Links on this page refer to multimedia resources (podcast, vodcast,
audio recordings, video recordings, photos) related to DragonFlyBSD or
of interest for DragonFlyBSD users.
If you know any resources not listed here, or notice any dead links,
please send details to
Edwin Groothuis so that
it can be included or updated.
OpenBSD 4.0 Release Song - Humppa negala
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 10 October 2006
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (3.6 Mb, 2 minutes 40 seconds), MP3 version (2.3 Mb, 2 minutes 40 seconds)
The last 10 years, every 6 month period has (without
fail) resulted in an official OpenBSD release making
it to the FTP servers. But CDs are also manufactured,
which the project sells to continue our development
goals.
While tests of the release binaries are done by
developers around the world, Theo and some developers
from Calgary or Edmonton (such as Peter Valchev or
Bob Beck) test that the discs are full of (only)
correct code. Ty Semaka works for approximately two
months to design and draw artwork that will fit the
designated theme, and coordinates with his music
buddies to write and record a song that also matches
the theme.
Then the discs and all the artwork gets delivered
to the plant, so that they can be pressed in time
for an official release date.
This release, instead of bemoaning vendors or
organizations that try to make our task of writing
free software more difficult, we instead celebrate
the 10 years that we have been given (so far) to
write free software, express our themes in art, and
the 5 years that we have made music with a group
of talented musicians.
OpenBSD developers have been torturing each other
for years now with Humppa-style music, so this
release our users get a taste of this too. Sometimes
at hackathons you will hear the same songs being
played on multiple laptops, out of sync. It is under
such duress that much of our code gets written.
We feel like Pufferix and Bobilix delivering The
Three Discs of Freedom to those who want them
whenever the need arises, then returning to celebrate
the (unlocked) source tree with all the other
developers.
For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL
is an FTP site.
OpenBSD 4.0 Release Songs - OpenVOX
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 10 October 2006
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.0 Mb, 4 minutes), MP3 version (3.9 Mb, 4 minutes)
This is an extra track by the artist Ty Semaka (who
really has "had Puffy on his mind") which we included
on the audio CD.
This song details the process that Ty has to go
through to make the art and music for each OpenBSD
release. Ty and Theo really do go to a (very specific)
bar and discuss what is going on in the project,
and then try to find a theme that will work...
For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL
is an FTP site.
OpenBSD 4.1 Release Song - Puffy Baba and the 40 Vendors
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 02 May 2007
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (8.3 Mb, 4 minutes 19 seconds), MP3 version (4.1 Mb, 4 minutes 19 seconds)
As developers of a free operating system, one of
our prime responsibilities is device support. No
matter how nice an operating system is, it remains
useless and unusable without solid support for a
wide percentage of the hardware that is available
on the market. It is therefore rather unsurprising
that more than half of our efforts focus on various
aspects relating to device support.
Most parts of the operating system (from low kernel,
through to libraries, all the way up to X, and then
even to applications) use fairly obvious interface
layers, where the "communication protocols" or
"argument passing" mechanisms (ie. APIs) can be
understood by any developer who takes the time to
read the free code. Device drivers pose an additional
and significant challenge though: because many
vendors refuse to document the exact behavior of
their devices. The devices are black boxes. And
often they are surprisingly weird, or even buggy.
When vendor documentation does not exist, the
development process can become extremely hairy.
Groups of developers have found themselves focused
for months at a time, figuring out the most simple
steps, simply because the hardware is a complete
mystery. Access to documentation can ease these
difficulties rapidly. However, getting access to
the chip documentation from vendors is ... almost
always a negotiation. If we had open access to
documentation, anyone would be able to see how
simple all these devices actually are, and device
driver development would flourish (and not just in
OpenBSD, either).
When we proceed into negotiations with vendors,
asking for documentation, our position is often
weak. One would assume that the modern market is
fair, and that selling chips would be the primary
focus of these vendors. But unfortunately a number
of behemoth software vendors have spent the last
10 or 20 years building political
hurdles against the smaller players.
A particularly nasty player in this regard has been
the Linux vendors and some Linux developers, who
have played along with an American corporate model
of requiring NDAs for chip documentation. This has
effectively put Linux into the club with Microsoft,
but has left all the other operating system communities
-- and their developers -- with much less available
clout for requesting documentation. In a more fair
world, the Linux vendors would work with us, and
the device driver support in all free operating
systems would be fantastic by now.
We only ask that users
help us in changing the political landscape.
OpenBSD 4.2 Release Song - "100001 1010101"
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 02 November 2007
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.4 Mb, 4 minutes 4- seconds), MP3 version (4.0 Mb, 4 minutes 40 seconds)
Those of us who work on OpenBSD are often asked why
we do what we do. This song's lyrics express the
core motivations and goals which have remained
unchanged over the years - secure, free, reliable
software, that can be shared with anyone. Many other
projects purport to share these same goals, and
love to wrap themselves in a banner of "Open Source"
and "Free Software". Given how many projects there
are one would think it might be easy to stick to
those goals, but it doesn't seem to work out that
way. A variety of desires drag many projects away
from the ideals very quickly.
Much of any operating system's usability depends
on device support, and there are some very tempting
alternative ways to support devices available to
those who will surrender their moral code. A project
could compromise by entering into NDA agreements
with vendors, or including binary objects in the
operating system for which no source code exists,
or tying their users down with contract terms hidden
inside copyright notices. All of these choices
surrender some subset of the ideals, and we simply
will not do this. Sure, we care about getting devices
working, but not at the expense of our original
goals.
Of course since "free to share with anyone" is part
of our goals, we've been at the forefront of many
licensing and NDA issues, resulting in a good number
of successes. This success had led to much recognition
for the advancement of Free Software causes, but
has also led to other issues.
We fully admit that some BSD licensed software has
been taken and used by many commercial entities,
but contributions come back more often than people
seem to know, and when they do, they're always still
properly attributed to the original authors, and
given back in the same spirit that they were given
in the first place.
That's the best we can expect from companies. After
all, we make our stuff so free so that everyone can
benefit -- it remains a core goal; we really have
not strayed at all in 10 years. But we can expect
more from projects who talk about sharing -- such
as the various Linux projects.
Now rather than seeing us as friends who can
cooperatively improve all codebases, we are seen
as foes who oppose the GPL. The participants of
"the race" are being manipulated by the FSF and
their legal arm, the SFLC, for the FSF's aims,
rather than the goal of getting good source into
Linux (and all other code bases). We don't want
this to come off as some conspiracy theory, but we
simply urge those developers caution -- they should
ensure that the path they are being shown by those
who have positioned themselves as leaders is still
true. Run for yourself, not for their agenda.
The Race is there to be run, for ourselves, not for
others. We do what we do to run our own race, and
finish it the best we can. We don't rush off at
every distraction, or worry how this will affect
our image. We are here to have fun doing right.
OpenBSD 4.3 Release Song - "Home to Hypocrisy"
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 03 May 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.5 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds), MP3 version (8.2 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds)
We are just plain tired of being lectured to by a
man who is a lot like Naomi Campbell.
In 1998 when a United Airlines plane was waiting
in the queue at Washington Dulles International
Airport for take-off to New Orleans (where a Usenix
conference was taking place), one man stood up from
his seat, demanded that they stop waiting in the
queue and be permitted to deplane. Even after orders
from the crew and a pilot from the cockpit he refused
to sit down. The plane exited the queue and returned
to the airport gangway. Security personnel ran onto
the plane and removed this man, Richard Stallman,
from the plane. After Richard was removed from the
plane, everyone else stayed onboard and continued
their journey to New Orleans. A few OpenBSD developers
were on that same plane, seated very closeby, so
we have an accurate story of the events.
This is the man who presumes that he should preach
to us about morality, freedom, and what is best for
us. He believes it is his God-given role to tell
us what is best for us, when he has shown that he
takes actions which are not best for everyone. He
prefers actions which he thinks are best for him
-- and him alone -- and then lies to the public.
Richard Stallman is no Spock.
We release our software in ways that are maximally
free. We remove all restrictions on use and
distribution, but leave a requirement to be known
as the authors. We follow a pattern of free source
code distribution that started in the mid-1980's
in Berkeley, from before Richard Stallman had any
powerful influence which he could use so falsely.
We have a development sub-tree called "ports". Our
"ports" tree builds software that is 'found on the
net' into packages that OpenBSD users can use more
easily. A scaffold of Makefiles and scripts
automatically fetch these pieces of software, apply
patches as required by OpenBSD, and then build them
into nice neat little tarballs. This is provided
as a convenience for users. The ports tree is
maintained by OpenBSD entirely separately from our
main source tree. Some of the software which is
fetched and compiled is not as free as we would
like, but what can we do. All the other operating
system projects make exactly the same decision, and
provide these same conveniences to their users.
Richard felt that this "ports tree" of ours made
OpenBSD non-free. He came to our mailing lists and
lectured to us specifically, yet he said nothing
to the many other vendors who do the same; many of
them donate to the FSF and perhaps that has something
to do with it. Meanwhile, Richard has personally
made sure that all the official GNU software --
including Emacs -- compiles and runs on Windows.
That man is a false leader. He is a hypocrite. There
may be some people who listen to him. But we don't
listen to people who do not follow their own stupid
rules.
OpenBSD 4.4 Release Song - "Source Wars - Episode IV - Trial of the BSD Knights"
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 18 November 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (4.4 Mb, 3 minutes 5 seconds), MP3 version (5.6 Mb, 3 minutes 5 seconds)
Nearly 10 years ago Kirk McKusick wrote a history
of the Berkeley Unix distributions for the O'Reilly
book "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source
Revolution". We recommend you read his story,
entitled "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix From
AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable" first, to see
how Kirk remembers how we got here. Sadly, since
it showed up in book form originally, this text has
probably not been read by enough people.
The USL(AT&T) vs BSDI/UCB court case settlement
documents were not public until recently; their
disclosure has made the facts more clear. But the
story of how three people decided to free the BSD
codebase of corporate pollution -- and release it
freely -- is more interesting than the lawsuit which
followed. Sure, a stupid lawsuit happened which
hindered the acceptance of the BSD code during a
critical period. But how did a bunch of guys go
through the effort of replacing so much AT&T code
in the first place? After all, companies had lots
of really evil lawyers back then too -- were they
not afraid?
After a decade of development, most of the AT&T
code had already been replaced by university
researchers and their associates. So Keith Bostic,
Mike Karels and Kirk McKusick (the main UCB CSRG
group) started going through the 4.3BSD codebase
to cleanse the rest. Keith, in particular, built a
ragtag team (in those days, USENIX conferences were
a gold mine for such team building) and led these
rebels to rewrite and replace all the Imperial AT&T
code, piece by piece, starting with the libraries
and userland programs. Anyone who helped only got
credit as a Contributor -- people like Chris Torek
and a cast of .. hundreds more.
Then Mike and Kirk purified the kernel. After a bit
more careful checking, this led to the release of
a clean tree called Net/2 which was given to the
world in June 1991 -- the largest dump of free
source code the world had ever received (for those
days -- not modern monsters like OpenOffice).
Some of these ragtags formed a company (BSDi) to
sell a production system based on this free code
base, and a year later Unix System Laboratories
(basically AT&T) sued BSDi and UCB. Eventually
AT&T lost and after a few trifling fixes (described
in the lawsuit documents) the codebase was free. A
few newer developments (and more free code) were
added, and released in June 1994 as 4.4BSD-Lite.
Just over 14 years later OpenBSD is releasing its
own 4.4 release (and for a lot less than $1000 per
copy).
The OpenBSD 4.4 release is dedicated to Keith Bostic,
Mike Karels, Kirk McKusick, and all of those who
contributed to making Net/2 and 4.4BSD-Lite free.
OpenBSD 4.5 Release Songs - Games
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 25 May 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (4.5 Mb, 3:29 minutes), MP3 version (6.4 Mb, 3:29 minutes)
[Commentary still being written]
For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL
is an FTP site.