[chrismsnz]

If you actually read the thread he was reacting to the premise that: as a secure operating system, OpenBSD should implement virtualisation (in this case, Xen) due to its security benefits.

A premise which he rightly shat directly on, and is his statement is completely congruent with the presence of a VM hypervisor in OpenBSD.

[nickpsecurity]

"OpenBSD should implement virtualisation (in this case, Xen) due to its security benefits."

A specific answer that only took a day to form.

"If you actually read the thread"

Still this again, though. That's three people whose position is that anyone wanting to know OpenBSD's position on virtualization should spend 20m-1hr digging through threads like that and many dozens of hours watching video presentations/interviews. Just in case the answer's there. That's quite unreasonable given one link to a definitive answer on a mailing list, site, etc is all it would take. It's not a one-off thing as this topic comes up endlessly with them having the same response minus some exceptions.

So, given them acting that way, it's a reasonable default for outsiders to assume they didn't give a crap, got way behind on virtualization, cite comments like that just to save time, and finish by adding they're finally doing something. It's actually more effort than OpenBSD supporters put in those discussions. At least one had the wisdom to send me a video with Theo straight up saying it wasn't a priority. QED on whole topic. See how easy that was?

Not so easy in certain circles it seems...

[chrismsnz]

> anyone wanting to know OpenBSD's position on virtualization should spend 20m-1hr digging through threads like that

Okay, okay. Personally, I think the fact that OpenBSD did not support any of the current virtualisation solutions, and now have an appropriate one in the works says a lot about their position.

And, frankly, what use is an organisations "position" on VM hosting to a user? It either supports it or it doesn't, and if you don't plan on developing it the reasons don't really matter.

EDIT: I'm also going to point out that mailing list posts in general rarely stand on their own, and exist within a context.

[nickpsecurity]

"Personally, I think the fact that OpenBSD did not support any of the current virtualisation solutions, and now have an appropriate one in the works says a lot about their position."

It's ambiguous far as past is concerned. Two possibilities are (a) they didn't care for longest but caved on the issue or (b) they wanted it, waited for a solid codebase that never showed, and finally did one of their own. All I can tell is that it matters to them now.

"And, frankly, what use is an organisations "position" on VM hosting to a user? It either supports it or it doesn't, and if you don't plan on developing it the reasons don't really matter."

Not true. Very few develop for Linux or FreeBSD vs number of stakeholders. Nonetheless, many features non-developers would want came about because people needed it or were talking about it. I agree with you for OpenBSD specifically, though, as they've been clear about "code it if you want it so bad."

"EDIT: I'm also going to point out that mailing list posts in general rarely stand on their own, and exist within a context."

True, too. Probably best way to apply that is to just not quote mailing lists if it's a huge conversation. I only quote or back those references because later interviews corroborated them a bit for virtualization in general. We certainly shouldn't just grab things off mailing lists without a context, though.