| There was a discussion about this on the OpenBSD misc mailing archives back in 2012:
http://marc.info/?t=133961305400003&r=1&w=2 Theo's initial response to the thread, which may help illuminate the situation, was: "Except for the fact that it is bullshit. They started the fork because they got kicked out because one
developer (Marco) hired 5 other developers for his startup company,
and attempted to hire around 10 other developers in a sneaky and
underhanded way. They were told, oh i forget they were "asked", to
not tell anyone else in OpenBSD that this was happening, probably
because people "including Theo" would be upset. Funny thing is, I've never been upset about the 20+ OpenBSD and
ex-OpenBSD developers who now work for google. Previously, many of those developers were in critical positions in the
development team. As they were suddenly hired with such terms and
conditions, they became more scarce in OpenBSD -- perhaps because they
suddenly got real busy with work, but also to avoid telling others
that this was happening. Various projects lagged. To avoid telling a
lie, they instead chose to not tell the truth. It had effects. It
was dishonest of them to not tell their co-developers that they were
creating vacuums in the development process. So because of those decisions, they are now gone from OpenBSD. And
now they miss it. So now, all these guys who work for the same
company have started a fork. And it is directed by the guy who hired
them in the first place. From where I stand, that is the truth. Yet none of that is in that article, because the truth hurts,
doesn't it guys?" |
It's much more interesting to compare the development process of the groups, and how the two groups will help each other.
I always thought if OpenBSD had modern development tools and processes they would do really well, but unfortunately there are too many risks. How they're doing it works well for them already. But perhaps this situation with another group working in a different way better again. Since this project can experiment, and anything that is proven can be taken on by OpenBSD.