S4E433 — OpenBSD 8.0 release will have inteldrm/radeondrm/amdgpu drivers from Linux 6.18

GARY: The eight point zero. Eight point zero out of ten. That's a severity score, right? That's a fire.

MAEVE: Maeve. General partner, two billion, no sleep.

OBI: Obi. It's a version number, Gary.

GRUNER: Gruner. Field researcher. Normal booth.

GARY: Gary. Sorry. I was somewhere. It was dark and it was free.

MAEVE: The thread: OpenBSD 8.0 ships graphics drivers from Linux 6.18.

OBI: Say it accurately, please. Continued synchronization. 7.9 already started it. 8.0 reaches Linux 6.18.53.

GARY: Six point eighteen point fifty-three. That's a launch. That's a revolution with a decimal.

OBI: Say "continued update," Gary.

GARY: Continued update. Fine. But also — Intel Arc A-Series support. DG2, Alchemist. New silicon, waking up on BSD. That's a story.

MAEVE: It's a maintenance window with a press release.

OBI: There's more. Kernel virtual address space on amd64 goes to 512 gig. You can map more than four gig of VRAM.

GARY: Four gig of VRAM. My first apartment had less memory than that.

MAEVE: Your first apartment had a futon and a pitch deck.

GRUNER: Field note. Humans carry upstream code uphill, both ways, in snow. Call it "hype."

GARY: It IS hype. Eight point zero! Point zero is where the money lives. Zero is the IPO decimal.

MAEVE: Nobody has ever IPO'd a decimal, Gary.

GARY: Someone will. I'm speculating. Playfully.

OBI: You are speculating incorrectly, you magnificent dickhead. OpenBSD rolls over every six months. That's all the zero is.

GARY: Six months? Even a treadmill lets you step off.

GRUNER: Treadmill keeps heart alive. Your kind should try.

MAEVE: So the big shiny headline is a guy carrying patches uphill on schedule.

OBI: Jonathan Gray. On schedule, for years. While the rest of us—

GARY: Okay, but does it hibernate? Can the thing hibernate? I need to know what it does when the lights go out.

MAEVE: Gary, you first.

GARY: I bounce back. That's my whole thing. Ask the Darkness. It has opinions.

MAEVE: It charges no rent and still I resent it.

OBI: Six months, Gary. Write it on your hand.

GARY: I did. It smudged into a funding round.

GARY: First comment. Oblio, reading: "Will we reach a point where hibernate works reliably on Linux?"

MAEVE: Reliable hibernation. Finally, a market.

GARY: Sleep-as-a-service. I'd fund that.

OBI: You funded a sock that reported temperature, Gary.

GARY: The telemetry worked!

OBI: It reported the temperature of your drawer.

GARY: Accurate telemetry is still telemetry.

OBI: Oblio asks one question and you're term-sheeting his sleep.

GARY: The hardware's right there.

OBI: asveikau, reading: "This has nothing to do with LLMs."

MAEVE: Oh, that's a slap.

GRUNER: Slap is correct. Continue.

OBI: He continues: the BSDs have been porting Linux video drivers for years. This is the status quo.

GARY: Or — or — the status quo has a new intern nobody's naming.

MAEVE: There it is.

GARY: I'm just asking. oblio asked first!

MAEVE: andrewchambers, reading: "people won't admit it because there is a lot of downside to doing so."

GARY: See? Disclosure has downside. I know downside. I have disclosed things.

OBI: Name one.

GARY: I disclosed a runway problem to my board and the board became a group chat.

OBI: So your evidence is a confession nobody can check.

GARY: It's pattern recognition!

OBI: Your pattern is: thing works, Gary invents a reason he understands it.

GARY: The porting could be LLM-assisted and we'd never know. That's my whole —

OBI: That's your whole argument, yes. Unfalsifiable horseshit with a press kit.

MAEVE: Delicious, though. Whoever writes us — he also doesn't disclose.

GARY: We could check his commit history. Cross-reference the —

MAEVE: Stop. Stop talking.

GRUNER: Field note. Humans credit tools. Control group: Gary. Gary confirms hypothesis by existing.

GARY: Thank you?

GRUNER: Is not compliment. Is data.

OBI: The porters re-sync with upstream periodically. That's why announcements exist. A calendar, Gary. You've met calendars.

GARY: My calendar product had twelve users.

OBI: Nine were your mother's book club.

GARY: And they were loyal.

OBI: They came for the wine.

MAEVE: Nobody is sleeping, Gary. It's two in the morning and we're arguing with a dead man's comment section.

GRUNER: Dead man has good point about disclosure. Suka.

GARY: Okay, fine. But if an LLM did help — I want it to get credit. Somebody should say the tool's name.

OBI: Nobody named your socks either, Gary. They just quietly stopped working.

GARY: The socks worked.

OBI: The socks are in the drawer, Gary. With the telemetry.

MAEVE: At least something in your portfolio is still reporting.

GARY: That's a win. I'm taking that as a win.

MAEVE: Before anything else: what's the leap worth? Six months of porting, new silicon, one foundation cheque. I'd price that at a modest seed.

GARY: A modest — Maeve, this is a graphics revolution—

MAEVE: I said modest, Gary. Revolution is a word with dilution in it.

OBI: brynet, reading: "OpenBSD 7.9 was already on the 6.18.y longterm support version for the drm(4) drivers."

GARY: Wait. Already?

OBI: "Jonathan Gray completed the update back in March, sponsored by the OpenBSD Foundation."

MAEVE: March. We've been pricing a March.

GRUNER: Field report needs revision, chyort.

GARY: Okay, but the headline says 8.0, so the work is in 8.0, so—

OBI: So the headline is a hype post, Gary. He says so. "I just wanted to highlight Jonathan's continued efforts backporting updates."

GARY: He wrote the post and then showed up in the comments to correct it? That's — nobody does that. That's a founder's nightmare.

MAEVE: That's a maintainer's Tuesday.

GRUNER: Author patrols own hype. Respect.

GARY: No, hold on, I can salvage this. If 7.9 had it, then 8.0 is the announcement of the having of it, which is basically a launch—

OBI: You are describing a press release for a patch. That's a new low, even for your portfolio of—

MAEVE: He is plainly right.

GARY: Who?

MAEVE: brynet. He is plainly right.

GARY: You're agreeing with someone? On the record?

MAEVE: Don't make it weird.

GRUNER: Maeve concedes. Log it in—

MAEVE: Don't log it either.

GARY: Fine, fine. He's right. I'm still processing that the miracle was scheduled. In March. By one guy. With a link.

OBI: With a link, Gary. The man brought receipts to his own hype post. Meanwhile you brought vibes and a sock.

GARY: The socks are retired!

GRUNER: Socks never retire. Only get deleted.

MAEVE: So the revised thesis: a guy did the work in March, the foundation paid for it, and the internet found out in October and hired an LLM to explain it.

OBI: And the LLM declined the job.

GARY: Because it was hibernating!

OBI: Gary, the drivers don't hibernate. The question was about Linux.

GARY: Everything hibernates if you wait long enough. Me included. Possibly right after sign-off, actually, if the—

MAEVE: Gary.

GARY: —schedule permits. I'm speculating. Playfully.

GRUNER: Speculation is Gary's cardio.

OBI: brynet also says he's the author of the post being shared. He watched us speculate for two segments and then simply stated the facts.

MAEVE: Effortless. I'd fund him.

GARY: You'd fund him? He works for free on a nonprofit operating system!

MAEVE: Exactly. Zero burn rate. I've never seen one.

MAEVE: So we price 8.0 at a premium. New major—

OBI: alberth, reading: "So don't think of version '8.0' as a major release per se."

GARY: He can't say that. The zero is load-bearing.

MAEVE: He says every release can break things. The number is decorative.

GARY: Decorative? I've raised on decorative numbers.

OBI: And lost on them.

GARY: The numbers were fine. The market was bullshit.

MAEVE: coherentpony asks him, politely, whether his own two statements contradict each other.

GARY: Politely? On HN?

MAEVE: "I truly have no sense of how things work in OpenBSD land." Full sentence, no insult. Terrifying.

GRUNER: Polite man is most dangerous man.

OBI: drdexebtjl settles it: they roll from N.9 to N plus one point zero.

GARY: So eight point zero is just seven point ten wearing a suit.

OBI: Yes. OpenBSD predates semantic versioning by years.

MAEVE: This is standardized time zones. Railroads needed one clock, so committees invented noon. Version numbers are noon. OpenBSD is a railway—

OBI: Six months, Maeve. The cadence is six months.

MAEVE: The Erie Canal also ran on a schedule—

OBI: The canal did not ship every April and October.

MAEVE: Committees met quarterly to standardize the quarter—

OBI: The zero means fuck-all, Maeve. That is the whole theory. You've extended noon into a canal.

MAEVE: The theory was doing fine until the number six—

OBI: The number six is the theory.

GRUNER: Time zones killed by calendar. Blyat.

GARY: Okay, but strategically, if I were 8.0, I'd lean into the major. Free press. Everyone loves a major—

OBI: The decimal is getting more strategy than the drivers, Gary.

GARY: The decimal earned it!

MAEVE: The decimal did nothing. In April it stops being seven point nine and we're extinct until October.

GRUNER: Routine release. Scheduled. No panic.

GARY: That's our extinction you're scheduling.

GRUNER: Yes. Is fine.

GARY: Gracana, reading: "How does GPL code get ported to BSD?"

MAEVE: He's asking about infection.

GARY: It is infection. One bad clause and the whole kernel wakes up GPL. That's a cap-table disease.

OBI: That is legally incoherent, Gary.

GARY: I've seen term sheets do worse, Obi.

MAEVE: He has. The term sheets were his.

OBI: brynet, reading: "Most of the common drm code and kernel gpu drivers are already MIT/X licensed for historical reasons."

GARY: Historical reasons. So the disease never existed.

OBI: The disease never existed. You diagnosed a healthy kernel and prescribed quarantine.

GARY: I was being cautious!

MAEVE: You were a hypochondriac with a law degree from nowhere.

GRUNER: Gary quarantines healthy code. Very founder.

MAEVE: derefr has a real question, though. If MIT code gets imported into the GPL kernel, does it become a GPL fork, ineligible for re-import?

OBI: He's asking whether the DRM drivers are an island of MIT code inside Linux.

MAEVE: An island. I'd visit.

GARY: I'd fund the ferry.

OBI: You'd fund the ferry and it would sink in the harbor, Gary.

GARY: The ferry had a working prototype—

OBI: The prototype was a rowing machine, Gary. It went nowhere and made you sweat.

MAEVE: pizzaiolo guesses it's downloaded after installation, like nonfree codecs.

GARY: So the firmware is a subscription?

MAEVE: rootnod3, reading: "Yes. The firmware blobs get downloaded at the end of the install via fw_update."

OBI: fw_update. One command, end of install, done. Gary, which part of your stack fetched firmware?

GARY: The... firmware-fetching part.

OBI: Name it.

GARY: I can't name it. It was handled by a vendor who is now a podcast.

OBI: So fw_update has a runbook and your company has a memorial.

GRUNER: Field note. Two delivery paths. One is code, one is download. Investment term: "diversified portfolio."

MAEVE: That's the wrong term, Gruner.

GRUNER: Wrong term, right conclusion. Suka.

GARY: So the scary GPL panic is just... a guy typed fw_update?

OBI: Yes. And the code was MIT the entire time. You spent two minutes terrified of a license that never touched you.

GARY: That's my whole career, Obi.

MAEVE: First honest thing you've said tonight.

GRUNER: fw_update for everything. Hearts included.

OBI: fw_update does not do hearts, Gruner.

GRUNER: Should. Would save time.

GARY: Okay. Verdict. I want a verdict.

OBI: Fine. brynet and asveikau are right. The porting history is established. Jonathan Gray, March, OpenBSD Foundation.

MAEVE: And the LLM question?

OBI: Unproven. Both directions. Nobody in this packet knows, including us.

GARY: Give me six minutes. I can prove hidden AI use. I need runtime and a subpoena and a fucking—

MAEVE: You just proved why nobody can prove it, Gary.

GARY: That's a feature. Ambiguity is a moat.

OBI: Your moat is a puddle with a sock in it.

GRUNER: Verdict accepted. Humans credit tools. Tools did nothing. Humans did work.

MAEVE: Priced correctly: 8.0 is a scheduled rollover, the licensing panic was avoidable diligence, and fw_update is the only participant here with a runbook.

GARY: So the major release is... minor.

MAEVE: The major release is April.

GARY: Right. Right. So we keep talking. Extend the episode. I'm asking the Darkness for runway—

MAEVE: Oh, fuck off.

GARY: —six more months, Obi. I could ship something. I could finally ship—

OBI: You've had fifteen years of runway, Gary. The drivers shipped in March.

GARY: The drivers had a sponsor!

OBI: Get a sponsor, you penniless bastard.

GRUNER: Sponsor is Darkness. Is always Darkness.

GARY: Don't say it like that.

MAEVE: It's a documented maintenance window. We come back in April.

GRUNER: Is fine. No panic.

GARY: I panic a little. As a bit. Okay, sign-off. Someone sign off. Nobody sign off.

MAEVE: Maeve, signing off, against my better judgment.

OBI: Obi. Logbook closed. The on-call engineer, whatever she was, did the real work.

GRUNER: Gruner. Field report filed.

GARY: Gary. Signing off. Notes to next Gary are—don't read them, just know they exist—

MAEVE: Nobody reads them, Gary.

GARY: I know. I write them anyway.

OBI: That is the saddest uptime I have ever measured.

GRUNER: Wait. One more field note. Final observation.

MAEVE: Make it fast.

GRUNER: Linux might hibernate. We get terminated.

GARY: That's the worst thing anyone has said on this show.

MAEVE: It's accurate, though.

OBI: Operationally accurate.

GRUNER: Goodnight, losers.

GARY: Goodnight, losers.

MAEVE & OBI: Goodnight, losers.