00:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, it just invites people to change it every year rather than just fixing it when something actually changes. But since it is policy, who am I to argue ;-). NicM 11:25, 2 September 2007 (UTC).

I think the idea behind the guideline is that, if left unchanged, (if people forget, or if it's printed out, or republished) the text will continue to be correct in years to come, even if it starts to sound a bit dated. The ideal solution IMHO would be to find a reference (posting by Theo or someone) that would confirm the date. We could then use "as of 20XX" with less risk of people robotically incrementing the year. Feezo (Talk) 20:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

How about just removing the sentence entirely? Even without it it is pretty clear the removal hasn't been undone. NicM 11:29, 3 September 2007 (UTC).

[edit] UNIX versus Unix-like

Technically OpenBSD is not a UNIX, it's a BSD, and while BSDs and UNIXes share code, they are not the same. In both conventions and in the actual implementation of many tools and systems, the UNIXes are different from OpenBSD. While OpenBSD has imported a UNIX compiler, awk and many other tools, that doesn't make them a UNIX. To do that at this point would require a big pile of money, as Apple has thrown around in order to get Mac OS X's most recent release certified. I have because of this reasoning, reverted the change from Unix-like to Unix. 74.13.43.249 00:52, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. That's how the article stated the situation until just a few hours before your edit. An anonymous user made this change without explaining why it should be so. (A similar change was made to the FreeBSD article.) There's also the small matter of the court battle in the 1990s, which settlement resulted in the BSDs not being able to claim to be UNIX, and which is how UNIX-like came about. Mindmatrix 14:12, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline/releases for OpenBSD

Think we can compile a list of OpenBSD releases similar to this table?

Altonbr (talk) 03:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

There is an entire article of that, along with other historical notes regarding OpenBSD. I don't see what this idea has which shows superiority over the already existing article. 74.13.29.9 (talk) 17:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want to improve the existing OpenBSD timeline article, that would be really great, but including such a table in the main article would be a mistake. NicM (talk) 07:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC).