Status

I have refrained from posting here because strictly, I have had
nothing to say.  Now as the occasional periodic flurry of messages
have surfaced once more, I feel I ought to say something.

Being the primary coder of the MP support of OpenBSD so far I can tell
you that the state is basically:

* All the working code there is, is in the SMP branch.  It is only
  i386-specific parts, no machine-independent parts have been worked
  upon.  The code manages to detect and spinup a 2nd processor, but
  not let it do any useful work.

* The SMP branch have not been synchronized with the trunk for over a
  year.  There are always troubles doing this synchronization due to
  CVS bugs which makes it a little tedious and boring.  A new sync is
  planned to occur in April, but do not count on it.

* We do have some non-working not committed code to deal with TLB
  shootdown.  This is as far as I can recall the final prerequisite to
  have the 2nd processor to do anything useful.  After that it is
  possible to do crypto off-loading or start on the MI parts of SMP.

* We don't need testers at this point.  When and if, we will ask for
  them.

* Anyone willing to help codewise, there is one thing noone currently has
  responsibility for.  Look for bug-fixes/changes in NetBSD's
  i386-specific MP-parts since the birth of the SMP branch of OpenBSD.
  Our work is based on theirs, and if they have identified problems,
  we likely have them and need fixes similar to theirs.  This is
  tedious and boring, sure, but if you want to help, this is
  valuable work.

* We are, after a year of no time at all, a few people in the team
  that see a few openings in our agenda to be able to at least start
  moving again.  This is not to say something will be visible for
  the foreseeable future.  But it means that you may be stepped on
  your toes if you try to do something major on your own.  If you have
  that kind of action in your plans, write down your design thoughts
  and send them to me, and I can stop you from reinventing the wheel
  in time.

I probably won't react on messages coming here in a while.  I still
have my hands full with real life, and cannot deal well with OpenBSD
issues at the moment.

Please remember that what Miod and Toby has tried to say, we set our
own priorities.  That what open source is all about, the freedom of
programmers to work on what they want, and share the results.  Open
source was never about anything else.  It's not about free software,
it's about software freedom, and that means requirements must not be
externally imposed, but come from ourselves.  Please help make
developers feel development is fun.  Disputes does not help that goal.

Niklas