Oh, I'm not very successful in the warning, just like those who tried to warn me originally weren't successful. Suffice it to say that I now know better. If I need to run a BSD on x86 hardware, I use FreeBSD. If I need to use BSD on more obscure hardware, I use NetBSD. Truthfully, I see more stability AND innovation in those two groups than in OpenBSD.

Here is a rant that I keep somewhat up-to-date on specific reasons not to use OpenBSD. I mostly update it after interesting email exchanges in which I spend the time doing research on my position and I decide to save the research for posterity.

OpenBSD documentation is often heralded for its quality. Perhaps you should check out this GNATS ticket about the failure of 3.7-stable to build floppy images. Now, this isn't all that serious an issue - I read it as more of a heads-up and a proposed solution to prevent future problems. DeRaadt's response was fairly unhelpful, but made clear the project's position. There is a followup ticket submitted by the submitter of 4308 with a change to OpenBSD's documentation, to make the possibility of breakage for clear (and hopefully prevent future tickets in this vein.) Theo's response, as it frequently does, sets off the kook-meter.

This gem is a mailing list thread about an OpenBSD hackathon. Mostly, I was adding my opinion to Ben Goren's (and really, I mostly agreed with him EXCEPT about the idea of an "OpenSMTP") and I was making a comment on the number of subprojects OpenBSD is spawning. Needless to say, most people either didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, or just disagreed (Adam, for instance, made some points based on his opinion in private mail. I disagreed with his points, but at least there was communication at some level). Theo de Raadt, however, just attacked me personally. Apparently at this point I'm the "resident kook". I sent him a personal email informing him that 1) I rarely posted to the OpenBSD lists (I really try not to be troll-like, in general) and 2) I recommended he ignore me. If he couldn't ignore me, could he please lay off the personal attacks? The last message in that thread is his final email response to me, and is a gem. Although "Scaling isn't really our concern; I barely know what the word means." is perhaps my new Theo money quote. The thread in its original mbox format is available at .

It's funny what you stumble upon on the internet. I was Googling for a project Marc Espie was a part of once. It was a free, portable ports system that I guess never got off the ground. Anyway, on page 2 of Googling for Espie ports, I came across this ilc log involving Theo and others during, I suppose, the 3.3 release cycle. There's a money quote in this, too, from Theo: "I will not put up with people being so mean to me." This was apparently originally hosted at http://www.chaotic.net/tmp/art.pay , but it was broken when Google returned the result, so I copied the cache.

I realize this page probably won't convince much of anybody, so maybe it's just an opportunity for me to vent my spleen. So be it :) If, however, you're seriously considering using OpenBSD you might give the links given a quick once-over. At the very least you'll be preparing yourself for some of the rather immature antics and frustrations you'll encounter if you become more involved with the project.