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: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).