Open Vs Free BSD

[Charlie Kester]

On Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 11:23:26 PDT Michael R. Wayne wrote:
>
>OK, I'm going to take a guess here that English may not be Michal's primary
>language and re-ask his question:
>
>   Given the several versions of *BSD, I have been led to understand
>   that each excells in different ways.  How do I select which one
>   is right for my application, what are the underlying reasons
>   that would lead me to that choice and what are the the disadvantages
>   I am risking?
>
>This is, actually, not an inappropriate question coming from a potential
>new user who is not familiar with the history surrounding the various
>versions and would make an outstanding FAQ.  As an example, we run FreeBSD
>on our firewalling machines because it works well enough and we prefer the
>reduced support costs of using a single O/S across our network.  I am unsure
>of what the advantage of moving to OpenBSD might be and would find it very
>difficult to quantify the advantages (if any) versus the increased support
>resources required.
>
>This is a very real issue.  Linux has a similar problem; I've personally
>been in meetings where clients examined the myriad Linux distributions
>and say "It's very likely that we will make the incorrect choice.  So we'll
>go with Windows."  I suspect similar events have occurred with *BSD.  So,
>rather than jumping on people about them bringing up religous wars (because,
>face it, you CAN edit a file perfectly well in either vi or emacs :-), we'd
>all be better served by giving them enough information to make the
>right choice in their situation while realizing the tradeoffs they are
>making.


I agree, this shouldn't necessarily be treated as flamebait or trolling.

But shouldn't the question be redirected to the advocacy mailing
list/team?