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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.'"
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.'"
Pro tip: He's talking about Mozilla.
Dear Theo:
Maybe people are deciding you're just too much of a douche to put up with.
I'm sure if you run out of money and cant work on openssh anymore that someone with the time and resources will pick up the ball and run with it. Such is the nature of OSS.
Love,
the Free Software Community.
This space for rent.
I know some large companies (cough*apple*microsoft*redhat*cough*) can certainly afford to support openSSH, and need the project to continue running.
These companies however would not want to give to an operating system project that competes with them.
Maybe the openBSD & openSSH projects should seperate?
My pics.
The SSH project will stay in development with or without BSD, there's no issue here of what would happen if OpenBSD ceased to exist. It's kinda like when most apps on Linux die, or simply cease development...if it's important then someone is there to pick up the pieces.
OK, I apologize in advance because I already know this is going to piss some people off, but why don't they try going all GPL. That would make it so that proprietary development couldn't fork off the code base and so would probably make the project leads a center point for support, services, and custom jobs. Lots of other people like Red Hat are making money this way, I don't see why the OpenBSD team couldn't do it too. The fact that the free software movement is exploding in cash while Open BSD is suffering - shouldn't that be telling us something?
Hopefully someone can pick up the slack and donate to this great project.
You?
OpenBSD is a vital project that is lead by an amateur. OpenBSD had a sugardaddy in Darpa, but apparently offended them with negative comments. My question, who does he think will be most interested in his super secure OS?
an ill wind that blows no good
What you said may sound troll-ish to some, but it just goes to show how little support there is for open source projects - especially money wise. Everyone here seems to think everything should be F/OSS, and that you should live off support contracts and such. But in reality, 99.9% of the time, it just doesn't work out (and I don't know many coders who want to do a living off answering the phone instead of coding).
There are some great and very useful OSS projects, but I don't make a living that way. My money comes off closed source/proprietary software - on the hugely popular closed platform. It's already hard enough making a living this way, I can't imagine how "easier" it would be if I gave the app away with the source code and let people fork it. I have enough money now to retire at 30, put my kids thru university, etc. Had I gone the open source way, I don't think this would be true.
It's just like websites and newspapers lately. Besides some advertizing (that we block in any way we can like using AdBlock), there just isn't much of a revenue stream. Nobody's really figured it out yet... Yet there are so many bright folks who've been scratching their heads for a while. This could be the 2nd "dotcom" crash - money has to come from somewhere to fund all this.
"It would be wonderful if these entities could share some of the wealth to keep us going."
Wow, that's a weak response. It sounds like they're basically asking other F/OSS projects to fork over cash because OpenBSD can't raise money. And it makes F/OSS groups look like the business-challenged hippies that some people think they are.
If you are going to have an OpenBSD organization, then that means that part of your job is raising funds to keep yourself a going concern. Let me repeat: your job is no longer just to write code, but to bring cash in the door so that you can continue to get paid. If you are building products that world + dog are using, then that should be pretty easy. If you are not capable of raising funds, then you need to find someone who is good at it to help you out. There are plenty of those people out there - any semi-competent second-year marketing student should be able to significantly increase their funding channels over what they have now.
I'm sorry but I just don't think you can say, "hey, other open source organizations have done a good job working with the public and the press, and they raised funding, so why can't we have it?" It just hacks me off when programmers complain about the business-types at an organization, then discover it's actually harder than they think. And in this case they have taken the additional step of not trying to remedy the problem, but actually glomming off other groups that have maintained done great work with fundraising and marketing their products.
I have supported OpenBSD myself in the past by buying install discs and T-shirts. I think OpenBSD is a fantastic OS and I will contribute my few bucks here and there to keep them going. But if OpenBSD's answer to their money problems is not to fix their own house but rather to ask others to fork over - it probably means they'll just get in this same hole again later! I think they need to have a better answer to this question if my support (or anyone else's) isn't just going to be money down the drain.
"95% of all Slashdot
And you, my friend, have hit on the reason that open source will always be a fringe movement. Despite its technical merits, it runs up against the most powerful force ever -- human greed and stupidity.
We are always worried about #1. Take your average workplace. If everyone is pulling their weight, people do their job. If one person slacks off and gets away with it, the rest of the staff immediately drops to the level of the slacker. The mindset is "If HE can get away with murder and still get paid, I can do the same thing" Never mind that we are still getting paid by our employer... we feel some snse of entitlement when one person is getting off scot free.
Now, return to OSS. Companies who use OSS don't donate. They see it as throwing money away. People don't contribute to OSS respositories at nearly the rate they use it. And people hardly ever donate money either.
Bottom line: OSS is a wonderful idea... like communism. You will find pockets where it works. But overall it falls on its face.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
No one's made this observation yet, so I figure I should: the flip side to OpenBSD not having enough money to maintain operations means that the software they make, especially OpenSSH, is in danger of being no longer supported. Yes, yes, I know, it's free software, so someone else can pick up the pieces after Theo is forced to take his toys and go home. But the reality is that no business in the world should trust software who's creator is about to implode.
What happens in six months when OpenSSH is no longer actively supported by the team that created it and a new exploit is discovered/released? What responsible IT manager is going to let his employer get into the potential problem in the first place?
I say, rather than begging for donations, the OpenBSD team needs to get their act together and find a way to keep the lights on, or they're going to see fewer and fewer people trusting the use of their software in large corporate environments. If that means the leader of the team needs to keep his mouth shut about his anti-war views when he's depending on a grant from the US Defense Department to keep his operation going, then that's what he needs to do. Being an adult means doing things you don't neccessarily want to do, like eating your peas and broccoli.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
In order words, we're discovering that handing out quality products and begging for money in return doesn't work. Is anybody really surprised?
When was the last time YOU gave money to OpenBSD?
When I bought OpenBSD 3.2 and it took them 4 months to ship it to me, and it arrived in broken jewel cases and the source CD was scratched beyond readability. That's why they aren't getting any more money out of me.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them that critical free software is important to you. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by the OpenBSD and GNU teams to support you with the software you need in your life but that if cheapskates keep refusing to contribute to the projects, ensuring people like Theo are not forced to hold down proper jobs, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how a lack of money for Free Software harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on funding Free Software.
Are you kidding? You want me to encourage my congressman to publically fund open source software? You want the state to get involved in software development? Because you do you realize that the government doesn't just write blank checks. Not even Halliburton gets a blank check, there's strings attached to all this shit. Do you really, seriously think it's a good idea to turn open source software funding over to the government? Because you know what's goign to happen. We get fat sucking off the public teat and when the government wishes to change something in how that software works because our reps are getting lobbied by the RIAA, they threaten to cut that funding out unless we incorporate (or don't incorporate, or stop development on) some specific feature or package that a lobbyist finds to be inconvenient. Like p2p technology.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Remember, it was thanks to ordinary people like YOU that we are now seeing such innovations as SMP in OpenBSD. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
No, sir, you can shove your socialized software up your ass. I want my government staying as far away from OSS as possible.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I don't think I'd describe Theo as particularly arrogant. When I've seen or read interviews with him (there was a particularly good one in the Sydney Morning Herald a while back that Google can probably help you find), he's seemed like a reasonable and rational individual. He occasionally flames people on the developer mailing list, but I don't really see how that affects you as a user.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And how much did it cost him to get to Australia?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
OpenBSD needs an annual donation drive the way that Wikipedia has one.
OpenBSD needs to open up it's OS distribution so that people can download and bit torrent OpenBSD ISO disks. OpenBSD needs to be a little easier to install. By taking these steps more people will find out about the project and use it and it will be easier for them to install.
For example, I know someone who switched from OpenBSD to FreeBSD simple due to the ease of installing FreeBSD.
Theo, open up OpenBSD distribution and get with it, have a donation drive: 100k per year sounds like a good goal. But if the software is hard to get then people simply won't use it.
"The CDs that OpenBSD project sells is their main source of revenue and support."
It obviously, and unsurprisingly, isn't working for them. They should work on finding other ways to raise money.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
How about teaching Theo manners and how to deal with *other people*. *Huge gasp*. Funding issues are a direct result of his insane attitude. Of course companies would donate money like niagra falls if Theo didn't piss EVERYBODY off. Who wants to donate large sums to an asshole? Not I.
Bottom line: OSS is a wonderful idea... like communism. You will find pockets where it works. But overall it falls on its face.
What sort of reality-distortion field are you in that it looks like Linux, GNU, FreeBSD, Mozilla, and OpenOffice are mere "pockets" of success and OpenBSD's perennial financial trouble is the "overall" situation?
0 1 - just my two bits
Then why do most other major F/OSS communities NOT have this problem?
The reason this is happening to OpenBSD isn't because they're relying on donations and support money...It's because many of the prominent members of their community have alienated those who would otherwise be willing to shell out cash. Bad salesmanship will kill businesses and organizations alike.
...is that there is no corporate entity at all. You make checks out to "Theo de Raadt", which *isn't* going to happen from any really large company with deep pockets. There is zero tracability and zero accountability.
When the U.S. DoD was funding them, the disbursements were handled thru a University or some such.
They need to grow up as an organization. Find a sympathetic accountant to donate his time/effort to establish a tax-free (and tax deductable) non-profit in Canada and an arm in the U.S. Hell, maybe one in the EU and one down under as well.
This will make them infinitely more appealing to corporations who have deep pockets and MAJOR qualms about writing big checks out to individuals.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
you probably could have:
1. donated $40 (or whatever the cd sets cost at the time)
2. installed via ftp
you would have been done much faster and the project would have gotten more $$ for the same $$ out of your pocket
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Well, if he was presenting at a conference, the conference most likely picked up the tab for transport and lodging. That's usually how it goes.
Keeping in mind that I believe that his work and the OpenBSD project are important, a few words of advice. As someone who works at a very large non-profit let me say this, doing a good job isn't enough. You have to work just like any other business to stary afloat. And that means constantly dedicating time to fundraise and not acting as a "one-man-show". Perhaps he needs to hand off the reigns to someone else and let them manage the project and fundraising. He apparantly and not suprisingly is unable to handle both coding and fundraising. Most people can't so that isn't a knock on him.
Anyway I wish him luck and hope he gets organized. He really needs to establish a real non-profit and get someone with real fundraising experience working for him. Without that I'm surprised it lasted this long. IMHO giving him a few donations in order to keep the project running without him deciding to make major organizational chages is just delying the inevitable. I sincerely wish him the best of luck.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
you are wrong
what openbsd needs, and what the article is highlighting, are the big companies who use openssh to kick in a few bucks
cisco uses it in their kit. soes does hp. ibm is another. do you think that between the three, they can't come up with say, $75k/year?
~a year ago, a friend of mine consulted at a company that was reworking their entire network. they ended up spending well over $30k on kit. they chose cisco *because* they had ssh (openssh btw) on their kit at the time. the other vendors they had did not
vodka, straight up, thank you!
If eighty cents of every dollar I spend supporting OpenSSH gets flushed down the OpenBSD toilet, is that a good use of my contribution?
The cluelessness of this post defies belief.
I want to support this OpenFoil airplane wing because it supports me. However, if eighty cents of every dollar I spend supporting OpenFoil is vented through the OpenBlow high-test wind tunnel, is that a good use of my contributions?
NX protection, Pro-police, and priv-sep are all products of the two efforts coordinated together. Almost every dime OpenBSD spends is spent in the pursuit of enhancing security, and it's to imagine that those results are not immediately folded back into OpenSSH. Unlike FreeBSD, OpenBSD spends shockingly little on the OS itself. They aren't busy inventing disk geometry managers or porting to 150 different platforms.
90% of human stupidity originates in the capacity of the human mind to engage in intellectual shell games. Here is this dollar: let's split it up in to the 80 cents wasted on OpenBSD and the 20 cents invested in OpenSSH.
Or, my brother is dying of Leukemia. I want to donate blood because blood keeps him alive. Is that a good investment if 80% of the blood I donate is flushed down the toilet to replace blood lost during bone marrow transplants?
Almost too dumb to live, really.
Right on
Just say no to TCP/IP, BSD UNIX, WWW, the Internet, FTP, and many algorithms used for smp systems and servers.
If it were not for uncle sam you would be paying $50 a month for AOL or CompUserve on a dialup modem with no interent nor innovation.
The government is not that evil in doing things like setting standards and funding research that private industry can't do because of their need to generate profits.
I have no problem with academia sponsoring OpenBSD because it will help everyone including business and personal use. OpenSSH is the result of free software and so is the web and apache.
Its not that evil folks and the government is not always bad. Sometimes its needed because the industry can't help itself.
http://saveie6.com/
If he was at a conference, then he probably had his travel expenses paid by the organization. Very common.
Also, I just sent a donation to OpenBSD via paypal. Even if I don't think of Theo as the greatest guy in the OSS world, the project is very important to keep alive, and not just for the OpenSSH portion. The OpenBSD group has made a public plea for support and I'm dissapointed to see something along the lines of "needing money, huh, hehehehe then just suffer bitches..." from many posts here.
I'm sure that talented people with a little spare time will read those kinds of posts and be glad to spend a year or two writing something cool and useful for you. With these attitudes, they may get what they are really begging for; a computer running microsoft software because developers got tired of people not stopping at mere indifference towards the projects, but happily extending into ridicule. What a grateful bunch we must seem to be.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I don't run the OpenBSD OS, but based on this report, I donated. Since I do use OpenSSL and OpenSSH all the time and want to keep them under active development and if everyone that uses these important open source tools for network security kicks in some bucks, we can keep this good thing going.
Do have have any idea what you're talking about?
First, there's a good amount of production servers running OpenBSD. I happen to be the developer of an OpenBSD-based firewall, and the things are running rock solid. The only failures we've had in 5 years are hardware-related. One of the firewalls sits in front of our developer network and has by far the best uptime of anything in the company, including several so-called high-availability systems.
More importantly, only a fraction of the OpenBSD development efforts have moved into other systems, and then often incomplete or much later. I don't wanna start a W^X vs. other methods discussion here, but if you've ever seen a presentation where Theo or one of the other core dudes explained just what is really new under the hood in the latest release, you'd be quite surprised. There's a lot of actual research and development going on in OpenBSD.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org