Operating Systems - Unix

My introduction to unix came in college via Digital Unix. After giving linux a spin in its infancy I've been using FreeBSD since around 1995. There is always at least one BSD box in my house, and I've pretty much split my time between NeXT/OS X and BSD since 1996.

Some time around the turn of the millenium, a new version of FreeBSD broke something on the box I was running it on. Broke as in I lost some functionality I had before, or stability was compromised. I don't exactly remember. Anyway I dabbled with linux and Solaris, and just couldn't stomach either. I ended up running OpenBSD for a while, and was happy with it. I engaged in the openbsd-misc mailing list, and as I recall I even had a couple of pleasant conversations with Theo de Raadt. This came as something of a surprise given his reputation, and my feeling at the time was that Theo was a smart guy that didn't suffer fools, and I was just fine with that.

Eventually I said something in a discussion that drew his ire, and he laid into me. I looked for it in the list archives but didn't have any luck finding it to use as an example. Anyway, I was a serious young man at the time and my response to getting flamed by Theo was "FU and F your os, bitch", and I stopped using OpenBSD.

Years have gone by and I'm older now. I don't have any hard feelings toward Theo or OpenBSD. On the contrary, we are lucky to have pioneers like Theo, and I very much respect the contributions that OpenBSD has made to open source and system security. I don't know what made me think of it the other day, but I did, and it gave me an idea.

In retrospect I think it's pretty cool to have been flamed by Theo. I mean, how many people can claim they've been publicly abused by one of the best? I am proud to display my public shame at having been cruelly kicked by one of the prime architects of two out of three significant BSD operating systems, and it seemed like a good idea to share those sentiments with those like myself, and those who just find it as amusing as I do.

Therefore, I have added an "I got flamed by Theo de Raadt" t-shirt to the pseudoexpert.com Zazzle store.