OpenBSD 5.7 Preorders Started | Hacker News Reader

OpenBSD 5.7 Preorders Started

undeadly.org

58 pointsfcambus13 comments

Placed my order today. I'll probably never use the discs but to me it's worth it to support the project. I use OpenBSD on a few machines but on the other hand I use OpenSSH on all my machines.

Go buy the discs, a t-shirt, a poster or simply donate, it's a great project!

https://www.openbsdstore.com/cgi-bin/live/ecommerce.pl?site=...

http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html

That's a very kind gesture from you! This made me realize: why having some CDs pressed, printed and shipped if most people don't plan to ever use them? Maybe they should offer some different kind of collectible/gizmo that would be funnier than a boring layer of polycarbonate.

there are tshirts and posters. also you can donate directly to the project.

If they had USB installers instead of CDs I'd buy them and actually use them as well.

Bootable OpenBSD USB sticks are simple to make. Just use a computer with a CD drive to install OpenBSD onto a USB stick. Then you can plug the USB stick into most any computer and boot bsd.rd to do an install. You can even copy various versions of bsd.rd onto the USB stick, current, etc.

> Bootable OpenBSD USB sticks are simple to make.

So are bootable CDs and coffee, but people still buy them.

This is a fundraiser for OpenBSD -- a bootable, branded USB stick would get the purchaser their copy of OpenBSD, be future advertising ("Oh hey! That's a nice Puffy USB Key you have!"), provide utility (as a general purpose USB device) after their laptop has OpenBSD installed/updated, and be a nice little collectable artifact too.

USB images are available on the mirrors (installXX.fs).

I find the discs are collectable in a way. A niche collection but interesting none the less.

The covers are great (artwork that is). And they only press so many copies and once they sell out they become pretty scarce.

So maybe not comic book collectable but in my mind more sane than some of the weird stuff people collect. :-)

Many people collect the CDs for the artwork.

Much better to simply donate than waste earth's resources on discs and packaging. There's enough pollution in this world. Our oceans are filling with garbage.

http://compactdiscrecyclingcenter.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

Well I can't argue with that and I do consider myself quite conscious of the environment in general. Even though I said I won't actually use the disks I do love the extra packaging and treat them like collector's items.

But your point is well taken... I will think twice next time!

Edit: fixed typo.

Is it still true that all of the developers on the project are volunteers?

Probably depends on what you mean by "volunteer". But, like many non-trivial OSS projects, some of the team members are supported in various ways (understanding employers, bounties, government grants, consulting gigs, etc.) specifically for their contributions to the project.

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