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DARPA Grant Cancelled for OpenBSD and U-Penn?
Starrider writes "It seems the DARPA grant for OpenBSD and for University of Pennsylvania has been cancelled (?) immediately and without warning. See the full story in Theo's email and on deadly.org." Theo is left to only speculate why funding was suddenly pulled. One also has to wonder what this means for the University of Pennsylvania, since they were also in for a piece of the pie.
Read the whole thread; not everyone thinks it was because of the peace comments. (Not that it would be surprising to this particular slashdotter.)
Something else that ought to be looked at is the Microsoft angle -- in the past they've put pressure on public institutions to avoid supporting open source projects and instead invest in the "free" market. in this particular climate, of jingoism and nationalism, how hard would it be for them to target OpenBSD as a Canadian, anti-capitalist movement, and then to shove a couple hundred copies of IIS under DARPA's nose?
But, then again, maybe I'm misunderstanding the nature of the grant. It is quite possible that DARPA was funding it specifically because of the non-proprietary nature of the software.
My guess? We'll never know the whole story. (But, I've been wrong before. I used to think Enterprise had promise.)
* Corporate lobby (hey, it's a sale-point)
* TIA would be seriously hampered if everyone is very secure
* fear of technology leak into other countries
* other acts of "head-in-ass"
My life in the land of the rising sun.
They're going to be cancelling as many contracts and grants, etcetc, as possible to recoup some of those costs.
You obviously have little idea how beaurocratic money works. You don't spend money in one place and move it back into the pot for use by other things.
Once money is allocated for a particular use or group, it stays there. This isn't money that DARPA is losing from the government, just money they decided they weren't going ot give to BSD. They will spend it on something else.
The war will be funded by us, our kids, their kids, and so on as budget deficit.
OT: I think making a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget may be going too far, but make it so that you can't be re-elected as president if you have a budget in the red (or something like that -- though not sure what to do about second-term presidents)..
While I do empathize with your anger and would love to see the guy responsible face the wrath of the public, I must say this is not an isolated event. The DoD has put my employer quite in a similar situation a number of times. They would compete a contract, award it, and then decide not to fund it, essentially canceling it before it began. I have a feeling that it may be just another one of those events that have occured rather than something more sinister.
EOT
While understanding what you mean and where you are coming from... you are suggesting Theo change his ways. I have been subscribed to misc@openbsd.org for over a year now and I firmly believe that Theo knows what he is doing even if he lost this money. He stats in a later thread on the misc mailing list that this is actually for the better in the long run (could have happened at a slightly better time like 1-2 months in the future for the purpose of the hotel/hackathon)...
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Government bodies do pull money on projects in order to make ends meet, and its a US government which has dropped many schools, a complete health program and a lot more in equivalent value on Iraq. The OpenBSD funding may just have been converted into a couple of missiles instead.
Theo can still have the last laugh, I dread to think how many holes in common government used software the OpenBSD audit team could find in one hackathon.