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Comment by asdasf | Hacker News Reader

>Competition is a good thing, so we should consolidate and have less competition

That makes very little sense.

Then re-read my comment within the context of this discussion, which is OpenBSD being on the verge of bankruptcy.

If I believed all the BSD forks had a chance to live long and prosper on their own I wouldn't be saying that, but right now it seems to me that none of them have any real long time chance to remain generic OS on par with Linux (except possibly FreeBSD but it's not even certain anymore). Linux just moves too fast these days.

Your comment doesn't make more sense from reading it more often. Saying "because I don't understand how the BSDs work or their development processes, I think they should stop existing to prevent them from having to stop existing" is still nonsensical, no matter how you slice it.

It's nonsensical because you misunderstand it. He is saying he thinks two or more of them ought to combine efforts in order to prevent all of them from failing.

Two of them "combining efforts" is removing one. That is no different than one of them "failing". That is the point. Contrary to armchair OS designer belief, you can't just say "hey guys, stop working on your project and go work on someone else's because I don't know what I am talking about and think this will somehow help something". Go tell linus to start working on mercurial because you think he should. What is the result of that conversation going to be?

You have it wrong;

> Competition is a good thing, so we should unite bit-parts that are in danger of being stomped out to ensure the dominant player still has competition in the future.

"Unite bit-parts" is stomping them out, that's the point. Even if you just magically convinced all the openbsd developers to stop developing openbsd and go start working on an OS they don't like instead, that would just be getting rid of openbsd to try to prevent losing openbsd. That makes absolutely no sense.

getting rid of openbsd to try to prevent losing openbsd

No, it would be getting rid of openbsd to try to prevent losing bsd.

BSD stopped 20 years ago, if you are worried about losing it you are a little late. This weird misconception that because openbsd is begging for money that other projects with the letters "BSD" in them are in some sort of danger is bizarre. Inventing a problem that doesn't exist, then suggesting doing something that wouldn't solve it as a solution is simply insane.

BSD stopped 20 years ago

I doubt you were truly unable to determine I was not talking about the Berkeley Software Distribution, but the family it spawned. Which leads me to conclude you are being obtuse. For... pleasure? I don't know.

No, I am pointing out something very obvious and important that you seem to have missed. A bunch of totally independent, distinct projects don't all vanish because one of them wants money. The entire premise that "BSD" would vanish makes no sense.

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