OpenBSD’s Support Model

If you’ve worked with only commercial UNIX, you might find OpenBSD’s support structure a little surprising. There is no toll-free number to call and no vendor to guide you. No, you may not speak to the manager of the support team. There isn’t one. The management is you.

Many commercial operating systems conceal their inner workings, and the only access you get is through the programs, application programming interfaces (APIs), and application binary interfaces (ABIs) they provide. If you want to learn more about how your operating system works, you can’t (unless you reverse-engineer it). When something breaks, you either live with it or pay the vendor to solve the problem.

OpenBSD, on the other hand, is completely open. You can view the source code, the compiler, and the resulting binaries. You have the official manual and a whole bunch of ancillary documentation. You have access to the developers’ logs—logs that describe every change ever made to every part of the system—through the same tools the developers use. You can back out of changes, understand the motivation behind the changes, and even contact the people who have most recently worked on a component you’re interested in and ask them what they were thinking. You can add your own features. In other words, you have the opportunity to understand OpenBSD in exquisite, excruciating detail.

If you want to learn about OpenBSD, you must jump from eating what you’re served to reading the cookbook and creating your own meals. If you’re willing to learn using the information provided, you will develop skills, and you’ll probably even make some friends in the OpenBSD community along the way. If you want to use OpenBSD and don’t have the time or inclination to learn, invest in a commercial support contract. Many companies and consultants around the world support OpenBSD. The OpenBSD website lists dozens.

If you don’t want to learn and don’t want to buy a support contract, then OpenBSD is simply not for you.