[HN Gopher] FreeBSD Core Team Statement on FreeBSD Development P...
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       FreeBSD Core Team Statement on FreeBSD Development Processes
        
       Author : vermaden
       Score  : 130 points
       Date   : 2021-03-29 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lists.freebsd.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lists.freebsd.org)
        
       | Metacelsus wrote:
       | Looks like they're committed to improving things.
        
       | busterarm wrote:
       | Netgate doesn't exactly have the best reputation as it is.
       | 
       | There is a reason there's a growing push of people leaving
       | pfSense for OPNsense.
       | 
       | Remember when they bought their competitor's domain and put up
       | this?
       | http://web.archive.org/web/20160314132836/http:/www.opnsense...
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | Kinda feel bad for them here though because they did things
         | initially pretty much exactly right: paid real money to a
         | developer with reasonable credentials to work in upstream to
         | develop this feature with apparently best of intentions. That
         | is pretty much textbook example how corporations can
         | participate in open source (without in-house developers). And
         | then it somehow blew on their face.
         | 
         | The response then from Netgate was very much on-brand, they
         | indeed have a history of _colorful_ PR. And of course they are
         | ultimately responsible for things they put their name on.
         | 
         | But this also highlights how difficult participating in open
         | source can be.
        
           | tw04 wrote:
           | I don't know, I've never heard of Arm or NetApp or Netflix
           | having these issues. They just quietly contribute both
           | employee time and financially to the FreeBSD project without
           | fanfare (I guess at times Netflix does blog about their
           | contributions but not in the same look-at-me way).
           | 
           | Netgate seems to want to brag about their contributions
           | (despite the fact they don't even show up on the foundation
           | page) while also somehow not taking any responsibility for
           | when they screw up.
           | 
           | https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-
           | donors/donors/?donationYea...
        
             | stonogo wrote:
             | Netflix presents their FreeBSD work at FOSDEM fairly often.
             | They're usually good technical talks that don't come off as
             | PR.
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | Which makes sense. The type of person Netflix wants to
               | know about their FreeBSD contributions is the type of
               | technical person that will be impressed by non-PR
               | technical talks and think "I want to work with this guy".
               | The average Netflix customer shouldn't care at all about
               | the technical details of the background so doing non-
               | technical PR wouldn't gain anything.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | ksec wrote:
           | >paid real money to a developer with reasonable credentials
           | to work in upstream to develop this feature with apparently
           | best of intentions.
           | 
           | Yes, but Netgate's TSNR is based on Linux. So it seems they
           | will be pivoting to Linux, or at least have less emphasis on
           | FreeBSD.
           | 
           | My guess is that going forward there will be less money and
           | participation going to FreeBSD from Netgate. Whether that is
           | a good thing or bad thing depends on your perspective.
        
             | gonzo wrote:
             | TNSR is really based in VPP, Linux is more of a platform
             | than the actual functionality.
             | 
             | Our commitment to FreeBSD continues unabated.
        
           | na85 wrote:
           | >But this also highlights how difficult participating in open
           | source can be.
           | 
           | I dunno, I was shopping around for network appliances and I
           | considered a netgate box until I saw how Netgate
           | representatives conduct themselves on their reddit.
           | Participating in open source doesn't need to be difficult; a
           | modicum of humility is all it ought to take but the Netgate
           | folks seem arrogant an abrasive pretty much as their default
           | position.
           | 
           | Gave my money to someone else instead.
        
             | newsclues wrote:
             | Who did you give your money to instead of Netgate?
        
           | xoa wrote:
           | > _Kinda feel bad for them here though because they did
           | things initially pretty much exactly right: paid real money
           | to a developer with reasonable credentials to work in
           | upstream to develop this feature with apparently best of
           | intentions. That is pretty much textbook example how
           | corporations can participate in open source (without in-house
           | developers)._
           | 
           | I mean, I see what you're saying, but I can't 100% agree with
           | this. As a textbook example, I still remember way back when
           | Apple was getting started with KHTML and what would
           | eventually become WebCore and WebKit, and they got quite a
           | lot of heat for a while early on for just doing big fat block
           | code dumps without following project procedures and such.
           | "Contributions welcome" is true for anyone, but there is an
           | implicit (and often these days explicit for larger projects)
           | "...as long as you follow our code standards, communicate,
           | put in the basic effort to do a professional job, etc".
           | Contributions don't have to be perfect but there needs to be
           | _some_ meat there or it 's just a waste of everyone's time.
           | Even for a big corp doing big work, just "throwing code over
           | the fence" so to speak often is not appreciated.
           | 
           | Netgate hired him, so they were ultimately responsible. They
           | apparently did a very, very poor job of both checking on him
           | and supporting him, which is on them. They didn't see about
           | coordinating with the actual guy who created the entire
           | thing. They didn't do a basic sanity check of what he'd
           | finished before trying to have it pushed right to main, and
           | they were aggressive about deploying a _security product_
           | that was really really shoddy and in context quite dangerous
           | right out to the general public. And then they were complete
           | dicks about even relatively low-key efforts to try to fix it
           | with as much face saved all around, too much even.
           | 
           | I'm sorry, but that doesn't actually seem like a great
           | example of how corps can participate productively. Nor do I
           | honestly think it "highlights how difficult participating in
           | open source can be". Can't just expect unlimited gratitude
           | purely for volunteering something useless/dangerous.
        
           | busterarm wrote:
           | Netgate isn't exactly your average open source contributor
           | either. In fact, their product is very much closed source.
           | 
           | Even the areas of it that have been "open" have largely
           | hidden, incomplete and non-buildable for the longest.
           | 
           | It's really a mixed bag. They pay for a bit of development
           | but throw their weight around in ways that are harmful to the
           | project.
        
             | zokier wrote:
             | That's why its sad that this time when they seemingly
             | behaved mostly like good citizen it didn't work out very
             | well especially for them.
        
         | jorl17 wrote:
         | Holy cow. Is there proof they were the ones who did that? Can't
         | that be considered slanderous in some parts of the world?!
        
           | stock_toaster wrote:
           | yes. https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case
           | =D20...
        
         | fryman wrote:
         | The line mocking VPN implementation hasn't aged well. That site
         | is a piece of work, from top to bottom.
        
         | TavsiE9s wrote:
         | They were supposedly also squatting r/OPNSense, which is why
         | the official subreddit is r/OPNsenseFirewall.
         | 
         | Just checked:                   r/opnsense is a private
         | community              The moderators of r/opnsense have set
         | this community to private.         Only approved members can
         | view and take part in its discussions.
        
           | gonzo wrote:
           | Not Netgate
        
       | 1-6 wrote:
       | I just love how all communications including official statements
       | from freebsd.org get posted to the web as email threads. Nothing
       | pretty, just utilitarian.
        
       | alacombe wrote:
       | This is standard behavior.
       | 
       | When someone publish a +10kloc patch in an area maybe 1 or 2
       | other developers are competent in, nobody's gonna read it in
       | details. Heck, I probably couldn't even review my code from 1
       | year ago without lots of metadata/comments attached to it.
        
       | kev009 wrote:
       | I'm really not sure what the point of this message is. From a PR
       | perspective it is an own goal. It was obvious from earlier
       | statements that self-critique was underway. The right time to
       | send another communication is once some improvement has been
       | made.
       | 
       | What is unfortunate is that the project has not publicly defended
       | itself, which is what core should have addressed -- that the
       | situation has been broadly and unfairly misreported. The history
       | of wireguard is bizarre, Donnefeld is hellbent on total control
       | of both the protocol and implementations. He blew the same gasket
       | on NetBSD developers for implementing his protocol http://mail-
       | index.netbsd.org/tech-net/2020/08/22/msg007842.h.... The real
       | story here, that the Ars reporter missed because he allowed
       | himself to be compromised by Donnefeld, is how this single person
       | is accumulating and aiming a cult following as he chooses and
       | what are the security and business implications of this in the
       | future. This is a simple tunneling protocol. I don't expect WG to
       | end well. At the very least, you are subject to public zero days
       | and shakedowns if you don't do exactly what Donnefeld wants. A
       | new black hat open source business model of monetization by mob
       | rule and "scooping" low intellect reporters instead of license
       | and implementation.
        
         | stock_toaster wrote:
         | > The history of wireguard is bizarre, Donnefeld is hellbent on
         | total control of both the protocol and implementations.
         | 
         | Given how bungled implementations can apparently end up (case
         | in point), as a user of wireguard, I'm like.. thankful I guess?
         | 
         | This _is_ crypto/security stuff, and I'm glad it is being held
         | to a higher standard by _someone_ at least.
        
         | ksec wrote:
         | Unfortunately the NetBSD side's story was not widely known or
         | reported. Otherwise it would give a different perspective to
         | the case here.
        
           | kev009 wrote:
           | Which is why Jim Salter is a clown, yellow journalism at
           | best. He spent days of his life digging into Matt yet failed
           | to realize that Wireguard's leader is literally a black hat
           | and the project "Grew out of a stealth rootkit project" [1].
           | Meanwhile this doofus combo, Jim and Jason, were trying to
           | promulgate a rumor that Matt is NSA-compromised. Yeah, state
           | security agencies pick people as conspicuous as Matt to sneak
           | in 'splots.
           | 
           | Wireguard seems like a clear and present danger to anyone in
           | commercial setting. The FOSS community used to hold itself to
           | higher standards on disclosure and governance.
           | 
           | Jason relies on the incompetence of others to purport his
           | genius. Yet there is no obvious path to revision the
           | cryptography in wunderkind's project which is Dunning-Kruger
           | at its finest.
           | 
           | The whole situation is preposterous and makes me want to
           | resign from open source if the "community" is ok with this
           | kind of behavior.
           | 
           | [1] http://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Wed-August-8/us-18-Donenfeld-
           | Wir...
        
             | gonzo wrote:
             | Salter couldn't even get the CEO's name right, but he did
             | manage to drag Macy's spouse into his article.
             | 
             | Guy is a muck-racking misogynist.
        
         | jron wrote:
         | Can you expand on why the history of WireGuard is bizarre?
         | 
         | Do you believe that a blackhat presentation taints the code
         | quality of WireGuard? Do you believe that Donnefeld's desire to
         | maintain tight control over kernel implementations suggests he
         | has ulterior motives?
        
           | kev009 wrote:
           | I'm just a systems software guy, I don't know anything more
           | than anyone else on Donnefeld's true motivations. The old
           | saying is where's smoke there's fire. If Salter had
           | intellectual integrity he would have dug into Donnefeld's
           | past, and asked pointed and direct questions about
           | vulnerability disclosure and how he intends to work with or
           | against people that compete with him in the future. All I
           | know is what is obvious to anyone else who spends 15 minutes
           | looking into things. When a reporter spends DAYS digging up
           | details on Matt yet fails to mention anything about the
           | governance and flamboyant history of WG (the NetBSD incident
           | is a carbon copy minus the salacious clickbait of Matt), what
           | the heck is actually going on here? I think Salter is just
           | stupid rather than a fully aware actor in all this. Donnefeld
           | appears to have some kind of fundamental personality flaw
           | that facilitates using people to inflate his ego.. this
           | became such a big deal because he compromised another FreeBSD
           | developer who never fully took responsibility nor publicly
           | rebuked being used by a narcissist.
           | 
           | Donnefeld was a nobody in the kernel development community,
           | comes out of nowhere with a relatively simple tunneling
           | protocol that is tightly bound to certain design and
           | implementation decisions, and continually insists
           | implementation is inseparable from the protocol. Noobs
           | celebrate this. Pros look at this and wonder what happens
           | when the governance fails for any reason, when the crypto
           | becomes outdated, how it evolves. Pros celebrate independent
           | implementation because it means a general solution has been
           | achieved and stands a good chance of lasting beyond one
           | person, one company, and one implementation.
        
             | jron wrote:
             | I'm just a systems guy too so I can't really make
             | judgements on why so much input is needed for the
             | implementation of a seemingly simple protocol. I disagree
             | with there being smoke but I appreciate the reply and it
             | seems like you're not alone in thinking something might be
             | a little off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24430424
        
       | tgbugs wrote:
       | Here is a writeup that provides a good review of the context for
       | this [0].
       | 
       | 0. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/buffer-overruns-
       | lice...
        
         | generalizations wrote:
         | Honestly, the criticism of the freebsd code review process
         | seems way overblown. To me, it looks like a smaller team that
         | works well together in a less formal manner, and someone
         | exploited that.
         | 
         | They caught it, the person has lost trust, they all moved on.
         | Big whup.
        
           | gmueckl wrote:
           | Even if you trust your team members to do a good job, another
           | pair of eyes on the code before it goes in rarely hurt.
           | Everybody slips up once in a while and a review has at least
           | a chance of catching the worst mistakes early. Team size
           | doesn't matter. You just need to bring a little discipline to
           | the process.
        
           | Voline wrote:
           | This weekend I came across an interesting comment on the
           | Netgate WireGuard fiasco from a former FreeBSD Core team
           | member David Chisnall. He does consider it a failure of
           | FreeBSD's process.
           | 
           | https://lobste.rs/s/sh2kcf/buffer_overruns_license_violation.
           | ..
        
           | ajross wrote:
           | Well, it's not the end of the world (and I feel much more
           | sympathy for this guy's poor tenants than I do for pfSense
           | customers), but...
           | 
           | Bad code going unreviewed from a single author into a main
           | branch from which people build production systems is
           | definitely beyond "Big whup" severity. The equivalent would
           | be if one person pushed an unreviewed driver into Fedora
           | Rawhide or an Ubuntu Beta, say. It's a clear violation of the
           | principles behind the service the distro is supposed to be
           | providing for you.
           | 
           | There are a zillion ways to make sure code gets reviewed
           | before merge. Linux does it informally via Signed-off-by
           | headers and a tree structure of trusted maintainers. Services
           | like github provided automated tooling to enforce review.
           | FreeBSD needs to just pick one. It's 2021, for goodness sake.
           | A fixed COMMITTERS list just isn't going to cut it.
        
             | anticristi wrote:
             | >In December 2020, development of the base system migrated
             | from Subversion to Git.
             | 
             | Call me mean, but I don't associate FreeBSD with a project
             | that is quick to adopt modern development practices.
             | 
             | I remember the time that FreeBSD moved from CVS to SVN, and
             | it was hailed as revolutionary. The world was already
             | embracing Git, which, despite its flaws back then, was
             | perceived as a bliss compared to SVN.
        
               | jjav wrote:
               | That's not mean, it is a compliment. Although the phrase
               | "modern development practices" makes it a loaded
               | statement.
               | 
               | There is much value in not constantly hopping onto every
               | hypetrain that comes along. For a reliable project, I
               | want to see engineering practices that favor remaining on
               | proven stable technologies as long as possible. Let all
               | the hypes die down, don't go down with them.
        
               | colejohnson66 wrote:
               | I don't see how code review is "modern development
               | practices" (in a bad way). It's common sense.
               | 
               | An analogy would be lawyers. They don't represent family
               | because they may overlook something they think is
               | meaningless, but a "fresh pair of eyes" would say is very
               | important. With code, it's the same way: your eyes are
               | biased towards your own code which can cause you to miss
               | a bug.
        
           | unethical_ban wrote:
           | The items they discuss, like more rigor on MRs, static
           | analysis, etc. seem like no-brainers from five years ago. I'm
           | not knocking them, I don't know the scope of their
           | limitations. And they're doing the improvements now, so good
           | on them. Just seems odd some things weren't being done
           | previously.
        
         | cryptonector wrote:
         | Wow. Thanks for that link.
        
         | Ericson2314 wrote:
         | Wow, evil landlords, C being bad. All my favorite things to
         | discuss in one article!
        
         | loeg wrote:
         | I would suggest the LWN article instead:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26572370
        
         | kevans91 wrote:
         | FWIW, "good review" is pretty debatable (source: was involved)
         | -- it provides a decent overview, but you should read it with
         | the thought in mind that the author did some pretty heavy
         | cherry-picking to support their arguments. Also, this indeed is
         | not "Kernel Debugging Quarterly."
        
           | mbreese wrote:
           | I thought the Ars article was a pretty good overview for the
           | context of this current issue and why there needs to be a
           | statement on FreeBSD development practices at all. I don't
           | expect Ars to get into too many kernel specifics, so won't
           | knock them for that. But as far as bringing more attention to
           | how the mess started in the first place (and was dealt with),
           | I think the Ars article is a pretty good place to start.
           | 
           | I mean, the question of how the rough-draft Wireguard
           | implementation made it into the kernel in the first place
           | without sufficient review is a pretty big question.
           | 
           | I'm happy the FreeBSD team is addressing it directly.
        
             | kevans91 wrote:
             | Yeah, sorry, I'm mostly lamenting that there's not a more
             | objective overview. This whole situation is pretty tiring
             | at this point, so it's unlikely that one will surface
             | except as a post-mortem down the road.
        
               | busterarm wrote:
               | I think that unfortunately a lot of people can't separate
               | "this code is bad" from "this person is bad".
               | 
               | We all have times when we don't ship our best work. Life
               | happens. It's also worth noting to the readers that
               | Donenfeld's criticism of bad code is completely
               | dispassionate and that he isn't above criticising
               | himself. He seems to be genuinely among the nicest people
               | in the community.
               | 
               | This seems unfortunate for mmacy and unfortunately
               | exacerbated by the behavior of Netgate.
        
               | loeg wrote:
               | > It's also worth noting to the readers that Donenfeld's
               | criticism of bad code is completely dispassionate and
               | that he isn't above criticising himself.
               | 
               | Er, what? Donenfeld's hyperbole and wild
               | characterizations are part of what fanned the flames and
               | made this a tech-press mess instead of some quiet
               | collaboration and bug reports.[0]
               | 
               | > The first step was assessing the current state of the
               | code the previous developer had _dumped into the tree_.
               | It was not pretty. I imagined _strange Internet voices
               | jeering, "this is what gives C a bad name!"_ There were
               | random sleeps added to "fix" race conditions, validation
               | _functions_ that just returned true, _catastrophic
               | cryptographic vulnerabilities_ , whole parts of the
               | protocol unimplemented, _kernel panics, security
               | bypasses, overflows,_ random printf statements deep in
               | crypto code, _the most spectacular buffer overflows_ ,
               | and _the whole litany of awful things_ that go wrong when
               | people aren't careful when they write C.
               | 
               | While some details are based in reality, the paragraph
               | goes well beyond the realm of truth. It makes totally
               | unnecessarily jabs at Macy as "the previous developer."
               | He is (broadly) a competent C/kernel developer. Yes, he
               | did an inadequate job here. No, some Greek chorus isn't
               | jeering about the C code just because stylistically it
               | differs from how Donenfeld would write it.
               | 
               | To my knowledge:
               | 
               | * There was only a single "validation function that
               | returned true," and it involved validating an ip address
               | internal to a validated and decoded message from a wg
               | peer. The message is already cryptographically verified;
               | only peers that are part of the same mesh could spoof IPs
               | outside of their configured range. (Donenfeld described
               | this as validation _functions_ , plural.)
               | 
               | * Donenfeld's only ever found a single real buffer
               | overflow. It's the one where Jumbo frames can cause heap
               | overflow. His other buffer overflow claims are not
               | realistic due to other constraints on the inputs. Mostly
               | they seem to reflect stylistic preferences about using
               | mallocarray(a, n) instead of malloc(a * n). So the claims
               | of "spectacular" buffer overflow(s), plural, feels
               | disingenuous. (I don't know what "spectacular" is
               | supposed to mean in a cold technical critique, either.)
               | 
               | Maybe this is "dispassionate," but it seems unnecessarily
               | careless with the facts when writing technical criticism.
               | 
               | To be clear, Netgate's press response to this was totally
               | inappropriate and also just a dumb move. The public
               | narrative would be more in their favor if they had been
               | totally silent instead of posting the angry screed they
               | did.
               | 
               | Ars takes Donenfeld's hyperbole and runs with it, fact-
               | checking only the easily verified claims. And there is
               | _some_ truthiness to it! Unfortunately, it 's the rest of
               | the communication that leaves something wanting.
               | 
               | Anyway, I love wireguard and what Donenfeld has
               | accomplished. I just wish the guy would be a bit more
               | considerate and less colorful when writing sensitive
               | emails.
               | 
               | [0]: https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2021-Mar
               | ch/00649...
        
               | wbl wrote:
               | Mallocarray exists for a very good reason. If you don't
               | check for overflow you can allocate a much smaller buffer
               | than needed. Mallocarray handles this case for you.
        
               | loeg wrote:
               | I understand what mallocarray does and why it is
               | preferable. In these cases, the multiplied values happen
               | to be constrained such that overflow is not possible.
               | Given that precondition, the two patterns are
               | functionally equivalent.
               | 
               | For what it's worth, I tend to advocate for using
               | mallocarray and would use mallocarray in the same places
               | Donenfeld does here. But unless overflow can actually
               | happen, it's stylistic rather than "bug."
        
       | secondcoming wrote:
       | Did Coverity not pick up on any of the bugs that were later
       | found?
       | 
       | The folks behind PVStudio regularly spam the /r/cpp subreddit
       | with actually very intersting articles about issues their static
       | analyser finds in several open source projects. Does anyone here
       | use it?
       | 
       | (I do not work for them or use their product)
        
         | loeg wrote:
         | Coverity has a bunch of false positives and true positives, and
         | FreeBSD wasn't coverity-clean before this patch landed. No one
         | in the FreeBSD dev community has time to watch every Coverity
         | report that comes in.
        
           | justin66 wrote:
           | How does that work, is there a periodic review of static
           | analysis results?
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | If the number of false positives in your project is > 10
             | static analysis is a waste of time. It doesn't matter if
             | your project is 10 lines, or 100 million, 10 is the most
             | false positives static analysis is allowed to have before
             | it is shut off as useless.
             | 
             | It is very hard to be a static analysis tool developer. All
             | the easy cases have been done, most have been folded into
             | the compiler. What is left is the hard cases where you have
             | to figure out how to not trigger on the false positives.
             | Get this wrong and your customers will dump you - doesn't
             | matter if you get it wrong by not detection many problems,
             | or you get it wrong by too many false positives. It doesn't
             | help that once the customer has fixed all the problems they
             | forget about them, but the false positives come up all the
             | time.
             | 
             | You can't get out by making it possible to mark false
             | positives. Once you allow that everyone will just get in
             | the habit of marking all messages as a false positive. I
             | tracked one production bug to a line that was immediately
             | preceded by a false positive suppression - the problem was
             | real but the someone decided instead of thinking they would
             | suppress the issue like every other one found.
        
               | justin66 wrote:
               | I've got some very real value out of static analysis
               | tools, so I don't know quite what to say about all that.
               | For sure it is a tool that takes time and effort to use
               | correctly. Having used it, it can sometimes take a little
               | imagination to consider how much time might have been
               | wasted later in the game had the tool _not_ been used.
               | 
               | Not sure that any of that has to do with FreeBSD's use of
               | Coverity, which I'm curious about. (rereading the OP I
               | guess I'm not sure the FreeBSD project itself is a
               | regular user of Coverity or if there's something else to
               | it)
        
       | pdx6 wrote:
       | I think the important thing is this commit was blocked -- there
       | was QA process that caught it. This statement reads to me that
       | there will be more code review moving forward. The whole
       | situation is embarrassing to the 13 release process, but a lesson
       | was learned rather than a dangerous release being created.
       | 
       | I look forward to wg, and I understand the rush to want it out.
        
       | cbsks wrote:
       | As a FreeBSD user, this is great news! I hope that FreeBSD
       | bounces back from this setback and gets stronger than ever.
        
       | JediPig wrote:
       | FreeBSD is already 1000x better code quality than linux.
       | 
       | Linux still has WONT FIX kernel bugs, WONT FIX bugs do not exist
       | in freebsd that are userland based, they fix both kernel and
       | userland.
        
       | jron wrote:
       | This whole fiasco has made me question why I bother with pfsense
       | for my home network. When I only require a simple NAT/port
       | forwarding for torrents, OpenBSD seems like an obvious choice.
       | Other than hardware support, is there another reason why OpenBSD
       | hasn't taken off as a viable home router alternative to pfsense
       | and opnsense? SecurityRouter is the only OpenBSD specific routing
       | appliance that I'm aware of and it is no longer being developed.
       | It also had a closed source backend and unknown licensing for the
       | client.
        
         | nimbius wrote:
         | there may be reasons you wish to reconsider OpenBSD
         | 
         | https://isopenbsdsecu.re/
        
           | jron wrote:
           | Here is the presentation which provides more context than the
           | slides alone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E9ga-CylWQ
           | 
           | I've watched it before and it is compelling; however, at the
           | end of the day, an OS that tries to take security seriously
           | is probably better than one that doesn't. The OpenBSD code is
           | small and I suspect that the defects/KLOC is far less than
           | other projects capable of routing. I'd love to hear more
           | critiques for using it as a home router though.
        
           | rurban wrote:
           | Yes. If you need 10x less performance, you'd choose OpenBSD.
           | Otherwise you'd go for DragonFly
        
             | jron wrote:
             | I have no doubt that DragonFly could handle higher
             | throughput but for a home router at 1GbE or less, OpenBSD
             | seems ideal assuming it doesn't add additional latency.
             | Benchmarks are hard to find; if you know of any, please let
             | me know.
        
         | uncledave wrote:
         | I treat my home network as insecure and use an off the shelf
         | ISP provided router (FritzBox). I have saved hours of my life
         | doing this. I was running various unixy things over the years
         | and suddenly something went snap and I decided not to bother.
         | 
         | It's fine for corporate and medium sized networks but not worth
         | it for home stuff any more. Just costs time, money and eats a
         | lot of power.
        
         | mishac wrote:
         | IIRC OpenBSD's version of pf is single-threaded, which might be
         | an issue depending on your network speed and hardware. A single
         | core of an Atom or Celeron might struggle on a gigabit or 10gig
         | network, if that's the use case.
        
           | jron wrote:
           | I might have the history wrong on this one but it sounds like
           | FreeBSD forked OpenBSD's PF code at one point to add SMP
           | support. OpenBSD's continued PF updates have not been merged
           | into FreeBSD due to the incompatibilities introduced by their
           | SMP changes. I believe single thread performance has also
           | increased quite a bit since the fork happened. I don't
           | require 10gig support currently but I have no doubt that SMP
           | support will eventually be required if OpenBSD wants to
           | remain usable as a router in the future.
        
           | jjav wrote:
           | My externally facing firewall at home is an OpenBSD box with
           | an Atom C2550 @ 2.40GHz, it's plenty enough to handle all
           | internet traffic (internal network traffic doesn't go through
           | it). I don't have 10gig internet link at home though (who
           | does?)
        
       | chromatin wrote:
       | Contrasting this with another FOSS UNIX alternative is
       | interesting.
       | 
       | Although I initially thought the Illumos code review and commit
       | processes (request to integrate; RTI) [0] [1] seemed overly-
       | cumbersome and laborious (and to some extent, perhaps they are
       | still slightly), I now have a much greater appreciation for the
       | safety mechanisms built in.
       | 
       | Strictly based on code quality and engineering I wish we could
       | rewrite history, have Sun open up OpenSolaris sooner and faster
       | (and perhaps with a different license) such that Illumos stood as
       | a/the dominant Linux alternative today. But maybe that's just
       | nostalgia talking.
       | 
       | Best of luck to FreeBSD going forward; I'm sure this event will
       | lead to even better processes in the future.
       | 
       | [0] https://illumos.org/docs/contributing/ [1]
       | https://illumos.org/docs/contributing/#code-review
        
         | busterarm wrote:
         | OpenBSD is surprisingly viable for most things. There's a few
         | stacks it doesn't quite run, but it supports most of what I
         | need to run professionally.
        
       | craftyscrafty wrote:
       | This isn't the first time FreeBSD's lack of code review in
       | security-sensitive areas has been put in the spotlight, and
       | probably won't be the last either.
       | 
       | https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2015-Feb...
       | 
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/cid3ud/freebsdsa1912te...
       | 
       | https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=32439...
       | 
       | https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-head/2018-June/1...
       | 
       | https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-security/2018-Ja...
        
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