Yes, it’s basically just a quick and last-minute April Fools' joke. In case people are truly seeking some extra explanation or reasoning and background behind it, it’s basically a funny domain hack (well, obviously), with a play on the word “sanctioned” possibly having either the positive or the negative connotations, depending on the context and circumstances — approved / disapproved, officially allowed / officially disallowed and penalised etc, and “ru” having a double meaning as well — official ccTLD for Russia (the author actually being Russian) / hack on “are you”.
But, still, why “sanctioned” and why “.ru”? If you haven’t been following the news in the last year, basically, the American government has officially sanctioned the Russian and Crimean ones, most visibly, by preventing companies such as Visa and MasterCard from processing payments of certain banks and in certain regions. What this effectively does, however, is actually effectively sanctions the American companies themselves instead (and, ironically, these American companies are not actually sanctioned by the Russian government, but by their own one, no less!), and promotes wider issuance and acceptance of the cards through the alternative payment systems like China UnionPay and Sberbank ПРО100 (“ProSto”, literally, a hack on “about 100” / “simple”). And the US-based companies losing the Russian market share at this time, will be very unlikely to ever get it back after a few years, that is, after all the alternatives become the new norm. Who wins? Long term, probably everyone, except for the American payment companies and their shareholders.
So, personally, I view We.Arr.Sanctioned.Ru (arrrr!) as a caricature expression on the official policy as above. Writing the above summary, I guess an expansion of the list is in proper order — must find a category to also list UnionPay and ПРО100 as being sanctioned, and place Visa and MasterCard on an alternative we.are.not.sanctioned.ru list. ^_^
I don’t understand why OpenBSD is Desktop OS instead of Server OS. Seems like they just wanted to make a list with their favorite things without much reason as to why.
FreeBSD’s motto is “the power to serve”, and it’s arguably the most performant OS, just ask Netflix. Hence they got sanctioned for “just serving” and won in the “best server OS” category.
OpenBSD, on the other hand, is actually a great operating system on a desktop, or even better, on a laptop, as many OpenBSD developers will surely attest (on the other hand, traditionally, very few FreeBSD ones eat their own dogfood on their laptops, and setting up the desktop on FreeBSD is no easy task). The sanctioned category for OpenBSD is thus a tribute to the common misconception.
What the hell is this
The author (see meta tag, OP) is a contributor across the major BSDs. Still doesn’t explain this.
Yes, it’s basically just a quick and last-minute April Fools' joke. In case people are truly seeking some extra explanation or reasoning and background behind it, it’s basically a funny domain hack (well, obviously), with a play on the word “sanctioned” possibly having either the positive or the negative connotations, depending on the context and circumstances — approved / disapproved, officially allowed / officially disallowed and penalised etc, and “ru” having a double meaning as well — official ccTLD for Russia (the author actually being Russian) / hack on “are you”.
But, still, why “sanctioned” and why “.ru”? If you haven’t been following the news in the last year, basically, the American government has officially sanctioned the Russian and Crimean ones, most visibly, by preventing companies such as Visa and MasterCard from processing payments of certain banks and in certain regions. What this effectively does, however, is actually effectively sanctions the American companies themselves instead (and, ironically, these American companies are not actually sanctioned by the Russian government, but by their own one, no less!), and promotes wider issuance and acceptance of the cards through the alternative payment systems like China UnionPay and Sberbank ПРО100 (“ProSto”, literally, a hack on “about 100” / “simple”). And the US-based companies losing the Russian market share at this time, will be very unlikely to ever get it back after a few years, that is, after all the alternatives become the new norm. Who wins? Long term, probably everyone, except for the American payment companies and their shareholders.
So, personally, I view We.Arr.Sanctioned.Ru (arrrr!) as a caricature expression on the official policy as above. Writing the above summary, I guess an expansion of the list is in proper order — must find a category to also list UnionPay and ПРО100 as being sanctioned, and place Visa and MasterCard on an alternative we.are.not.sanctioned.ru list. ^_^
I don’t understand why OpenBSD is Desktop OS instead of Server OS. Seems like they just wanted to make a list with their favorite things without much reason as to why.
I think this was an attempt at an April Fools joke.
I’ve always considered April Fools the day that people without humor pretend to have it.
I guess it’s all an inside joke. :-)
FreeBSD’s motto is “the power to serve”, and it’s arguably the most performant OS, just ask Netflix. Hence they got sanctioned for “just serving” and won in the “best server OS” category.
OpenBSD, on the other hand, is actually a great operating system on a desktop, or even better, on a laptop, as many OpenBSD developers will surely attest (on the other hand, traditionally, very few FreeBSD ones eat their own dogfood on their laptops, and setting up the desktop on FreeBSD is no easy task). The sanctioned category for OpenBSD is thus a tribute to the common misconception.