dk smith wrote:
> I apologize to the porters... cuz this certainly could not be the
> appropriate list, but it is the one with sigificant off-porter traffic...
> 
> What is the difference between OpenBSD and NetBSD? Is one better than the
> other for use on the Mac68K hardware?
> 
> And further off topic... why are we on the porter list? Don't the porters
> want to take this list back for their own devices?

huh?  i'm assuming you're confused about this mailing list (or at least
i'm confused about what you're saying ;-)  this mailing list is devoted to
all things concerning the mac68k port of netbsd.  it is not necessarily
for people porting netbsd _to_ mac68k...although that is certainly a valid
use.

as for your first question, it would probably be a little more appropriate
to ask it on netbsd-users (or maybe netbsd-advocacy if there is one).
it's likely to start a bit of a flame war, tho ;-)  you might also want to
check out www.daemonnews.com.  they probably have some comparisons and
history.

here's a brief attempt to answer it here, however.  openbsd was started as
the result of a schism within the netbsd developer community.  basically,
a few developers decided that they wanted a different direction for the
project, and they went off and started one of their own.  from that point,
netbsd and openbsd have diverged a bit.  there are any number of things
that you can say about project direction (netbsd focuses on multi-platform
support, openbsd on security), but those are just buzz phrases.  both
projects pretty much focus on all those things.  the only real difference
i can think of at the moment is that openbsd integrates a lot of things
into the base distribution that netbsd doesn't (e.g. perl).

as far as the mac68k port goes, i generally believe that the netbsd
support is a little more advanced than the openbsd support.  the reason i
say this is that openbsd hasn't had a consistent port-maintainer over the
past couple of years.  this may have corrected itself (a brief glance at
the website indicates this is so).  the netbsd/mac68k user base is
probably a little larger, too, so you might get better support as a result
(more people to plague with problems).

anyway, i hope this little diatribe has been of some use to you ;-)

-colin