Theo de Raadt Discusses OpenBSD and Beyond 476
emil writes to tell us that NewsForge (Slashdot Sister Site) is running an interview with OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt. In the interview Theo explores the upcoming release of OpenBSD 3.9, continuing financial difficulties, and some of the tension between the OpenBSD team and other businesses that some feel are taking advantage of the free software without giving anything back. In related news the Jem Report has an interesting writeup that expounds on widespread difficulties that could be faced if the OpenBSD project continues its downward spiral because of their parallel development of OpenSSH.
stay on topic (Score:3, Funny)
All other posts are off-topic. Enjoy!
Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Damn. I wonder if there was anything [wikipedia.org] they could have done about that?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
And a dual license, like the one that MySQL uses may have worked great for them.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
How dense are you GPL people? This comes up at every BSD story, you are trolling by bringing up the GPL in a BSD thread.
OpenBSD isn't trying to make money, they're asking that the companies which save millions by not licensing SSH.com's codebase via use of OpenSSH help pay for the continued improvement of the suite they use, they're not asking for advice from random dipshits that don't kn
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Damn. I wonder if there was anything they could have done about that?
No there wasn't, BSD as in Berkeley Software Distribution, as in University of California Berkeley, as in "Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.", as in paid for by California taxpayers including corporations and individuals who should not be denied access to what they paid for.
BTW, you shouldn't confuse BSD with a very talented but potentially mismanaged team that has a tendency to piss off lucrative sources of income.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
BTW, you shouldn't confuse BSD with a very talented but potentially mismanaged team that has a tendency to piss off lucrative sources
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Subsequently, their moaning about how their self-inflicted mortal wounds hurt horribly is going to rightfully fall on deaf ears, if they are lucky, or will become a butt of jokes, if they are not.
This is what happens if someone is given good advice not to drive their car off the road and into a bog and which they derisively reject and proceed at "what can possibly happen?"-speed into the mud. Following which they sit on top of their sinking vehicle, far into the swamp, waving frantically and complaining loudly about "selfish" people who fail to stop to pull them out of there. So that they can ignore good advice, as soon as rescued, derisively, again.
I say onto Theo: Tough Cookies! You made your bed, you sleep in it! Perhaps placing product placements into the BSD code or performing in a clown outfit at conferences will bring the required revenue, now that the commercial interests do what you have always encouraged them to do: take, take and take ... whatever they can get in return for as least as possible. Its called "business", Theo. Look it up sometime.
BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:4, Informative)
BSD vs GPL is not relevant. Theo's bed was made by driving away potential sources of income like DARPA.
Re:BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it is, as a part of a very long list of good advice he received over the years on a lot of things, and all of which he proceeded to sneer and snicker on, as only Theo can. DARPA's help is just one item on that very, very long list.
Re:BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it is, as a part of a very long list of good advice he received over the years on a lot of things
No, that's a fallacy. In general under open source the money is in consulting, not in the development. A BSD based project is more likely to get inside a corporation and possibly more likely to create consulting work. Whether a project is BSD or GPL, if someone doesn't want to code themselves, they can hire others to do the work. The only difference is whether that work goes back to the community at large and for the company that needed specialized changes that is irrlevant and it may even be counterproductive to the company. The GPL is not some magic pill. We've seen numerous GPL based projects in financial trouble and begging for donations around here as well.
Re:BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, really? You mean it does not depend on what the purpose of the project is?
In general under open source the money is in consulting, not in the development.
Oh I see, making money for Theo was the whole idea of OpenBSD? NOW you tell us!
A BSD based project is more likely to get inside a corporation and possibly more likely to create consulting work.
Which is a good thing if you are planning to make people appropriate, modify and sell your code while not letting you look at it ever again, in hopes that somehow your celebrity status will make some of them hire you.
Whether a project is BSD or GPL, if someone doesn't want to code themselves, they can hire others to do the work.
True enough, that is why BSD offers no advantage over GPL in this area.
The only difference is whether that work goes back to the community at large and for the company that needed specialized changes that is irrlevant and it may even be counterproductive to the company.
Which, in most cases, as Theo is finding the hard way, is the only type of return expected from commercial involvment in your project. Hoping to get hired by someone using your code is wishful thinking in vast majority of cases. GPL folks understand that, and operate accordingly.
The GPL is not some magic pill. We've seen numerous GPL based projects in financial trouble and begging for donations around here as well.
Of course it is not. But it was never its purpose. The purpose of GPL is to ensure that regardless of who is using or contributing to the code, and regardless of financial circumstaneces of a project, the code remains the property of the community and cannot be stolen and then sold back to us. That is all.
Re:BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless they are academics and thereby have their open source development efforts subsidized they have to generate some sort of income to keep their pet projects going and avoid having to get "real" jobs.
"A BSD based project is more likely to get inside a corporation and possibly more likely to create consulting work."
Which is a good thing if you are planning to make people appropriate, modify and sell your code while n
Re:BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:3, Interesting)
Vast majority of FOSS projects are either after-work hobby efforts or side-effects of some other paid work. It is a testimony to Theos' ego, for him to assume that he will be funded just because his project is sooooo much more important then all the others.
Not celebrity status, expertise with the code.
P
Re:BSD vs GPL is not relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Outstanding bullshit. It is *exactly* the opposite!!!
According to Stallman, if I'm a hairdresser or a butcher, I can sell my services, if I'm a programmer I can sell my services too!
The question is that since the hairdresser won't ask you for money each time somebody see your hair, or a butcher will ask you for money when you buy the meat, but h
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
They started with a fork of the NetBSD codebase and maintained compatibility for a long while. Many drivers in the Net/OpenBSD tree used to be ifdef-ed for specific OS related parts. In fact one of the reason for OpenBSD to survive for so long especially on obscure architectures has been the fact that it used to rely heavily on Net for low level hardware specific code (disclaimer - I do not know if this is still the case as I have not looked at their source since 3.3).
As a result GPL-ing is not an option. Your codebase is heavily dependant on somebody's else's codebase which is BSD.
As far as the financial difficulties, all business and businesslike entities using GPL rely on support, custom code and consulting for their day to day living expenses. You do not get that money if you have this attitude:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/428749/30/
Another essential factor is that if you write software in the real world you have to go out of your ivory tower on a daily basis and check what your competitors doing. OpenBSD tends to believe its own PR about their security prowess and does not follow Linux, FreeBSD and other OS development as much as it should. One example for this is how it missed the appearance of hardware RNG in AMD hardware for several years. They simply did not know it is there (I actually pointed it to Theo myself a year ago). I bet that they have missed other stuff in a similar fashion as well.
Frankly, the days when Open Source OS projects were PFY jobs and flaming each other out of existence on mailing lists was business as usual are long gone.
Time to grow up or face the dark stairway down down and down towards oblivion.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dumb question, but if you can take BSD-licensed open-source code and put it in closed-source code, why can't you take the same code and GPL it (maybe make slight trivial modifications to make the software unique before GPL'ing)? I mean, it would most likely piss the BSD team off if someone did this, but legally speaking, is there a reason it cannot be done?
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's be Objective about this, was Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, no, he's not claiming that the world owes him something. He's claiming that his act of creation and contribution does not cause him (well, specifically, the OpenSSH developers) to be owe anything further to the people who take advantage of their contribution.
That is an entirely different issue.
"From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.
"The creator - denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited - went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective." - Howard Roark [davehong.com] in The Fountainhead [amazon.com] by Ayn Rand [wikipedia.org].
Re:Let's be Objective about this, was Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, his point is that he's not being paid for this, so people should stop treating him like an employee. Part of the freedom of writing FOSS code is that you don't have to bend over backwards to accomodate people, because they aren't paying customers. If somebody thinks some software I wrote should have some feature, or should work in a certain way, and whines because it doesn't, I can tell them to take a hike, because I provid
Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
"Free" is an illusion.
When we use "free" software, we pay for it one way or another. Time or money, and, no, time is not money.
Money is green stuff that you through around on the crops to make things grow, as somebody in some famous musical once said, quoting somebody else, I'm sure. When you collect too much money in one place, it goes fetid.
Time is the true currency, although too much time can go fetid as well.
The licenses are gentlemen's agreements. It's a trade of time for time, with rules of courtesy. (EULAs are _not_ gentlemen's agreements, I am not taking about those licenses, they don't deserve to be called licenses.) The licenses form the ground rules for the community that forms around the software. It's very much like the old guilds, although much more open in a very good way.
With the GPL, some of the rules of courtesy which are important for maintaining the infrastructure of the guild are explicit. We might assume that this is because Stallman is a cynic, or because he is a realist, but must people are still confused and think he is an idealist.
With the BSD license, the rules are implicit, derived from the external society, the (Christian, though not entirely uniquely so in the current view of history) principle of casting one's bread on the water. It is expected that the waters will bring the bread back, multiplied. And this is where things have broken down.
Even under the BSD license, the rules of giving back are natural laws, and are not suspended. Humans whose primary product are sales presentations have no idea that they have to give back or the resource will be depleted. Stallman recognized that, Theo has not yet.
People have to be reminded to be courteous, and that's why an idealist and general nice guy like Theo ends up making enemies. The license doesn't remind people, so he has to spend his energy reminding them.
Putting new source under GPL would be one solution, but, as is well known, it is not one that can really be considered yet. A new modified BSD that contains a non-binding reminder that the resources don't renew themselves may be what's in order right now.
Re:Well, (Score:3, Insightful)
You imply that things have broken down because the bread never came back, but I would point out that the broken part was expecting it to.
I write software and release it under the BSD licen
GPL based distributions have to beg too (Score:2)
"The first public signs of financial trouble at MandrakeSoft appeared in March 2002 when Mandrake began asking users for donations and changed their support structure to get a new revenue stream."
http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jan/osg20030116 0 18188.htm [geek.com]
Theo's bed was made by driving away potential sources of income
Classic Theo de Raadt (Score:2)
Gee, I don't know, maybe they had lives they didn't want to sacrafice for the cause Theo. He then goes on to slag linux developers in general but maintains that he doesn't really go int
Re:Classic Theo de Raadt (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Classic Theo de Raadt (Score:3, Insightful)
If you disagree with his point, how about stating why you think it's wrong rather than just bitching about 'classic theo'.
SunSSH (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure they'll find out when everyone else does.
Sounds almost like a threat (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds almost like a threat (Score:5, Insightful)
what a whiner (Score:2, Insightful)
What part of the BSD license does Theo not understand? Apple and SCO aren't "freeloaders", they are using the software under the intended license.
Furthermore, what makes Theo think that people want to run OpenSSH? At this point, it's as entrenched as Windows--nobody has a choice.
For our work on OpenSSH, companies using
Re:what a whiner (Score:4, Insightful)
That part wasn't written by Theo, as far as I can tell.
Re:what a whiner (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:what a whiner (Score:5, Interesting)
For a business that uses OpenBSD code, it would just make good business sense to support the project at a fraction of what it would cost to develop the same code in-house. It is ridiculous that Sun wouldn't even cover the travel expenses of an OpenBSD developer to go their conference, because the value of the developer's hours would have far exceeded such travel expenses. That's just simply bad business.
Re:Is it bad business sense if it's done anyhow? (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent point, although not quite completely true:
By short-term metrics, this is certainly true. However, your above statement isn't 100% correct. So long as someone (or a group of someones) is supporting the development, the code will get written. As (I believe) yo
As a California Corp Apple helped pay for BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's far simpler than that. Apple and SCO *paid for* BSD. BSD was paid for by the taxpayers of California, including corporations like Apple and SCO. Perhaps Theo not
Check your dates (Score:3, Informative)
OpenSSH development began in 1999. So, no Apple didn't pay for OpenSSH
Let's Add Some Context Here (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenBSD has done good work & currently depends on receiving financial donations. Enlightened companies should notice that OpenBSD needs some funding right now & that it would be cheaper to fund them than to have to adopt the support and development of the OpenBSD products they use.
Re:what a whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? People use OpenSSH because it's by far the best out there. Nobody is locked into using it, the specs are open, anyone can code a replacement. It's just not easy to produce something of the same quality and security as OpenSSH. People are locked into Windows because of proprietary file formats and closed source applications; how is that in any way similar to OpenSSH?
But, like many celebrities, it's just never enough.
Sorry. CELEBRITIES? Hmm.. yeah sure, Theo is a celebrity. I'm sure he has paparazzi knocking on his door every day.
Sure Theo can be abrasive, but it's weird to see how gleefully people at the receiving end of his charity will attack him. It's always easy to be an armchair critic.
Re:what a whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure you're right, it's not like we wouldn't have another SSH client, but would it be as good? The fact is that Theo and his team writes really good, really secure code. Someone who does security "for fun" is very rare and valuable. Most developers are quite naturally more interested in cool features than tedious code review.
Re:what a whiner (Score:4, Funny)
which would suddenly turn off encryption on your channel and pop up RMS's face saying "You are using this software for something *I*, his Imperial Majesty RMS, happen not to like today or maybe in the future, therefore I will stop it. I also hope your OS crashes and burns because it's not running HURD."
Thanks, I'll keep using the *really open* OpenSSH.
Amusing indeed (Score:2)
(from the OpenSSH History [openssh.com] page)
I have to wonder how long it will be before the commercial SSH folks are talking to apple and sun and so on about really cheap bulk licenses.
Re:what a whiner (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it isn't. You can also use LSH [lysator.liu.se] or Dropbear [ucc.asn.au], and for SSH clients there are even more alternatives (PuTTY is available for Linux, for example).
This article almost makes me consider using one of them...
Re:what a whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, what makes Theo think that people want to run OpenSSH? At this point, it's as entrenched as Windows--nobody has a choice.
Dear friend, herein lies the indelible mark of your misunderstanding of the free software _Movement_, and will live on even after you are dead and gone.
The help he is asking is pocket change for the companies which use OpenSSH. For the work done in making it compatible with major projects of those companies. __If you read the article__ you will also note how IBM sends customer complaints to the OpenSSH team. And how Sun refused to pay for travel!
I find it painful.
Re:what a whiner (Score:3, Interesting)
it's just bad business. lately lots of companies got big on open source and seeing how SUN (and others) has openssh based products, it would be freakin common sense to give something back to the developers. "well shit, they threw all that code in the wild, we're using and profiting from it, why not drop them some dosh so we motivate them to keep up the good work, so we don't have to".
some recent examples:
HP donated a 20 node [freebsdfoundation.org] blade monster to the FreeBSD project last year in december "We at HP recognize
Bitchy (Score:2)
You doity raht (Score:5, Funny)
yes (Score:2)
Problem with BSD licencing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problem with BSD licencing (Score:2)
And BSD developers know that, accept that, and often want corporations to use their stuff. With easier corporate acceptance there is more opportunity for consulting. Unfortunately with someone like Theo scaring away corporations his pet projects suffer, I'm thin
Re:Problem with BSD licencing (Score:5, Interesting)
They paid for ancient BSD development. However after the court cases were over, that went away.
They have every *legal* right to use it.
They have an ethical responsibility to contribute but this is in no way required.
Morality is individual, so were you talking about a person it would be their choice as to what their morality is. As you're discussing corporations, they inherently and as required by law are entirely amoral.
This is certainly about as clear a demonstration as you can find of the difference between the BSD license and the GPL, but other than that, which wasn't explicitly in there, there really isn't anything to your post.
Is Theo justified in calling the people who used his code without giving anything back asshats? Absolutely.
Can he force them to? Absolutely not.
That's the license he chose and he's well aware of the ramifications.
The thing to me that most sucks was that Stallman and the BSD folks basically made a bet on human nature.
The optomists are losing badly.
Re:Problem with BSD licencing (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not so ancient: "Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved". An this code remains at the heart of the *BSD projects.
Morality is individual, so were you talking about a person it would be the
Re:Problem with BSD licencing (Score:2)
It is NOT a problem with the license. It's the way it is, and if it doesn't suit you, you shouldn't be developing software under the BSD license at all - there's a number of open source licenses to choose from. You can even write your own one and set
Re:Problem with BSD licencing (Score:2)
If businesses were required to act more responsibly and more in the civic interest none of this would be an issue, but capitalism as it is implemented in the western democracies does not allow for this.
I bought the T-shirt (Score:2)
I bought the T-shirt [openbsd.org]; does that count?
Re:I bought the T-shirt (Score:3, Interesting)
Job interview question (Score:2, Insightful)
(and my interviewer is probably reading this, in which case, "Hi there!")
I said I wanted Dan Bernstein to come out alive, because I actually use his stuff in production as opposed to OpenBSD... but after thinking about it for a while I realised that OpenSSH is perhaps more important that Dan Bernstein's stuff. I mean, Dan never updates qmail and any of his tool
Re:Job interview question (Score:4, Funny)
At which question I would have gotten up, broken off a leg table, and proceeded to ask "Where are they?!" so that I can proceed to give Dan a hand, musing to myself that it is at times like these that I wish I were a gun nut.
I am afraid this kind of a reaction would have been rather popular amongst those who had a pleasure of reading Theos' "conversations" with people on some of the USENET groups of old. Theo is just such a charming, loveable guy that swiss army knives open spontaneously in people's pockets at the very mention of him.
Re:Job interview question (Score:5, Insightful)
Was it me, you would have found out that it takes only 0.3 seconds to have a horrible accident with your coffee spilling all over your lap. Applogies and all that, why, I am just such a horrible klutz!
Joking aside, but that sort of question would have me thanking you for the lovely opportunity to get interviewed by you, followed by a mental note not to ever do business with you, under any circumstances.
Has it ever occured to you that these types of smart-ass, self-congratulatory questions, main purpose of which is to show who is the smart alpha-dog in that interview room, are absolutely useless in ascertaining someone's workplace abilities? Oh, what am I talking about, if it had, you would not be asking that and all the other ridiculous "logic" puzzles I am sure you are inflicting on your poor hapless, victims ... err ... applicants.
It's not just openSSH (Score:5, Informative)
If you're a Linux user and you like your madwifi driver, you can thank the OBSD ath driver. Also if you ever want a RALink driver, OpenBSD is the only OS that has one right now and it seems almost certain any ports will be based off it. Anonymous CVS? Theo came up with it after NetBSD kicked him off the commit list. Randomized mmap, stack protection ... there's a lot of development being taken from openbsd. We've all got an interest here.
Re:It's not just openSSH (Score:2)
Re:It's not just openSSH (Score:2)
Would all the KDE devs be Gnome/Fluxbox/XFCE/etc devs if KDE didn't exist? Not bloody likely. Programmer resou
... and licenses (Score:5, Informative)
TCP Wrappers IIRC was one of them, pppd another (again IIRC).
Like Theo or hate him, he's done more for the Open Source community than just piss people off.
Re:... and licenses (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure Wietse Venema saw the value in updating the licenses for TCP wrappers and (perhaps more importantly) Postfix when approached by Theo and did so without any drama whatsoever. Of course, when t
Oh really? (Score:4, Informative)
I thought RALink supported Linux themselves, otherwise, what's this [ralinktech.com]?
Re:Oh really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Malloc
Holy Crap! (Score:2, Troll)
Folks are completly missing the point... (Score:5, Informative)
It's that some companies *cough*Sun*cough* make all kinds of noises about being "open" and "supporting open source" and market the crap out of it purely because it's the latest buzzword, when in reality they just don't give a shit.
That's what gets to Theo... and others.
Be fair (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure there are plenty other projects, but Sun have donated what must amount to many millions of dollars of code to the community.
Sure they use other open source projects (in line with their licenses) and while they presumably aren't throwing money at Theo it seems unfair to brand them as anti-opensource when they've done a lot of good.
Re:Folks are completly missing the point... (Score:3, Interesting)
But as far as buzzword jumping - Sun has given a lot of things to open source, more than IBM in fact. NFS was developed
Anti-Theo sentiments are muddying the point here (Score:5, Interesting)
His request is very reasonable - everyone is benefitting, and those who are in a position to give a little back should do so. He didn't say fund the project, he said contribute a little. Jeez, anything really.
This whole Slashdot anti-Theo movement is lame, it's like watching jocks push the nerdy quiet kid around in high school, which is a bit ironic considering that many of us *were* those nerdy quiet kids. Stop trying to be part of the "in" crowd by bashing this guy and read the article with an objective eye.
Absolutely (Score:5, Funny)
I agree wholeheartedly.
-Theo
Pony up (Score:5, Insightful)
So cut the anti-BSD crap and get over Theo's personality for like 10 seconds and pony up. Some day you'll be glad you did. If for no other reason, do it in your own best interest.
Re:Pony up (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about code but MONEY (Score:5, Insightful)
Theo is NOT talking about code. He couldn't care less about the code!
He's talking about MONEY. OpenBSD and OpenSSH need money to pay Theo's (and other's) income, bandwidth, servers, etc. How does the GPL help when you need money? It does NOT help!
Re:It's not about code but MONEY (Score:2)
Vendors who extend the code and sell it along with their products will have to either release their modifications or pay $$$ for an LGPL or BSD licensed version.
Re:It's not about code but MONEY (Score:2)
Remember when some company tried to get a one-time BSD-licensed Linux kernel? No way, and it had nothing to do with the amount of money being offered: they were plainly said 'no'.
And what about Wine? Don't you remember about the change from X11-license to LGPL and Transgaming trying to start
SunSSH (Score:2)
If OpenBSD find a bug in OpenSSH they will surely post a notice and release a fix. I don't see how they can keep the information from sun.
I understand that Theo is still Theo, and that they should get some help from Sun, but I don't think his approach is very realistic.
Doesn't Theo understandf the BSD license? (Score:2)
So, he OpenBSD and OpenSSH are BSD licensed by choice. That means that NOBODY needs to give them money if they use the source code. The BSD license
Fork it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fork it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then people wonder why de Raadt behaves the way he does. When I read this post, my first reaction was to send you to hell with enough bad language to put you in a first class seat. Maybe that's why de Raadt gets his stigma, by not taking a pause from his first reaction.
So you want to know that the money you give would go directly to support OpenSSH? According to de Raadt, there are six developers that focus on OpenSSH. These developers also work on other aspects of OpenBSD. What exactly do you want them to do? Divide your money between the six of them according to how many hours each works on OpenSSH? Do you want them to have separate network connections and hardware, and pay for it with your donation? How do you compensate the other OpenBSD developers when their ideas and contributions inevitably end up in the OpenSSH codebase?
The OpenBSD developers are a group of people working together. OpenSSH is the fruit of their work. The way to contribute directly to OpenSSH is to contribute funds to its developers. That's exactly what contributing to OpenBSD does, because the developers of OpenBSD and the developers of OpenSSH are one and the same.
So contrary to your second sentence, you have every interest in supporting OpenBSD. Saying otherwise is a disingenuous and pathetic attempt at justifying your reluctance to reward the people whose work you claim to respect.
Re:Fork it! (Score:3, Informative)
But, incorporating (for-profit or otherwise) is not difficult and needn't be expensive, either. Were he to do so, he could adopt articles of incorporation and bylaws which would clearly state the divisions of the company. He could create an "OpenBSD" division and, similarly, an "OpenSSH" division.
Maintainin
Jerry A. Taylor, call Theo today! (Score:3, Insightful)
City Manager
Tuttle, OK
Dear Jerry,
you like secure operating systems. So does Theo de Raadt: he loves them!
Please contact Theo directly at *deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org*
Be firm: Theo will help you, but only if you are make it clear that you expect help, and you want it now. (I think that when you contacted CentOS's team, you were sort of beating around the bush. That won't work with the OpenBSD team. Be direct!)
Theo will respect your 22 years of IT experience. And, I think he will be impressed that you worked at Raytheon--wow!
No need to call the FBI to get a response from Theo and his boyz. Enjoy!
--A concerned citizen
Grow up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Since it's obvious that many here haven't actually read what they're flaming about, here's the last question of that interview:
Sounds completely reasonable -- just calling a spade a spade and not trying to sugar coat anything.Re:Iff..... (Score:4, Informative)
Where to start?...
BSD is an operating system. It consists of a kernel (like linux), a userland (like GNU), and a bunch of applications which are largely source-compatible with Linux.
The BSDs share the fundamental gcc/gas/ld toolchain with GNU, but pretty much everything else (particularly the C library and make) they have their own version of. It is *possible* to run the BSD system on Linux (though not very easy), and actually very easy to run the entire GNU system on BSD. But they are different projects.
OpenBSD was the result of a squabble between Theo and the NetBSD team. This was a felicitous squabble for the rest of us, because OpenBSD is a great operating system.
Re:Iff..... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a simple matter of importing code, to duplicate the changes in the Linux kernel and the GNU toolset would be prohibitively difficult. Also, much of the improved security comes at the expense of performance or functionality.
Re:Iff..... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Iff..... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/03/msg00 309.html [debian.org]
It's not like the whole linux world would fall apart if there was some more
string functions which would not go ape on weird inputs.
I know strl*() isn't a magic bullet to prevent all kinds of badness, but they
really can't be worse than the same functions without bounds checking.
Still, better to bash some BSD...
Re:Corps take but don't give back? (Score:2)
Should have believed Stallman...
But given that it's the money they want and not the code, GPL wouldn't help in this instance. Unless of course they dual license it, in which case they simply put a price tag on the freedom and sell out once somebody pays enough.
Re:Corps take but don't give back? (Score:2)
This approach seems to work for MySQL.
Re:I love OpenBSD (Score:2)
As California taxpayers they *paid for* BSD in the first place.
Re:I love OpenBSD (Score:2)
As California taxpayers they *paid for* BSD in the first place.
Look, you keep spouting that crap.
They paid for BSD.
That is different than FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BSDOS, or any of the other things that forked off it long long ago.
More importantly: (Score:2, Interesting)
Because if they don't, then Theo de Raadt will shoot this adorable rabbit with "OpenSSH" written on it? Meh.
I mean, I'm sure that the loss of OpenBSD would be a sad thing for the open source community, but this entire fundraising drive just smells like the old Oral Roberts "if I don't raise 8.7 million dollars, God will call me home" thing. It seems rather unbecoming
Re:More importantly: (Score:3, Informative)
However, I do notice that when I actually test on my Mac OS X machine here:
And it seems that besides there being more of them, the freebsd matches are more "real"-- if i look at the actual matches the FreeBSD ones consist to a great extent of matches in actual basic binaries and libraries, whereas the OpenBSD matches that ar
Re:I love OpenBSD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love OpenBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
A careful reader of the interviews that come up with Theo occasionally will note that he's pretty good about endorsing the companies who actually support the project. Just in that short interview he mentioned a couple of wifi chipmakers who actually share information. The expectation is that the open-source concerned reader will support those companies in favor of the
Re:Time to merge OpenBSD with NetBSD (Score:2)
Perhaps FreeBSD & OpenBSD could merge... but I'm not so familiar with FreeBSD so I probably shouldn't comment.