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.

Comments

Re:Theo's comments in Globe and Mail

[CausticWindow]

The "oil grab" comment does strike me as a bit uninformed and polemic

You really bought the "spread democracy" angle, didn't you?

Re:Theo's comments in Globe and Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

So we killed his own people so that they would not be killed by Saddam? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The fact is that we killed more people, via direct war and 12 years of sanctions than Saddam ever did. We leveled down the whole country, as far as I know Saddam never did that. Not to excuse Saddam, but it seems that the cure is far worse than the illness... Saddam was not a nice guy, but why was Rumsfeld shaking his hands in the early 80's? Why was he put in power with the US blessing to begin with? Why has the justification for this war shifted at least three times?

a) Saddam was ignoring the UN, so we must ignore the UN in order to enforce the UN's mandate?
b) Saddam had WMD and was an inminent danger, therefore we must destroy them! Where are the WMDs?
c) Now it is because we want to liberate the Iraqui people, how noble!! Is that why we liberated the oil wells earlier than the actual people?

I am pretty sure that a lot of nations feel that GWBush is 21st century hitler. They were both right winger (Ba'ath, Saddam's party is a form of socialism), both exploited catastrofic events to their gain (the Reichstag fire, the demolition of the twin towers), both stared their invasions as a fight on terrorism (go and read some of Hitler's speeches), both snubbed the role of the international law (Hitler ignored the leage of nations, Bush ignored the UN), both presented a clear and present danger to the nation as an excuse for war (Poland was accused of violating German borders, the leftist of being behind the terrorist actions in Germany, and the jews because they threatened the idea of a Germanic nations, since they were the backbone of a transnational movement -socialism and the fact that jews had been spreaded throught the diaspora and held no allegiance to a specific nation or race, Bush is doing the same... watch out Saddam is our main enemy, he is going to attack us really!!!!). Etc, etc... so according to you, if a lot of nations or people feel that GWBush is today's hitler, are they also entitled to remove him and his regime from office. Should the Chinese "liberate" us from the opresive capitalistic system and impose their (in their view correct) communist system. Right?

BTW there have been far worse dictatorships than Saddam in the 2nd half of the past century. For example some of the wonderful juntas that destroyed most of Central and South Amercia, all of them with the blessing and backing of the US of A. Or check the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, 80% of the hijackers were from that country for freaks shake! Then we have PolPot that killed almost 1/4 of the population of Cambodia, where was the US then? Mao during the cultural revolution, Some of the great African dictators (Bokassa and co.), etc. etc. etc..... in fact if you look at the world map today, the US has a lot of work if they are truly to remove all of today's
Hitlers.

Oh, you mean we are only interested in removing hitlers that terrorize our oil? Aaaahhhh.... OK, I understand now.

Re:I don't know what to say...

[theedge318]

For full disclosurer: I currently work on a defense project paid for by the Air Force, and my girlfriend is under a DARPA contract, so I pretty familiar with the process.

First I have to start with the logical. I work for X. If I go out and bad mouth X at a bar after a stressful day of work, I would expect no repercussions. However if my derogatory comments made the evening news, I would start packing my desk. No rational person would expect to have a job in the morning, why should this be any different. His first ammendment rights were upheld, he is not in jail, or otherwise quietened. To refuse to continue a business relationship is an entirely different matter.

That said, DARPA is very structured an meticulous about how its money is spent. They expect quarterly reports, where they spend a day and a half going over everything. Thats 6-days a year, where they really get to know the project. They don't care if your project spends money on foreign researchers, as long as THEIR money isn't spent on foreign researchers. The same also goes to foreign excursions: you can fly to any country for someone elses conference. But if you are using their money to host a conference, it should be in the U.S.

The reasons for such rules should be obvious. If $10 million is spent in the US, it only costs the gov't $5m (b/c the money will come back in taxes @EOY). If the money goes out of country it cost the gov't $10 million dollars.

Oh yeah, and I am a Canadian citizen and coder (but I live and pay taxes in the US). I hope that Canada exercises similar restraint towards keeping the tax payers dollars in country. The only countries I would like to see benefiting from my tax dollars, are the developing countries of the world (which Canada isn't).