On 04/06/12 07:35, Dan Shechter wrote: > Hi, Sorry for the newbe question, but what is wrong with what he is doing? > > Best regards, > Dan
First of all, OpenBSD is completely free software. we can not, nor do we want to stop anyone from making their own "project" (or product) based on OpenBSD. That doesn't mean we always like it. The problem comes in when people create things that are no longer OpenBSD, then the users come to our lists and developers expecting help. Or develop an opinion of OpenBSD based on these non-OpenBSD projects. This is often due to lack of maintenance on the part of those "projects" -- they put something together because they feel they need it, they think, "this is pretty cool", set up a website, make a logo, and ta-da, a project is born...and often, that's how it stays. We also don't like misinformation...for example, this from another part of the thread: > can't install in the first place if your only bootable media can be > usb sticks. the alternative to downloading premade images is making > them in qemu, which is more work for little gain That's ONE alternative. Roughly equivalent to turning right by turning left three times (reverse for Drive-on-Left countries). You can take your USB stick and an OpenBSD CD to any same-platform computer in the world that can boot from CD and has a USB port and build an install device there using standard processes...and you know what you have and how you got it. But other issues are solutions to non-problems, like flash-based re-distributions of OpenBSD. They are sold as "here's how to put OpenBSD on a flash device", but in reality, they make a difficult-to-maintain system that is actually NEEDED by a tiny minority of people utilizing flash media on an OpenBSD system, the rest are just taking perverse pleasure in doing simple things the hard way, because it is the sport of this industry. Worse, a lot of these "projects" are in the form of "just do this, and you get this" type things, rather than "here's how I did this, adapt as needed to your goals", so people can't see the assumptions they made and the overall strategy, so their ability to troubleshoot, upgrade, etc. the "solution" is minimal. We've also had users find "recipes" for mail servers on the 'net that only worked for obsolete versions of OpenBSD, and users who would rather follow the recipe on an obsolete version of OpenBSD than understand how it works and implement properly on supported versions of OpenBSD. There is a problem that many people on the 'net have -- they forget that any idiot can publish anything they wish on the 'net...the ability to render their thoughts into print or web does not mean it is accurate or of value...and google rankings There's also the issue of trust: "here's this file I put out on the 'net, please download it, install it, and run it. enjoy!" ummmmm... I have NO reason to believe Girish is deliberately doing anything to hurt the OpenBSD project, or its users. However, I have some gripes with this particular project: * The "Live CD" (which might be fascinating, though in 2012, now that everything boots off Flash now, I'm not sure how useful) isn't a live CD, it's a CD that makes a live USB drive. * He's perpetuating the "gotta use qemu to make a flash drive" thing. That's a funny shaped hammer to drive something that doesn't look like a nail. * Some language vagueness which is somewhat confusing (4GB...what? RAM? Flash drive? space free?) * Significant lag between OpenBSD release and project updates. * Recreating something that is trivial for any experienced OpenBSD user to create on their own. It may be of use for new OpenBSD users...but are they really using OpenBSD? While a USB flash drive may seem a good starting point for new users, due to performance, I'd much rather suggest a junk PC one could dedicate to the (I actually started out thinking I was going to be singing the praise of Girish's creation of a Live OpenBSD CDROM as a true "value add" to OpenBSD...but was rather disappointed to find out it was just an installer for a USB Flash install.) Nick. > > > > On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 8:56 AM, Jan Stary <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Apr 01 21:30:58, Girish Venkatachalam wrote: >> > After a long long time. Sigh. >> >> Please stop spreading this. All it does is give wrong >> instruction and diverts people who should instead read >> http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#flashmemLive
