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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.""
Not only from a pure lines-of-code point-of-view, but also by the way the OpenBSD-project scrutinizes licenses and pushes security and cryptography forward every day.
Congratulations, Theo - keep on fighting !
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Imagine a world without the networking Swiss Army knife that is ssh.
OpenBSD is a totally underrated OS too. Even if it is a bit slow, its packet filter actually works.
I use Linux every day, and appreciate the fact that I have a good method to connect to my servers in a secure manner, thanks to Theo.
And I want to thank him for his other contributions, as it has made me some good cash, installing BSD boxes in front of Windows email servers with packet filtering!
Again Thanks Theo. I wish this type of stuff could reach more mainstream news, but we can all know just like other major happenings in the world, there is a army of unsung heros who make things happen.
Another reason could be that Linus is an a-political OSS writer, while the FS Award seems to be oriented at ideology. Last year's winner, IIRC, was Lawrence Lessig. I've never used a line of software he's written, but he's going all the way for FS ideology.
:p), and it cannot be denied that Linus has done his share.
Nevertheless, there's no such thing as a perfect match for an award winner (prove the Nobel Prices for Peace
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
You get a reward to be put in the spotlight. To introduce someone you didn't really know or did not yet see the full quality of his work.
Linus is already fully in the spotlight.
Unlikely. The BSD people are actively working to replace every GNU utility still in the system with a BSD-licensed version - look at the changelogs for OpenBSD, for example, and you'll occasionally see an entry mentioning that this or that has been replaced.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Actually the differences in ideology between the GNU and BSD developers are more in the outlook and means than any other thing. Free software is free software for both camps, and most sane people in both sides shares a common idea of what free software is. The licences, that are generally the main difference between the two, try to achieve an end using different approaches, but all in all both GNU and BSD people are great contributors to a common free software community. The noise many times created is more on the "newly convert" section of each side :).
It's IMHO rather silly to watch the flame wars between the GNU/Linux and *BSD sides when there is so much more that unites us than what divides us. This award make perfect sense. In the end a gnu, a penguin and a daemon can sometimes be noisy neighbourghs, but in the end they stick together to defend their building. Shitty alegory, I know, eh.
cheers,
fsmunoz
Another reason could be that Linus is an a-political OSS writer, while the FS Award seems to be oriented at ideology. Last year's winner, IIRC, was Lawrence Lessig. I've never used a line of software he's written, but he's going all the way for FS ideology.
I'd say that Theo is much further from the FSF's ideology than Linus is. Linus at least likes the GPL.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
If you had any kind of clue about the way `proactive security' works, you wouldn't write such drivel.
Why is OpenBSD called OpenBSD ? because it was the first BSD to make its CVS tree accessible for everyone. That's right, anyone can subscribe to source-changes and see the commit messages. And anyone can get the sources.
Now, most security fixes are NOT tagged as security fixes. They're tagged as clean-up, or reliability issues, or normal bug-fixes.
Why is this so ?
Quite simply, because those fixes are done while reading the code, NOT in reaction to a security hole.
That's what `proactive security' means. When you find something fishy, you just go and fix it, you don't sit on your fat ass and wait for months until someone finds a way to exploit it.
As a result, OpenBSD is more secure than most other OSes out there. Not because of cool technology like ProPolice or W^X, but simply because of good engineering practices.
OpenBSD doesn't have the latest cool feature. It's never been about that. But it has obsessive-compulsive developers who care about security.
Security is not a plug-in. It's not something you add to a distribution after you've put in all the carelessly designed and dangerous features.
Security is a process.
Security is a state of mind.
Security is a priority: either you put it right there, in front of you, and FIX THINGS when you think they might get broken, or... you will run into actual nasty holes, and make the front page of bugtraq.
You still don't know what you are talking about.
Yes, most bugs we fix have some kind of security relevance. This is obvious. Now, are we going to tag each single entry we commit with `possible security fix' ? Are we going to spend a lot of time convincing other people this might be relevant ?
Nope, we are not.
We tried. This is simply a waste of time. It doesn't work. A lot of other projects don't have a clue. You tell them that what you're doing might be security-related, and you waste hours explaining the issue to them.
Think about it. Every time you simplify a piece of code, or replace an obfuscated algorithm with something simpler, you ARE handling security issues... or you might be. That's not important.
You are not going to waste time figuring out whether that fix is an actual security fix, or just some clean-up.
Because you can use the same amount of time fixing other issues, and that's more useful.
Want actual proof ? Look at all the changes in OpenBSD that replaced strcpy/strcat with strlcpy/strlcat. Now, go out on the linux lists, and ask why strlcpy still isn't a part of the glibc, but strfry is. Or look for comments on the above subject from Ulrich Drepper.
Make up your own mind.
Who do you think has a clue ?
The people who found out countless potential buffer overflows all over the place, fixed these, and still find that new code has the same mistakes and buffer overflows ?
Or the people who think that strlcpy is irrelevant because good programmers don't write buffer overflows ?
You could also look at tmpnam and mkstemp, and countless other examples.
As another instance, look at chroot and privilege separation. In many cases, the added safety translates to less features (like, a chroot'ed daemon that can no longer read its configuration file on a kill -HUP, or an http server that needs a whole set of libraries to run cgi). Bottomline, do you want the extra features, or the added security.
Most time, there is a trade. Those security fixes rely on non-portable parts of the libc. In many cases, third party software will buy back the extra stuff (look at rsync, kde and strlcpy), but this takes time...
try to do some development work, instead of posting opiniated, clueless comments on slashdot. Spend some time fixing security issues. See your patches take months to get accepted upstream. See the next release still have the bug, because some clueless, feature-conscious developer added some code with the exact same wrong pattern in another area than the one you've been fixing...
Now mod this insightful!!!
"The freedom of BSD has the danger of making you a prisoner of its distributed derivatives."
How? If you don't like the version the company you're dealing with (Sun, Apple) is shipping, you can always get the official software from openssh.org.
"GPL code belongs to you for the asking. That is also why GPL will eventually out-evolve all other software."
No. What has become obvious is that the community of developers is what drives the evolution of a system. Either can stagnate, either can advance quickly.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
If you choose to distribute BSD licensed code, your stuff doesn't become less free because you chose to allow those distribution terms. You are only a 'prisoner,' as you said, of your own right to choose how to distribute some code. The GPL has numerous restrictions placed upon how you can use GPL software that the BSD license doesn't, therefore it grants far more freedom to everyone. The GPL is not a magic bullet and is not suitable for all situations, and simply having a 500 page license behind your software does not make it any better then anything else or guarantee that it will 'out evolve' anything else.
BTW, care to explain how MS locks me in by using BSD code that I can go and pick up just about anywhere else.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I've been personally involved with all these technologies. In my shop, we run two OpenBSD firewalls, one on each available broadband service. Our automated build system is based on SCons, and our scripts make heavy use of rsync internally. Our embedded surveillance project runs Linux which we compile in a chroot build environment along the lines of scratchbox (but scratchbox didn't exist when we started). We also have an ARM7 microcontroller in our product running on top of the GNU tools compilation environment, with some structural similarities to eCos/Redboot. Have I missed anyone?
I have a coworker here educated at the U. of Calgary (where I grew up myself) who knows (but does not enjoy) Theo through overlapping social circles. We had a short debate just a few weeks ago over a spicy Sichuan lunch special about where the boundaries between competence and personality belong. My coworker suggested "couldn't he accomplish as much without pissing people off?" I countered, "for someone with a knack for pissing people off, he retains some of the smartest out there within his circle. How does he do that?" There's a line I once read in Drucker that I've taken to heart "you're not in business to win friends". For me, the bottom line is that Theo delivers, and I admire the end results of his zealous rigour (regardless of where one might choose to draw the line between those qualities).
Before I became involved in this shop, I studied computational linguistics, which brought me into contact with just about everything in the area from which rsync originated. I was depressed that Tridge had to lose the award he deserves as much (well, almost as much, although it pains me to say it).
I've read all the benchmarks over the past year that show how OpenBSD is as slow as a senile dog. Whatever. For the purpose we employ those boxes, we've never had an iota of concern over performance level except for the negotiation phase on https. Guess what? Once Via/IBM finally coughs up the C7 Esther, OpenBSD running on a steroid enhanced 486 will crush the most expensive present day Pentium IV on our most essential performance metric.
The odd thing about OpenBSD, which many people never manage to assimilate, is that you have to look at that project through a very narrow gun turret to realize just how much they accomplish by entirely ignoring the whingings from everyone else.
It's an odd day in my personal universe to see RMS pat Theo on the back. I guess it takes one to know one after all.
Whatever their differences, RMS and Theo are both idealistic. They are primarily motivated by their desire for Freedom, not because they want to produce the best system ever (although that may be true as well).
I agree on everything else but that paragraph. BSD (and so TdR) is all about making ALL software BETTER. That is the importance of free sofware in the BSD cosmovision.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
At the end of the day, OpenBSD was created because Theo couldn't get along with the other 'first-tier' NetBSD developers, and didn't want to be a 'second-tier' developer.
Or you could phrase this as
At the end of the day, OpenBSD was created because the 'first-tier' NetBSD developers used access controls to try and enforce social policy and Theo refused to be extorted.
This whole thing cuts both ways.
As long as both sides keep improving their tools in order to convince people to switch, the user can only benefit from this.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
You can't get hold of the propietary, extended code for windows networking to fix the operatability problem without NDA etc. You can only guess the BSD code up to the moment of forking. After the fork point, the code has been tweaked and closed and used to build a system that tries to lock you in forever after. That's the kind of danger the GPL protects you against.
If Microsoft does not use the code, they invent their own protocol. When Microsoft uses BSD code as a basis, they are at least easier to guess or work around. How long has it taken the people working on Samba to under all of the SMB protocol? Many years at least. Even Stallman has said the BSD license is good for standards.
BTW, the network stack in Windows has not been based on the BSD code for years.
The restriction of GPL protects the coders in the long run.
Protects coders from what? For example, when Microsoft embraces and extends a protocol (i.e., Kerberos, DNS, DHCP), they have no need for the source. They break the protocol. The GPL nor any other open source license would have power against that. You would need a patent (yuck).
The freedom of BSD can restrict the coders in the long run.
This is never true. I never need to use a proprietary vesion of open source. Which version of Kerberos do you use? With BSD-licensed code, I have very few restrictions placed upon me as a coder. Fewer than using GPL-licensed code.
I forgot to include this in my previous follow-up: it seems quite a political statement to me to favor convenience above software freedom. I'd hardly call Torvalds apolitical, I'd say that his views are the views people have been taught to value--use what helps you get jobs done, push aside any other concerns regardless of their effect on society--hence they are popular.
Digital Citizen
Theo deserves a lot of recognition for his technical achievements and his commitment to freedom. Getting this award proves that you can blow off everyone in the world except your personal fanboys and still be a success.
My company based a commercial product on O-BSD, then converted to Linux when it became clear that Theo doesn't know how to anchor a diverse community. We even tried to fund his project but never got past being personally abused.
If you think about it, one of the primary differences between the GPL and BSD is whose freedom the license intends to protect. It's a subtle thing, but true nonetheless.
The BSD license intends to protect the freedom of the programmer, whereas the GPL intends to protect the freedom of the program.
The GPL is not concerned about developer's rights, unless the developer's core values vis-a-vis the freedom of the program closely follow the ideology of the GPL. For example, I (as a Free Software advocate) feel that the GPL protects my rights, but that's mainly because I don't consider the right to close a program to be one that is socially beneficial, rather the way I don't consider, say, theft to be socially beneficial.
The BSD license, on the other hand, ensures that the person who has the program may do whatever they want with it, including relicense it under virtually any license they feel like. So in this case, the developer's rights to do what he wants are protected, at the expense of the rights of the program.
It may seem strange to think of a program, essentially a piece of mathematics that is by nature abstract, as being an entity deserving rights, but if you actually read RMS you'll realize that's very much how he views the world.
So it really isn't a matter of one being more free than the other, in my personal opinion -- rather, it's a matter of whose freedom we are protecting. If you are concerned about the program being Free, BSD is a poor choice for a license, because there's a good chance large portions of the program will be co-opted (enslaved, if you will, in keeping with the "freedom" analogy) into a derivative work that is not itself free. The GPL will ensure that the program (and all its derivatives) will ever be free, but you as the developer must accept certain restrictions in order to ensure that freedom.
For what it's worth, I don't think either view is necessarily wrong, but they have different goals -- and therefore different means when it comes to reaching those goals.
If you value the freedom of an individual, BSD is very much for you. Very libertarian in nature. If you value freedom for the program, which essentially translates to guaranteed freedom for the community, then the GPL is for you (which is perhaps a much more socialist view). I generally fall into the latter category, but it hasn't stopped me from extensively using BSD (OBSD in particular).