Theo de Raadt gets 2004 FSF Award

Caligari writes "Richard Stallman, presents this year's award to Theo de Raadt. "For recognition as founder and project leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects. Theo de Raadt's work has also led to significant contributions to GNU/Linux and other BSD distributions. Of particular note is Theo's work on OpenSSH. Theo's leadership of OpenBSD, his selfless commitment to Free Software and his advancement of network security, were cited by this year's award committee.""

Comments

speech?

[mistermark]

Does this mean Theo gets to speech? I can't wait to hear him rant on a stage :-)

Prime-time recognition for outstanding developer

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say that the first two postings to this bulletin are shameful. This man is without doubt one of the brightest software engineers on the planet. His expertise and insight into securing our systems is breathtaking. Everyone owes Theo a great deal. His contributions to open source software have given us the unbreakable, impenetrable OpenBSD AND the ubiquitous OpenSSH. His devotion to and competence in security have finally been recognised by the community. I didn't have an answer to the question "who should win the FSF award??" until about 5 minutes ago when I saw the announcement. The award couldn't have gone to anyone more deserving.
Oh, and dickhead: BSD is not dead.
Congratulations Theo!! *two thumbs up*

Re:BSD and FSF?

[javax]

There wasn't something like a united brotherhood of open source software on stage when Theo and Stallmann were shaking hands.
Theo will probably burn the FSF-rug anyway...

Commitment to software freedom--for derivatives?

[jbn-o]

I think the following goes too far:

This man [Theo de Raadt] is every bit as committed to software freedom as RMS is.

If de Raadt were that committed to software freedom, he would agree with copyleft which preserves software freedom for derivatives. Instead, the software de Raadt distributes is non-copylefted free software; software which is licensed to allow non-free derivatives. That means someone else (or some organization) has the power to separate the freedom from the software for their derivative and distribute that derivative which denies software freedom to their users. The effect on society is not the same with non-copylefted and copylefted free software licenses.

I think RMS is grateful for all the free software de Raadt writes and distributes, but I doubt that RMS and de Raadt would agree that they are equally committed to software freedom. One promotes non-copylefted free software licenses to encourage popularity (popularizing Ogg Vorbis, for instance, where the reference libraries are licensed under a new-BSD-like license) and the other uses a non-copylefted free software license routinely. None of this is to take anything away from de Raadt's award or how much he deserves it; he's done good work that ought to be celebrated.