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More on OpenBSD Funding Saga
Mortimer.CA writes "The OpenBSD Journal has an article with more info on cutting of the OpenBSD funding. It seems that the funding was partially cut due to worries about "capable nation-states". Also Mark West asked the hotel to cancel all reservations for the upcoming "hackathon" -- even though many of the arriving developers have non-refundable tickets, and would have no place to stay. Jonathan Smith also probably had something to do with the decision. If you would like to voice your opinion to these individuals, please be clear, extremely professional and courteous. Flaming and being childish will only hurt OSS. Also, please think about donating or ordering something to help the project along." DARPA, which initially denied that it was cancelling the grant, has now admitted it. Although de Raadt seems to be upset with how his UPenn contacts are handling the cancellation, it's DARPA that is ultimately at fault, not the UPenn people.
I saw this story at globetechnology yesterday but didn't even try to submit it (I don't like feeding the zealots :) because it was being said by DARPA that it was just a misunderstanding and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Too bad they lied.
The really sad part? The US government can still use OpenBSD, even though they basically flipped them the bird. It would have been better if they had just never offered the funding at all.
This definately makes DARPA and the US Government look bad. Bastion of freedom of speech my ass.
So what if Theo has some anti-war sentiments - that doesn't have any bearing on his development efforts.
Ok, ok, I'm ranting now. One question: What the hell does "capable nation states" mean?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
It was the UPENN folks who still had to pay 80% of the hotel fee for the cancellation (that's 24k canadian that they paid). It was also the UPENN folks who convinced the hotel not to let the OpenBSD folks pay the remaining 20% of the hotel bill, preferring to simply waste the 80% they had to pay anyway. Seems a little childish to me.
--
"Your mouse has been moved. Windows 95 must be restarted for the change to take effect."
And he did not just criticise US foreign policy, he stated that he didn't need DARPA money (which makes funding likely to be withdrawn), he stated that what he was doing wasn't directly useful to DARPA and he stated that he hoped that by taking DARPA's money that he'd make DARPA less effective.
So, why the hell should he get DARPA money??
Uh, what the hell are you smoking?Let's review a few facts:
So let's not blow this out of proportion.
The principal investigator of the grant is Prof. Jonathan Smith at U. Penn. This guy has been DEEP in bed with the spooks and with DARPA for years now. You may remember him as the guy who invented TCPA ("Palladium").
He's also a millionaire and he has his own company called iPrivacy. , which makes technology that claims to give online consumers privacy from web retailers (but at the same time allows the feds to monitor the transactions). Quoting from their website:
He's also on the board of advisors for other companies including Pinpoint Inc., which according to their page:
On the one hand he's marketing privacy technology that will supposedly protect consumers from retailers who want to profile and track their customer's behavior, on the other hand he's a technical advisor to a company doing just that.Ultimately, a professor who brings millions and millions of dollars of DoD grants into the U. Penn CIS department can pretty much do what he wants there, including using the money in his own private enterprises, as long as the technology he sells can be circumvented by the feds.
"Thats the whole problem. Just because free speech comes at a price, doesn't mean it should."
What would you do? Would you force people to buy CDs from RIAA companies that speak their mind and say something a person doesn't agree with? It's the same problem. If you're not buying CDs in protest of what the RIAA is doing, then you are a hipocrit for saying that the other people can't do the same thing for causes they believe in that much.
It's a fact of life that speech has a price--especially free speech. The free in free speech means you're free to say it, but it doesn't mean that you're free from the consequences of what you said. If you run into a crowded market and yell bomb causing wide spread panick (and maybe some injuries and deaths), you will be held responcible for what you said--especially if there was no bomb. It's that simple. The same goes for actors, actresses and open source developers. People have a right to decide where they spend their money.
The old says, "don't bite the hand that feeds you" is a very wise old saying that rings true. By saying what you said, you effectively saying that these people con't have a right to decide where their money is spent.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
If you re-read my post, you will not find the word "bias" anywhere. You will find an assemblage of facts and observations about facts. These facts and observations should be judged on merit, not on association. Theo's statements should be judged likewise. In my opinion, they don't hold up well when evaluated against the facts.
If I stood up and said "Smith is a nice guy, and you should take my word for it." I am offering an opinion that you, as a reader, are unable to judge independently. In that circumstance, it's appropriate to disclose relationships. In this case, everything I said is independently verifiable fact. The fact that Smith is my advisor does not alter the terms of government contracts. It does not alter the definition of the role of a PI. It does not alter the fact that Theo knew the terms of his contract. It does not alter the fact that as a contractor, issues of academic freedom don't apply to Theo. It does not alter the fact that Theo is engaged in slander.
Perhaps your energy would be better spent examining the merits of the issue rather than examining the people who are speaking.
Jonathan S. Shapiro (The EROS Guy)
The classic example of unprotected speech is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. The courts rightly view that the purpose of free speech is to combat government opression, and therefore the single most important kind of free speech is the freedom to complain about the government. There is no comparison between not arguing religion in the workplace and being punished by the government for speaking critically of it in public. They are in utterly different categories.
How do feel about this famous quote: "Those who would give up essential liberties for a measure of security, deserve neither liberty nor security."I apologize if my remarks were easily interpreted to mean that Canada makes no guarantees for free speech among its citizens. I mean to convey only precisely what I said, that the 1st Amendment to the Constituion of the United States doesn't give Canadians in Canada any such guarantees. I should, I suppose, have realized that people elsewhere might also think of 1st Amendment as being equal to Freedom of Speech.
But it's quite clear. The FBI can't arrest the French police for trying to prevent Yahoo! France from auctioning Nazi items, or arrest German police for trying to prevent a violent videogame from entering the country. The Supreme Court can't rule those countries' laws unconstituional. So I meant specifically to say that the U.S. 1st Amendment doesn't give foreign nationals who are not within our borders any protections for their speech.
The fact that Canada's charter makes such assertions for the entire world (if that's how your courts interpret that) has, as you know, absolutely no legal consequences whatsoever.