OpenBSD Project in Financial Danger

DieNadel writes "In an entry to the OpenBSD Journal, Marco, from the OpenBSD project, warns about the somewhat disturbing financial situation in which they are now. The OpenBSD team is the one that also develops the OpenSSH suite, used nowadays almost everywhere. From the entry: 'What I want to point out what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that OpenSSH development is paid from the same pool of money as OpenBSD. OpenSSH is in use by millions around the world however the revenue stream just simply isn't there. This is where other projects could help. Without naming entities or projects by name there are others out there that are sitting on some cash. It would be wonderful if these entities could share some of the wealth to keep us going.'"

Comments

Are many people really using OpenBSD?

[supabeast!]

How many businesses are actually using OpenBSD in production anymore? Not counting the people unknowingly using OpenBSD based appliances. I can't remember the last time I heard of someone running production stuff on OpenBSD - at least in part because so many of the OpenBSD teams ideas being adopted by other *nix variants or freely available lockdown scripts.

Maybe the reason OpenBSD isn't getting support from businesses is that the most IT shops never have an OpenBSD box doing anything but acting as someone's pet project in a test lab.

Wow

[NDPTAL85]

Did you notice your comment was modded funny? I'm not sure you meant it as a joke but thats how people are seeing it. The number of voters who would vote based on OSS issues alone is extremely small. There is a way for a software writer to stay out of bankrtuptcy, its known as charging for your work via proprietary methods. What Open Source is, is a failed business model. If you want to make money, don't be an idiot and release the fruits of your labor under the GPL or BSD license. If you don't mind starving and being taken advantage of, then go right ahead.