FreeBSD or OpenBSD for a web server?

Would FreeBSD or OpenBSD be the best for a web server? I've heard that OpenBSD has the best security, which is extremely impartment

You won't go wrong with either, but if I were making that decision, I'd pick FreeBSD.

I've always been of the mind that OpenBSD is more geared towards routers and firewalls, where security of the underlying system and programs is of utmost importance.

Thing with OpenBSD is tho, that Theo (the guy who 'owns' it) is very ... tight-fisted in the way that the project is run. Every single package, driver, etc. has to go through his scrutiny before getting added to the tree as part of the system. This sometimes led to delays in adopting the most recent software packages, driver editions, and outright refusal to let some things in.

Now, this was the case of OpenBSD a while ago, last time I looked, so it's possible that something has changed recently in the way they do things. But, if Theo is still in charge, it won't be much different.

On the other side, FreeBSD has very good security out of the box as it is, and is extremely stable and robust where it counts - disk subsystems and the networking stack, which is pretty much the superior one out there.

FreeBSD now has their own security audit team, and is going through the code to identify and fix security related bugs, and making sure no code gets through that shouldn't be there. There is a core team which does a very good job of keeping strict guidelines of how code is submitted into the tree, and you can be sure that the code goes through the most rigorous testing before being intorduced into the STABLE base system.

I would suggest the FreeBSD 4.x codebase (8 was last release, 9 is upcoming shortly), instead of the 5.x codebase. 4.x is their stable base, meant for production systems. 5.x is their CURRENT codebase, or basically the new branch which is being actively developed on, and may be hazardous to some production environments. 5.x will branch off to 6-CURRENT and 5-STABLE with the release of 5.2, and then 5.x will be the new, cutting edge stable branch, and 6.x will be the bleeding edge development branch.

-Gary

OpenBSD works fine as a webserver, among many other things.

It annoys me that people think its just a firewall.