OpenBSD or FreeBSD

Which one of these should I choose as an operating system for my server? We recently got attacked through a telnetd backdoor and I don't tolerate that kind of stuff (we currently run FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE and I wasn't aware of the telnetd exploit beforehand.) I've read on the OpenBSD webpage it's been 4 years without a security hole in the default installation, but I've also heard that FreeBSD is pretty secure out-of-the-box (which I'm doubting now.) Which one is better for a person like me, who knows little to nothing of security?

Either will do for you quite nicely, your real problem was having telnetd running at all! (This IS the 21st century, telnetd is just plain bad)

OpenBSD uses OpenSSH as it's telnet replacement, and that's stupid simple to add to FreeBSD. Both OS's can be made nice and tight, it's just that OpenBSD ships with less (no?) stupid stuff on by default.

Yeah, I know. I wasn't the one who had it on, but now it's off after a clean reinstall of 4.3-RELEASE. We've got OpenSSH running on our machine right now, too. I suppose it's easier for us to stick with freebsd instead of having to download openbsd. Thanks for your response.

I've been reading up on the exact same topic.

From what I've seen/heard, FreeBSD is optimized for PC platforms, so it may have a speed increase over OpenBSD. But since OpenBSD is a spinoff of NetBSD, it is ultraportable - it runs on nearly anything. Not only that, but OpenBSD is also more secure, some heavy duty security is in place.
But FreeBSD is more popular (even Microsoft themselves use it on their Hotmail servers), and it seems more articles are availble for FreeBSD over OpenBSD. So I'd recommend FreeBSD right now, though when I get a replacement video card for an old computer, I'm going to install OpenBSD on it and see what happens.

both are awesome...

never run any services that you don't need... and you don't need telnetd or ftpd ..... shut it all down. FreeBSD has more ports and more docs. OpenBSD installs like a dream and its file structure is very BSD friendly. both are free. =)