OpenBSD Lands $2 Million In DARPA Money

An anonymous reader writes "Canada's National Post is reporting today that DARPA is (indirectly) funding $2-million (US) to Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD. The article is available here." Update: 04/07 21:01 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, this blurb should credit instead The Globe and Mail rather than the National Post.

Comments

Hacker

[arvindn]

The U.S. military believes the work of a Calgary hacker may be its best bet to protect its computer networks from so-called cyber-terrorist attacks.

Non-techie news site gets "hacker" right? Very surprising.

Hardly New

[Anonymous Coward]

DARPA has been funding the OpenBSD project for awhile now. The grants have been a staple of the OpenBSD team's funding for quite awhile now. Come on, you didn't think they existed solely on the revenues generated from their t-shirts, CD's and posters did you? Congrats to the OpenBSD team on this latest grant. This is fortuitous especially with version 3.3 right around the corner.

Re:cash versus equipement

[NetJunkie]

Equipment doesn't pay bills. My grocery store won't take a hard drive as payment. Many of these large projects have core developers that work on it full time. They have to make money to live. That's where this money is going. If you read the article it says they can now hire a few more full time developers which will get more features in the software faster.

Errr... National Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

"U.S. military helps fund Calgary hacker

By DAVID AKIN
From Monday's Globe and Mail"

I think you've attributed it to the wrong paper, that's quite clearly from the Globe and Mail (as if the url, globetechnology.com wasn't a give away), the other national Canadian paper.

Lack of vulnerabilities

[deepchasm]

From the article:

OpenBSD, which does not develop as many products as Microsoft, says only one vulnerability or hole has been found in its software in the past seven years.

Erm, shouldn't that be "only one remote hole in the default install"?

Re: You don't get it, do you?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free" as in F-R-E-E-D-O-M.

Canadian Newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

...just for reference, Canada has two national newspapers: The National Post (to which the story is attributed), and the Globe and Mail (where the story was actually published)...

Re:Believe it or not...

[miniver]

It goes fast? Let's say each coder costs $100,000 a very liberal estimate.
4 coders * $100,000 = $400,000
$2,000,000/$400,000 = 5 Years
That's a very long time to be guarenteed a job.

Obviously you've never actually hired anyone or run a company. I don't know about Canada, but in the US, you can figure the overhead on a position to be anywhere from 50% to 100% above and beyond the salary of the position. Consider the following factors:

• Social Security (employer pays half, typically 7.5% of salary).
• Health insurance (typically $3600 per employee).
• Other benefits (matching 401k / pension / softdrinks / whatever).
• Equipment (PC, mail servers, file servers, etc.)
• Power, telephones, bandwidth, water, heat, etc.

Another problem with this type of payment is that typically the funds have to be spent within a specific time period, and any unspent funds have to be returned to DARPA...

Re:Can you say, "Hypocrite?"

[Minna Kirai]

He's been spending the money he gets from us buying oil to build WMD's.

No, US citizens don't buy oil from Iraq. However, they do purchase it on the international market, which drives up the price, and slightly increases Saddam's profits from his buyers.

But there's no reason to look for such an indirect money trail. 25 years ago, US tax dollars directly suppied Iraq with chemical weapons.