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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.
...well, wealthy... I guess...
I don't understand why getting money from DARPA makes them uncomfortable. He mentions it comes with no strings attached.
Shouldn't we be happy about grants like this that will promote and advance Open Source software in general?
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
Why is this news?
$2 million is news. That's a lot of money to be out into open source.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I completly understand how an OSS project can require funds for further development, what I worry is how these funds are donated, is it all contributed in cash?
Problem with that is some people can easily take advantage of a situation like that, I think funding should instead come in required equipement and/or other expenses, but not cash, because there are many contributors (coders) to projects like this, and no one should be taking coin from it.
Can someone shed some light? maybe I am off base...
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Non-techie news site gets "hacker" right? Very surprising.
well.. yeah, they can...
holy fucking shit.... this is turly beautiful.
there are two types of people in this world (well.. actually more, but ill narrow it down here), those who talk about needing - have their needs filled- then still dont produce... and then there are those who need - and once those needs are met.. they DO produce...
i hope theo and the rest of obsd are of the latter...
-frank
... can buy a lot of poutine!
and maybe theo will finally get the sparc docs he needs.
It's a very positive thing to see government funding OSS software. This is something that gives positive returns to everyone.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
"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.
Oh, man...
First, I like OpenBSD. I'm in a "network free-state" so I can run NAT to allow me to let my kids play on their machine while I compute on mine and we can all get to the internet... OpenBSD lets me do this.
But, MAN, how can he take $2,000,000 from the US Gov't and still criticize them at the same time?
No backbone? No ethics?
Give us a break; if he felt that strongly about the war, he could've said, "Thanks, but I'll wait till you guys leave Iraq before I'll accept your money."
Come ON already!
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
BTW, anyone else notice the article was actually from The Globe and Mail?
Carousel is a lie!
From the article:
Erm, shouldn't that be "only one remote hole in the default install"?
1. Posses huge, pain-in-the-ass ego.
Alas, this happens.
Highly talented and intelligent people get exasperated with us mortals and let us know in no uncertain terms that we are stupid. I knew someone in school like this once. He would put pointed questions out that would show people's stupidity in broad daylight. But he was so intelligent, and I had enough intelligence still left, to know when he was right.
True intelligence is being able to recognize someone more intelligent than you are and to be able to support their work even if they have a grating personality.
Don't ever make the mistake of putting them in a role of managing people, though.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
When asked about his brand-new 24K gold biking helmet, Theo pointed behind the reporters and exclaimed "What's that!". With the reporters distracted, he promptly ran the other direction and hid behind some bushes. The reporters, being only average journalists, published that OpenBSD's leader can turn himself invisible at will and cited that OpenBSD appears to be some sort of Canadian rap group.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I reckon they thought they were using "hacker" in the sense that we would consider the "wrong" way, and got it right by accident. Besides, "globetechnology.com" sounds like a techie news site to me, even if it is a part of a general news outlet.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
from the openbsd website:
"Today cryptography is an important means for enhancing the security of an operating system...
'...When we create OpenBSD releases or snapshots we build our release binaries in free countries to assure that the sources and binaries we provide to users are free of tainting. In the past our release binary builds have been done in Canada, Sweden, and Germany...'
Gov spends millions to control crypto exports.
Gov spends millions to support OpenBSD which
bypasses US crypto export laws?!
Mr. de Raadt is no fan of the U.S. military at the moment. He calls the war in Iraq an oil grab. "It just sickens me."
IN other news, Theo de Raadt is held by the Department of Homeland Security in Seattle while attending an OpenBSD conference. Mr De Raadt, in the country to give a speech at the conference is whisked away by unknown persons in a black van. Other conference goers are later told by organizers that a quote by Mr. de Raadt is being held under the US PATRIOT Act for "'aiding and giving comfort to Evil Ones."
The Canadian high counsel in Washington lodges a formal condemnation of the act -- demanding that the Canadian Citizen be released. Washington replies "It is quite obvious that Canadians and The Canadian Regime has been overrun by The Evil Ones. Like Syria and Iran, Canada must learn that their Either With Us or Against Us." In Ottawa, American ambassador Cellucci says "yeah, what he said, Canadians baaaaad"
Republican Senator U.S. Nitwitt says "Why should righteous Americans be giving their defense funds to this communist^H^H^H^H^H^Hterrorist? Its obvious he's a terrorist - at least. This is a threat to our security. The Department of Homeland Security may or may not be justified in siezing him if they did or didnt... uhm, filthy Un American... i hear he rides the bus!"
Why should it matter, if DARPA could not Coop Theo, they could just get the code and hire thier own "hackers" to modify it to thier own desires.
DARPA is a research oriented group, they are paying to continue the research and development of openBSD to keep thier (the DODs) options open. Not that the DOD is going to see the light any time soon and get off the MS software nipple.
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.
It's good to see that OpenBSD magnificient PR campaign finally pays off.
Sarcasm aside, I believe the government is the only part (apart from Microsoft with its cash reserves) which can invest in secure software development at the moment, so this is a step in the right direction.
Author Steven Brill is experiencing total friction among his close circle of elitist liberal media associates after releasing a book which claims: Homeland Security under President Bush is working!
And why have there been no fresh terror strikes in the United States since the start of the war?
Coincidentally, I have a rock that keeps away tigers. I know it works because I don't see any tigers.
Its supposed to hook scientists and researchers together over a "network" where computers can exchange information. It would be neat if this technology would some day be available to everyone!
Worst. Sig. Ever.
Nice. +2 Informative for an unsubstantiated allegation by an AC. Good moderation is the key to keeping Slashdot a valuable source of information.
If he were taking money to implement DARPA-requested features, I could see the issue. However, if all he's doing is taking no-strings-attached money to do work he'd be doing anyway, I don't see the moral conundrum. If there are any negative effects of his work (OpenBSD being used by TIA, for example), they'd exist even if he wasn't funded by DARPA; the only solution would be to stop developing OpenBSD entirely, not to keep doing it without DARPA funding. So insofar as DARPA funding doesn't change anything, I'd say take it. Plus, at least it ensures that this portion of DARPA's budget goes to something worthwhile and unobjectionable, rather than letting them keep it to spend on something else.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Theo is making OpenBSD. It is freely available to anyone who wants it. If the US military/gov wants it, they already have it and can use it for whatever unseen motive anyway.
As of now, they are just helping him do what he was doing anyway.
The motive of the US gov as it currently relates to OpenBSD is they want to help its development.
They can already incorporate it into closed source products, and they can't take it away and lock it up from everyone else.
Since anyone anywhere can make use of the products that will come out of this two million dollars, the benefit to wider mankind far outbweighs the benefit to DARPA | TIA | $evil_project.
Now, if that same money went into one of the many secret software projects at Lawrence Livermore or teh NSA, then no one benefits except the evil parties.
The use of this money to develop OpenBSD can be nothing but a good thing, due to the security everyone will gain, world wide, which will further protect from the real bad guys.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
The brilliant thing here is that this move recognises the importance of communities; the OpenBSD community IS all over the world, with Mr de Raadt a Canadian the work can be done in Canada, in the USA, in India, wherever the TALENT is.
As the grant is intended to help "testing the security of commercial software systems against the security of open source software projects", it will point to the truth in this old dispute what makes better secure software AND it will help to point to the relative merits of "security by obscurity".
However to assess this, I expect DARPA not to select Microsoft Windows as the champion of the proprietary world, I would choose OS/400. Given the smaller size of the OpenBSD community, the effect of methodology can be better assessed.
As DARPA throws bread on the water, I hope they will land a big fish!
Thanks, Gerard
Believe it or not, there is a lot that you can do with $320,000 USD worth of CD sales *alone* each year. That can make a few people live comfortably, paying the bills and meeting the need for servers. That doesn't take into account the sales of other merchandise.
This is how open source products like OpenBSD and Slackware have been profitable. OpenBSD *is* a product, in a way. Theo seems to make it a full-time effort, as far as I can tell, just as Patrick does with Slackware.
The extra 2 mil is just a bonus. But it goes fast if you're paying for 4 full-time coders to work on the project for a few years.
a >8Gb bootloader. I'm a big OpenBSD fan (own all the teeshirts), but those two items are a big pain in the butt.
The thing people forget is that OpenBSD is a much more tightly organized project than Linux or OSS in general. The OpenBSD developers are used to doing their work in a limited environment of reduced cost. The 'Image' of OpenBSD, i.e. the artwork, etc. has that kind of an aura about it (not meant at all as a put-down, more can often be done with less when the people involved are good at what they do).
The Red Hat organization was already getting crowded with the regular 'expense account' types by the time of their IPO. Obviously $2M wouldn't go far at that place.
red cananadian commie hippy bastard
I'm glad you believe in political freedom. You're an example to us all of how free Americans are: even small-minded bigots can voice their opinions!
If BSD is now Rich AND Dying,
Where is Anna Nichole ???????
=)
My rantings, only longer and with better spelling..
Not at all..
Theo just sent this to misc@openbsd.org:
it may seem like a lot of money, but there are overheads, and some of
the funding was also absorbed by upenn (that is how grants work when
you involve a US university)
however, the grant only runs for about another 6 months.
CD sales are more important now than ever. He mentions that CD sales in the U.S. have been dropping as FTP installs have been rising. Any open-source project will take all the help they can get.
I would consider it to be more of an investment on DARPA's part, rather than some sort of influence on the direction of OpenBSD development. They see a project that meets their needs, and they want to ensure that it does well, so it will serve them well. It's not that different from IBM spending $1 billion on Linux because they want to see it do well.
I don't know what kind of developers he's hiring but for $500,000 a pop -- I'm sending him my damn resume.