OpenBSD 3.9 released
Published: 03 May 2006 11:20 BST
The OpenBSD project on Monday released version 3.9 of its open source operating system, which offers improvements including a new sensor framework and better buffer overflow protection.
The sensor framework will allow system administrators to monitor the environmental conditions of servers running the OS, Theo de Raadt, the founder and lead developer of OpenBSD, told ZDNet UK in an interview.
"There is a significant new sensor framework [in OpenBSD 3.9], which supports voltage sensors, fan sensors, temperature sensors and so on," said de Raadt. "Such a feature is still missing in Linux and other major operating systems."
The OS has also introduced fully enabled randomised memory allocation, which ensures that programs do not always allocate memory in the same place and therefore offers protection against buffer overflow attacks. "No other major commercial operating system has this feature," de Raadt said.
Earlier this year, de Raadt admitted the open source project is running at a loss and called on vendors and commercial users to contribute.
But he said in an interview on Tuesday that Linux and Unix vendors have been reluctant to help, despite using software developed by the project such as the OpenSSH communications encryption program.
"Roughly stated, painting with some broad strokes, the Linux vendors flat out refused to help. They have not even really replied to requests. The commercial Unix vendors have tried to stay away from funding us as well, hiding in their castles, especially when users of our software sent them requests for action," de Raadt told kernel news site KernelTrap.
But while vendors have kept away, the project has received donations from "hundreds" of individuals and "large contributions" from some OpenSSH users. This included open source projects Smoothwall and Mozilla, and the domain name registrar GoDaddy, according to de Raadt.
"I think that contributions should have come first from the vendors, secondly from the corporate users, and thirdly from individual users. But the response has been almost entirely the opposite, with almost a 15-to-1 dollar ratio in favour of the little people. Thanks a lot, little people!" he told KernelTrap.
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