By
DebianMD.
June 11, 2010 at 12:52AM (PST)
OpenBSD is an excellent and secure choice from the Berkeley Software Development (BSD) free UNIX operating systems, although many people have discovered OpenBSD.org (and OpenBSD) in an effort to learn more about or to
find OpenSSH (and the costly and closed, proprietary SSH has lowered itself to legal arguments that 'SSH' is intellectual property upon which OpenSSH infringes, although the consensus is that 'SSH' is a widely used and
accepted term for "secure shell"). I certainly make use of, and am grateful for OpenBSD and OpenSSH, although, IMHO, OpenBSD made a mistake startinng the OpenNTPD project -- and, to be honest, I agree with Dr. David
L. Mills, the "father of NTP/D," and his statements about OpenNTPD...and NTP 4, the 'de facto' standard, may not yet have a finalized RFC, but it is the recognized cross-platform (and OPEN SOURCE) standard implementation
of NTP and it's a shame that Stratum 1 and Stratum 2 (and even Stratum 0, initially) NTP servers have been abused/"hammered" for almost a decade by ignorant and selfish individuals, and Dr. Mills newsgroup posts that
warned in 2003 of the consequences of such abuse were heeded by those who care (not abusers): I urge qualified individuals with a static IP address, hardware to set up an NTP: server (and the dedication and ability to
join the NTP Server Pool to keep the server running 24/7/365 as a volunteer for years, to do so; more pool servers are needed worldwide and the Pool is the only feasible way to offer accurate time syncrhonization to
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to fulfill the needs that have increased because many open, public servers have 'restricted' status (because the abuse would not stop). I DO DIGRESS and urge everyone to dontate to
OpenBSD, which -- like Debian GNU/Linux, the only Linux distribution I've used for a decade -- is developed and tested and maintained soley by volunteers. I see no point in comparing the *BSDs available, but each one
fulfills a vital need...and I have a special affinity for, and loyalty to, OpenBSD, because the project developers and volunteers have courageous spoken out against proprietary "binary blobs," which many *BSD and
Linux users accept as a "pragmatic evil," but I've avoided nonfree and restricted Debian packages -- and I have several Linux servers with Nvidia video cards, but Nvidia officially no longer supports Linux at all -- which
means no "blob" Linux drivers for new Nvidia cards and very minimal X.org contributions by Nvidia for free driver source that is already part of OpenDesktop's X server.
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