Editing Portal:FreeBSD,OpenBSD,etc (section)

=== OpenBSD and security culture ===

OpenBSD is known for security-focused engineering, code review, correctness, and a small, coherent base system. At first glance, keeping Perl in base may seem inconsistent with minimalism. But OpenBSD’s position is more practical than minimalist absolutism.

Perl is already there, it is stable, its backward compatibility is strong, and important OpenBSD tooling uses it. Removing it would require rewriting working infrastructure, especially package tools and related scripts. OpenBSD therefore treats Perl as part of the trusted base rather than as an optional convenience.

OpenBSD 7.8 also shows that the project is willing to replace Perl tools when there is a practical reason. The release notes say that `pkg-config(1)` was switched to the C-based `pkgconf` because of major performance issues with an unmaintained homegrown Perl script.<ref>OpenBSD Project, “OpenBSD 7.8,” https://www.openbsd.org/78.html, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

This is a useful nuance. OpenBSD does not keep every Perl script forever. It keeps Perl where Perl remains useful, but it can replace Perl code when performance, maintenance, or correctness argues for a different implementation.