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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.'"
...for Netcraft to weigh in on this one :-)
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.
This is really sad. I used to use openbsd and it is a great project. Very easy to install and a nice fast text based installer. Hopefully someone can pick up the slack and donate to this great project.
My UID is prime is yours?
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.
I think that when some people post of how good their competing project is (ie. Gnome vs. KDE, Linux vs. *BSD), most are secretly hoping that the people reading it would abandon the project for their own. Though I doubt the decrease in funds of the OpenBSD project is significantly caused by naysayers, I'm wondering now how these people feel when it actually comes to pass.
As for the OpenBSD programmers, I wonder if at the very end, if no change happens, they will decide to create a different entity to handle OpenSSH and see if that will receive funding that OpenBSD cannot attract.
...oh wait, I guess it really is!
As Maddog put it:
"I believe it was at a conference in Australia (also in the 1996-1998 time frame) that I ran into a rather despondent Theo de Raadt, who told me that for lack of $300. his ISP was going to turn off the project's servers. I took out my checkbook and immediately wrote him a personal check for $300., to keep the OpenBSD servers alive. My comment to Theo was that "your project is too valuable to let die over a measly $300.""
If you're really poor, just donate 5$.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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.
Brother, improving your security is as easy as ordering a CD: http://www.openbsd.org/orders.html
The CDs that OpenBSD project sells is their main source of revenue and support.
I recently purchased 3.7 and now I just might purchase 3.8 for shits and giggles!
I also think that the OpenBSD project needs to start operating a bit more like a business. Services need to be offered that bring in a healthy revenue stream. Two areas where the OpenBSD development team excel are cryptography and code auditing. Both are related to security, which is a good industry these days. The OpenBSD site could offer paid services, such as code auditing for other projects to enhance security, etc. The OpenBSD developers should also set up a consulting business that performs setup and maintainance of OpenBSD installations, perhaps primarily for small businesses that aren't in the IT business, such as clinics, legal offices, automotive repair facilities, family operated stores, etc. These are relatively simple setups for those familiar with OpenBSD and projects from the larger open source community, and the effort would be minimal. These small businesses would be willing to pay a reasonable price for the service, since they would save greatly on software licensing.
All of those methods could be used to bring in a healthy revenue stream for the OpenBSD project. But in the meantime, please get a PayPal account set up!
Unfortunately, they know that the best value they can give to the tools they provide is to make them free. But as long as the tools are free, there will always be those parts of society that do not contribute to the costs of their creation. And, unfortunately, that's not a minority of people. When was the last time YOU gave money to OpenBSD?
This quagmire of people being unable to develop that that should be free will not disappear by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. 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.
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.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
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?
Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates briefly saw Theo de Raadt in the Gents' toilets at an important computer show; Theo left the trough and walked away without washing his hands. A bit later, they saw him again and decided to take him to task over his indiscretion.
"At Microsoft, we always wash our hands when we've been to the toilet!" said Bill, smugly.
"I'm sure all the Linux developers wash and dry their hands when they've been to the toilet!" said Linus, determined to outdo Bill.
"Fuck off, the pair of you," said Theo, "OpenBSD people don't piss on their fingers!"
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is the perfect example of what happens when OSS fails itself. The OpenSSH source is open to anyone, and under the BSD license, anyone can use it for any reason. So what's happening? You have a great software product used by millions of people and they are running into financial hardships. This could result in this great software product being at risk of being undeveloped and unsupported in the near future.
Would it be too much for OpenSSH to go to a model that requires people to spend a meer $1 per server installation per year? That's at least $1 million in anual income which is more than enough to cover expenses and development.
Isn't SCO using the OpenSSH code? Maybe they could kick in a few dollars to help maintain it... after all, won't they be getting several billion from IBM any day real soon now?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Plenty of OSS projects use OpenSSH, and it's obviously far less sexy and able to get donations as some of the projects that rely on it. It doesn't seem right that only OpenBSD should finance it. However, I've not heard of projects helping out the stuff they depend on before.
Would it be a good thing if big projects with lots of money started to be expected to financially help the libraries they use? It might help with the development of good, reusable frameworks and libraries and maybe even help deal with one of the major problem of OSS, namely that in some areas there far too many mediocre frameworks and few good ones. If this became the norm, it would allow the most used ones to develop faster.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
The trouble is, what they have that is of value is well-audited, high-security code. You can't 'merge' that into NetBSD or FreeBSD (both of which I use) without basically rewriting (or reviewing to such an extent that you understand it as well as if you wrote it, which may take longer) the stuff.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I second that motion. A lot of time I will choose my software solutions based on the user community that backs it. For example, it's obvious reading a few newsgroup postings that there is a difference between say a Java programmers group and a Ruby one. In terms of friendliness, arrogance, etc. Same with OpenBSD compared to one of the other BSD's. Makes a difference for sure...
And yet, here you are on Slashdot. How does that work?
Sadly this shows once again that "pure" OSS cannot make money on its own. By "pure" I mean not relying on hardware sales and support contracts. Don't get me wrong - I use OSS, love OSS and I want OSS to be able to make money - but I cannot understand how that could possibly happen. Especially with the BSD license.
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.
Soon Mozilla/Firefox will have every failing opensource project BEGGING them for cash. They will become the OpenSource gravy train target if they give in and contribute.
Damned if they do, damned if they dont!
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
Okay, to explain why I consider that sooooo wrong, I present an analogy...
The US space program costs billions of dollars per year, and really doesn't "do" all that much - aside from the occasional high-profile exploration mission, it primarily launches satellites for the US military. Yet, it has given us, as a side benefit of solving the problems inherent in getting to and living in space, countless synthetic materials and advanced manufacturing techniques.
Even if the space program ended tomorrow, we'd still have the results of all its work. We can even keep researching ideas such as nanotubes, completely independant of the possibility of a space elevator.
If OpenSSH does well while OpenBSD teeters on the edge of collapse, perhaps a reprioritization of the larger group seems in order?
Ditch the shuttle, but keep the weather satellites.
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Man: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
OpenBSD: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Man: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
OpenBSD: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Man: Yes he is.
OpenBSD: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Man: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Just joking, here's to hoping OpenBSD gets better (financing) soon. (and you can change "Linux Zealot" to "Man" if you're so inclined...)
In the interest of understanding things (and to avoid actually getting modded down), could you (or anyone else) post actual examples of his arrogance or assholiness? Google has a bit to say, but I'm sure I'm limited by my keysearch terms.
I suppose that reopening conversations with DARPA is out of the question? I was very hopeful when I heard about this, but disappointed when the support was withdrawn. I don't know the reason, but if it was for some idealistic plan on Theo on how to position OpenBSD, I support it. I don't know how to remedy this situation, but can only think of offering paid support (shudder) to companies utilizing OpenSSH. Either that or a grass roots tshirt campain! Let's see some better designs on some nice American Apparel shirts to get the ball rolling. The posted ideas about using some kind of embarassment campain against no paying corporations harks back to the bitter taste in my mouth when you were shunned if you didn't belong to the 'Mandrake Club'. That is the wrong avenue.
fak3r.com
http://openbsd.org/donations.html - quite painless.
People either support a project or they don't. Please to come to the rescue give a false sense of value. Sure, you may get a temporary injection of funds, but then people will go back to ignoring it. If a project is dying from lack of funds, maybe the community really doesn't value it and perhaps it just needs to die.
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.
It is not about purchasing, it is just about making a donation to the cause. I mean, it is *not* Linux and I am 100% sure any of the BSDs distros are aimed to go against Windows. And, it is not like anyone of them can (and had) used any of this code!
As someone (who will probably be moded down) said before in the thread, the way this capitalist world is "profit or die". Companies that have used this software should donate some money to give a push to the software.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
"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
...to an escrow account for making OpenSSH have the GPL-compatible BSD license. Or if he insists on having his name on closed source software, a BSD/GPL dual license. It seems everyone and his mother (except debian-legal) link it anyway on a don't ask, don't tell basis but that's not what the license says. Yes, I'm talking about the attribution clause.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
FreeBSD survives mostly through donated money (to the FreeBSD Foundation) and donated equipment. Much of it from companies. Considering how prevalent OpenSSH is, there are a lot of large companies with a vested interest in what OpenBSD puts out and should be doing more to support the project.
(This is not a Free vs. Open flame, I work on Free.)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
After my Linux box got hacked for the 3rd time, I switched to OpenBSD. Here's about how it went. (1) Go to web site, pay for CDs (2) Wait 2 weeks (3) Wait 3 more weeks (4) Contact webmaster, ask what's going on, receive no response (5) Wait another month (6) Try again to contact somebody at OpenBSD, receive no response (7) Wait two more months, give up on trying to contact anybody, write off OpenBSD as a bust (8) CDs arrive in mail almost 4 months after I ordered them in cracked, broken jewel cases with one CD scratched beyond the ability of my drive to read it. Luckily it was the source CD and I didn't need it. (9) Write to OpenBSD people to say I got my CDs but the quality was god-awful, the delay was ridiculous, and one of them was busted. Receive no response. Regardless, my OpenBSD box is going on 3 years hack-free with minimal effort on my part to keep it that way. Regardless, I'm unlikely to go through OpenBSD again. When I order a product, waiting over a quarter of the year is unreasonable, and it could at least arrive NOT broken and all screwed up. And they could at least acknowledge that they receive my email, even if only to tell me to piss off.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
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.
That was a fantastic response from Maddog, but personal charity is not what OpenBSD/OpenSSH needs. It needs a patron for whom a regular $300 is not even pocket change.
Google, you know this is a worthy cause. Do the right thing.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
They have a nice convenient PayPal link.
"Don't give money to beggers." But I've got a few granola bars and juice drinks I would be willing to donate.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It's funny how arrogance and bitterness go so frequently hand-in-hand.
Theo goes around (as seen in these pages) lambasting Linux for basically being popular and successful, and then laments how his "far superior" OS is not as highly regarded. (Compare this to the utterly humble Linus Torvalds.) Now there is the implied threat that if others (read: Linux companies) don't cough up the dough, he's going to yank OpenSSH away from us. He seems like quite a bitter man...
The CD-ROM is $45.00. I can't afford that.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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
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.
OpenBSD's problem is a financial one. Is there some double-super secret source of funding that becomes available to them if they were to flip to GPL?
I'm not even going to touch why OpenBSD going GPL would compromise a lot of their underlying belief structure.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Really, think about what a resourse openbsd.org site is, if they had those tacky Google ads it would recieve a ton of pageviews, and clickthroughs likely since it'll tailor it's ads to BSD/Open Source stuff. Might go against the whole philosophy of the project, which I completely respect, but if it saves said project, it may be a required trade off. With the proliferation of broadband expect to see things like CD sales to continue to dwindle.
fak3r.com
If the world worked the way RMS says it should, then there would be an awful lot of programmers and projects in the same boat. Important, useful, software would be in grave danger of dying (or at least not updated) for lack of funds.
This is why many people and companies have the sheer gall to actually charge money to customers to buy a copyright-restricted copy of their work. They charge money so they don't have to get stories on Slashdot begging for funding.
BTW, way to go Theo, pissing off a large contributor of funds. The first amendment doesn't give you the right to receive "free" money from the govt. if you piss them off. It also doesn't give grant administrators the warm fuzzies when you tell them that you are taking their money so they can't spend it on something else. This is like justifying a lottery by saying: "At least all them poor folks can't go spend that money on booze." It's hyprocritical and stupid.
SirWired
Maybe VeriSign could cough up some dough.
They make a ton off generating SSL certificates.
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
Linux is for loosers interview Slashdot Interview Various emails from when he was kicked off the NetBSD project The world doesn't need any more BSD v Linux wars, and I never though I would see BSD v BSD wars until I heard of him. Theo is basically a complete dick and has no tolerance for anything other than his narrow ideals. It shouldn't be vary hard to see why both companies and users are less than enthusiastic about funding him.
Zing!
it's free software, so someone else can pick up the pieces after Theo is forced to take his toys and go home
Someone else will take on the work and cost of supporting OpenSSH. There's no "maybe" about it.
"I've never wanted to use OpenBSD. The reason? Their community is filled with assholes."
And yet, here you are on Slashdot. How does that work?
Well, if we describe what you're looking for as signal and what you don't want as noise, slashdot has a signal-to-noise ratio while OpenBSD has a signal-is-noise ratio.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I just created an account at Savern.com for OpenBSD. The site shares the affiliate advertising with the members. If you use this link to join http://savern.com/r=461 then every time you make a purchase you get 75% of the ad revenue and OpenBSD will get credited with 2% of the revenue. Please don't start a flame war on this, they need money and this can help them and also save you money. If anyone joins today I will forward the login/password info (which won't be the same as below because I am sure some nut will change it today) to the openBSD group so they can get any revenue that's generated.
If you do not want to join, but want to buy something from one of the stores you can sign in as user = openBSD@savern.com password = bsd1000. This way openBSD will get the full 75% of the ad revenue.
Someone from Slashdot has already ordered a Nokia770 under the guest account which was nice of them. We picked up a cool $35 on that one.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Locating its center of gravity in Canada is something of which OpenBSD takes great pride. This is not unreasanoble in light of the adverse legal envyronment and export limitations that security research faces in US.
Speaking of money, charitable donations, US is probably the best place to try to sell your cause. I believe that part of the work on OpenBSD could be supported by a non-profit organization registered in the US. Foundations permit donors to deduct the amount of the grant from their taxes, a benefit which, presently, OpenBSD denies to its benefactors.
Oh you mean like how we developed a crap load of software with kylix only to be left standing with our dick's in our hand right now because they decided to end of life it? ... go spout your drivel elsewhere.. BSD could go tit's up tomorrow and will it make a difference? nope the software and the code still exist.
Got Code?
donate $45 and do an ftp install. the project gets much more $$ that way
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Anyone who has ever decided not to go back to a resturaunt that has good food because of shitty service is in the same boat here.
I don't want to pay Theo's salary. Thats the basic problem here.
This space for rent.
...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.
Big question: for what there are 4 BSD distributions (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD)?
4 groups of people, who do the same work in theirs distros (like SMP, VFS, pthreads, extending network stack, writing new drivers). 4 groups of people, who have the same problems (little time, little money, big list of work on to-do).
Should 4 BSD distros/groups of developers/communities be integrated into one general distribution (simply BSD)/community? Where all developers can do more in time. One distro, who can be easier to support by hardware producers (one unified BSD drivers, one unified BSD support contract).
Actually, if OpenSSH was GPL software this probably wouldnt be happening. As I understand it, the reason OpenSSH manages to bring so little money home despite its wide use is the BSD licenceing allows venders/leeches/etc. to make minor (or no?) modifications, and sell it without giving back to the project that created the code base. GPL software cannot have non-free forks soaking up all the income and not giving back to the project, because it does not allow closed derivitive works.
Large companies are not leaders, they're followers. If you are an ISP or hosting provider and you have 20,000 servers on the floor and you have a few hundred instances of openSSH out there it's because it's cheaper to acquire, deploy and own. It has very little to do with whether it's good or bad. So if openSSH stops being supported here is what will happen. Companies will note that fact and stick a calendar item out there for the last day of support for that product. They are probably ALREADY backlevel so another level or two won't matter. Your customers really won't notice that much because they'll figure that you're coming after them for more money for a product you yourself should be paying for. The installed code will get older and older until about 2 years from now someone from the project office pulls together a project plan for replacing openSSH in the next fiscal year. It will get no more than 70% of the requested financing and the implementation costs will be 2x the estimate. This will yield about a 50% replacement rate and you will now have 50% a new vendor product and 50% old unsupported openSSH. Lather rinse repeat. In the meantime the business controls people will put a risk acceptance variance in to note to the auditors that you are aware the openSSH is out of spec and unsupported and that the work around is to get a funded project to replace it. Each RA lasts for one year so you will have at least 3 of these.
Despite the many cynic comments here and elsewhere, at current the ordering server of OpenBSD is overloaded and errors out of orders.
It looks like at least some people are stepping up and contribute their share to the project they need, love and depend on.
I'd say they could use a more performing ordering system with a searchable catalog and some throughput that can withstand to be ./
K<o>
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
If someone is deciding which project to donate to, and there are several which they've found useful, the attitude of the communities involved and their spokesmen WILL affect which one gets the money.
But yeah, your right. No one would dare to post about how their project was in financial trouble and ask for donations if they weren't terribly bitter. The non-bitter guys just keep silent and let the project sink and just disappear.
Thanks's for the great analysis.
This goes on all the time. Do you believe that Linux came on so strong because it had a grand design or because of the GPL back then? Nope. In fact, there were other OSs that were around. The big difference is that Linus and Alan were not a**holes. They are respected and well liked. In fact, even though you see Linus/Alan spout off, the truth is, ppl like Theo/Gates/Balmer/Jobs are 100% a**holes and are typically despised by those that work with them. BTW, I have known a number of ppl who have worked with Gates and Balmer. Not one that works directly with them, has a kind word.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Before borrowing [or begging for] money from a friend, decide which you need more. -- Addison H. Hallock
Quote just seen on this slashdot discussion page. I added the text in the block brackets.
OpenBSD provides tremendous value. Please make a significant donation. However, ask them to open up their distribution system to include OpenBSD ISO disk images freely available for download via ftp and bittorrent. OpenBSD needs to maximize the copying of their software; there are other OSes out in the sea that with easy and freely available ISO images that spread easier.
OpenBSD needs to open up their distribution so that more people can play with it easier. This means more people who can donate.
...and strike a deal with Google. New releases of OpenBSD will feature a scrolling text ticker at the bottom of the console :-\
More seriously, if Firefox can earn $72 Million a year from Google referrals, perhaps Google/Yahoo can help out with the $20k or so it takes to keep OpenBSD alive?
And do OpenBSD take Paypal/Amazon Honors/something?
Go somewhere random
They think an opensource firm should be able to stay afloat just through CD sales?! They are retarded! This is the problem with opensource -- you need to generate new, innovative revenue streams. A popular one is through support.
They're right, everyone uses openssh. Why don't they fire the part-time hacker, and hire someone for support. That way, they're one employee could help generate some income! Then push further down that road. OpenSSH is the only thing openbsd really has going for it. It's not a largely used distro, as far a linux flavors go. it isn't inventive enough... not that that isn't obvious by their inability to invent a cash flow, even though they have one of the BIGGEST, BADDEST damn applications in the whole linux realm!
This is my favorite part:
" 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."
YOU DAMN MORONS-- HOW DO YOU THINK THEY GOT THEIR MONEY?!?! They didn't sit on their one damn claim to fame, and bitch and moan that people weren't BUYING enough of their FREE FRIGGIN SOFTWARE!!!
RETARDS!
Maybe Sun, Oracle, or Novell will graciously save us all by swooping in a "buying" the OpenBSD/OpenSSH project(s)?
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
If you want money, then you need to sell stuff to get it.
Ironic then, isn't it, that OpenBSD is the only major open source operating system that works by selling stuff. They layout of their CD is copyrighted. You can't post isos or anything. You gotta shell out. Once you've got your BSD up and running, you can crate a boot floppy and install that way; but since you have the CD there's little reason to. If there's an official boot floppy on their site, it's not easy to find.
The model seems fair enough to me: if you want the fruit of their labors, you pay them a tiny fee ($45) for it, and then they (unlike a proprietary OS vendor) leave you alone.
From a marketing perspective, it's not going to set the world on fire. Apple's got the ticket here: you can spend hundreds of dollars over the course of a year, but at $0.99 for a hit of instant gratification, you never miss it. Starbucks too. You can get OpenBSD 3.8 for $4.99 from CheapBytes, but it's not as easy, and you have to wait. While this doesn't deter a professional user (nor does $45), it channels the grassroots experimenters towards downloadable isos. They're more important than their direct financial impact. When you are looking at an open source OS, you can go around the table and find that people have used a half dozen different Linux distros, but OpenBSD?
It's a shame, but it's a catch 22. Theo de Raadt has to eat, so he charges for media; charging for media holds back wider adoption that would open up other avenues for the OS.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"GPL software cannot have non-free forks soaking up all the income and not giving back to the project, because it does not allow closed derivitive works."
GPL doesn't demand that money be given back, only that code be given back. de Raadt would be in the same boat if his projects were GPL. He'd have more code, but no more money than he currently has.
Most vendors, landlords, and connectivity providers don't accept payment in GPL'd code.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I think that OpenBSD has not picked up the corporate support from big corporations who rely on OpenBSD such as HP et al. because the big corporations prefer to align themselves with feel good stories such as Barry Bonds, rather than difficult people like Theo.
Ya know what would be nice? Making it easy for businesses AND individuals to contribute. If they don't want to be a business, fine, get the 501(c)3 status in the US and let people make tax deductable donations. Writing a check to Theo's personal account doesn't get considered as part of my charitable giving. I also by a few CDs with each release or two, whenever I'm ready to do another OpenBSD project...
And guess what, the project makes me feel like a sucker... because usually whoever is shipping CDs is out of town, and they don't go out for 2-3 weeks, meanwhile, people have been downloading for free and I'm waitting for my CDs...
You want businesses to pay more that use it? How about selling a business "OpenBSD license" that provides us X copies for some price on a per-server (or per-CPU license) under the BSD. Is it a joke, sure, because given 1 personal copy, I have a license to use it however I want. But if you sell me 5 $299 licenses, I can write it off as $1500 in software purchases. Alternatively, I could donate $1500, but then I can't write it off... This is rough on me as a small business owner, for no reason. A receipt for the purchase would help...
However, asking for non-tax deductable donations is a non-starter. If I was an IT grunt in the field, knowing that I could buy a CD for the $20 or $30 and use it without effort (or download), but if I want to contribute, I could generate an online invoice and bring it to A/P.
In that case, the geeks LOVE that they start the project immediately, and maybe the "invoice" gets paid, and maybe it doesn't. There is no loser in this scenario, but it would require the OpenBSD project to understand the people that they want money from and find a way to make it easy on us to give it to them.
Alex
By now, it should be stable and static. Really, it doesn't do all that much.
Maybe they can also do some other things like save some money on electricty by consolidating some servers and possibly get a better deal on hosting or communication lines from another provider? They should be looking at also cutting costs in addition to increasing donations. Sometimes, if increasing income isn't a very easy option, the organization could be streamlined in other ways.
ConsultingFair.com
But Theo wanted to be an ass, and lost the funding. I bet if he had played his cards right, the project would have been set for the rest of his life. But . noooo he had to 'stand up for what he felt was right'. Now hes about bankrupt. Go figure.
Shows you how far 'morals' go in todays society.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They already do this. Most any software written on the taxpayer dime is available to the public, today. All you have to do is knw the right channels to go thru.
Anyone remember BRLCAD? Thats j ust one example.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
i used to think the whole deal with him being exceedingly arrogant was overblown - i'd been on mailing lists with him, and he was arrogant, but no more so than a dozen or so other really good programmers i could name. than i read the mail exchange between him and the NetBSD folks. the amusing thing is that Theo posted that thread, seemingly in an attempt to exonerate himself, but i just kept thinking "shut up before you make even more of an ass out of yourself." it was really amazing.
still, as was pointed out elsewhere, while he's frequently an ass, he's right at least as often and produces some very, very good results. you don't have to be an ass to be good (the fathers of Unix are uniformly good guys, in my experience), but it does earn you some slack.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
The guy who had the idea that all the consultants who install OpenBSD or OpenSSH for their clients should bill them for the official OpenBSD install set, so they can stack the shiny disks right beside the eight volumes of Vista they don't yet have was halfway to a good idea. [OK, I paraphrased.]
OpenBSD should release a special CD entitled "OpenBSD Recovery CD" for exactly this purpose. Fair game. You could use this CD to recover your system if you wanted to. Or, for a one time $50K payment, you can purchase the Enterprise-grade "OpenBSD Rescue CD" with exactly the same content.
Various embedded projects use OpenSSH, one example would be HP switches. If the project was licensed GPL, it may not have been included in those embedded applications. Ideally, OpenBSD could have been successful being dual-licensed, but it would have never gained such popularity with a pure GPL license.
Actually, OpenBSD is a highly successful fork.
.. or redbull.
Remember they are hackers not bumbs. Of course they dont cut their hair, grow beards, and a few shower less regulary so I can see the confusion.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm not sure why it needs to be full-time-or-nothing.
And as for hosting costs, shouldn't that be relatively easy to dispense with, by distributing via torrents or donated space on mirrors?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
After that, I was glad it was Theo, not Linus who was writing my kernel.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is more like not going to a restaurant with good food and good service because the manager (whom you never see at the restaurant) is an asshole. Yes, it is vindictive.
English is easier said than done.
I was thinking commercial software doesn't solve every problem. Especially setting standards. BSD, TCP/IP, and even the WWW were funded by tax payers.
Maybe we could convince our politicians to grant security and os development with some univerisities that use OpenBSD.
Its obvious the software is valuable to the commerical world and hackers but their business model is not working. IT has to be a business and not a charity or research organization to survive.
BSD came from academia and perhaps it should return? How much of Linux has univerisity code sponsored by the tax payers? My guess is alot.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Yet it's not arrogant for an AC to proclaim that an entire operating system which is the result of a great amount of labor should be merged with another OS which has different goals? What next, are you going to say that the GPL is pretty arrogant, and maybe Torvalds should get off his high horse and merge with BSD?
English is easier said than done.
why don't the gov't of Canada support it with monies and in return get good software for their computer systems throughout the government network? What about the universities such as the university in Calgary? Perhaps set up some sort of network security program and use openBSD as the model and provide some support? Just throwing out some ideas.
Are you sure?
If he did do that within 24 hours you would see 3 or 4 new sourceforge projects based on clean room implementations of SSH or forks of the existing one before Theo pulled the plug.
It would turn into an incompatible and ugly mess.
But SSH is here to stay as much as ftp and tcp/ip are here to stay regardless of how many versions and rewrites of applications that use htem exist.
http://saveie6.com/
I don't see the fuss. If I needed SSH enough to pay for it, I'd buy SSH Communications Security's Tecita server/client. Open source development is typically community driven, and thus should be expense free aside from hosting the distribution. Of course that could get expensive if a lot of folks are downloading, but aren't there mirrors out there? I don't buy it. (apology for cheesy pun)
I just knew a war between the Catholics and Protestants was going to break out somewhere in this discussion. You didn't disappoint.
The reason is simply that we would like you to buy the CD sets to help fund ongoing OpenBSD development.
Obviously this is why OpenBSD isn't in wider use. OpenBSD fails to recognize that this policy limits their growth. By demanding money from people for a simple install disk the people they want using their system simply go elsewhere. I've seen it happen at a major ISP who recently switched to FreeBSD beause it would take too long to create the OpenBSD install disks while FreeBSD is a snap.
More users equals the potential for more revenues. It's time to end this restrictive distribution policy that puts the breaks on free distributions of OpenBSD. Open the doors to success Theo.
Are you stoned? If the Stallman and the GPL is to blame for OpenBSD's demise, why hasn't Linux gone belly up?
Seems to me that if you want to point fingers, you should be pointing at the people who run the OpenBSD project. They are the ones who chose the BSD license, they are the ones who failed to secure any funding.
Using their failure to blame Stallman just makes you sound like an idiot with an ideological axe to grind.
STFU about slashdot bias.
http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html
Once again, with feeling:
http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html
I already donated today. Cheque, credit card (my preferred method), and Paypal are all easily listed. I guess having the donations link on the main page (just below project goals) was not obvious enough.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
So i've been working on a free and open source project for about two years, with releases coming out for about a year. The financial side is desolate. I don't despair (I don't live from it), but there is little monetary incentive to continue.
Income from donations is fairly small. Maybe $100 a month on average, more after releases. Overall, it doesn't justify the development effort.
Making money on support contracts is not likely to proove effective. My project is an advanced distribution of a text editor that's mainly used by geeks, and there in either a non-commercial (FOSS) environment, or by people who have been using the editor for many years. They're happy to solve their problems themselves, or simply ask a mailing list, where there is plenty of free support. Companies tend to use IDEs for their development efforts, and dedicated tools such as Dreamweaver to produce HTML. The third major application, LaTeX, is common only in academic circle (where people help themselves rather than paying for external support).
I could try to make $1 on each download. I'm allowed to do that under the GPL. That'll significantly decrease my user base. And it'll make Paypal rich, rather than me. Micropayment solutions aren't workable these days - there is no standard (except Paypal, maybe), and the fees for small sums are substantial.
Charging for the binary might mean copyrighting the layout of the distribution. That's against the spirit of free software, to some extent. People might fork off new versions. There are folks out there who simply care about this ideology, but don't see that developers need to pay their bills, too.
Ad revenue? Miniscule. And I've just seen that companies like Macupdate, which account for a certain amount of traffic, deliberately cut off any revenue stream by deep-linking so I can't show ads or ask people to donate when they download (I have no control over the download servers).
Bad market conditions with the wrong users for a workable business model. I don't know if it's the philosophy behind it. As a developer, I love the idea of free software. But since I have to pay my rent, I wonder if I can ever get some compensation for what I'm doing.
The reason why I continue is that users are supportive in a social way. Some donate and show their appreciation. Some blog about the project. Hardly anyone contributes code (Mac users...), but a lot of them send in good bug reports and support it that way. RMS and the FSF say, well, money is not the ultimate goal for all of us. Yes that's right. But as an answer to the problem, it's not enough.
OpenSSH gets deployed by just about every modern UNIX distribution, and even some not-UNIX stuff (Cisco and VMS come to mind).
These lazy freeloaders with $1 billion plus market caps need a swift kick in the shins. IMHO Theo ought to directly threaten them with retroactive removal of their platform from the portable code releases.
Doing it to IBM should result in some interesting fireworks and a PR disaster for the target.
The GPL demands money if you want the code under a different license. You have to pay if you want to remove the GPL restrictions; whereas, for BSD sofware do not have to pay.
Well, for one, PF comes to mind...
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
I count (at least) FreeBSd, OpenBSD, NetBSD -- and I suppose one could count OS X as being a BSD derivative system.
Each of these competes in some manner or other for user acceptance -- against each other as well as Windows, and the horde of Linux variants.
Maybe there's more BSD variants than the world needs?
I would expect that when financial support is needed, the folks carrying the banner for any OS would look around for additional financing, or beg for funds, or sell advertising, or charge for distributing the products -- charging for distribution costs is within the purview of most open source licenses, so starting with the next version of OpenSSH, OpenBSD, etc, charge for each download an amount equal to the costs of maintaining the server. If only one person downloads something in a given month, then that person will pay for the server hosting charges for that month. A better way would be to use a rolling average of the number of downloads over the previous 3 months to calculate the per-download charges for the current month. That will probably not solve all the problems, but it would at least keep the code available, as well as give a real indication of just how many users rely on it.
To keep someone else from paying the distribution costs for a single copy and re-distributing it for free, they would probably need to fork the code and distribute the updated fork under a different licensing scheme that disallowed redistribution. That would REALLY show whether the code is regarded as essential or not. In such a case, he might as well make it a commercial license and fold in development costs.
Of course, this will necessitate audits of where the money goes, and publicly accessible statements of same. But such details are probably already required to maintain one's standing as a not-for-profit organization, anyhow.
There's a lot of alternatives.
http://savern.com?r=461
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
What I find interesting is that everyone is worried that development of OpenSSH will stop and very few people seem to care that OpenBSD will end development?
It looks like OpenBSD is trying to use the "threat" that OpenSSH development will stop to get funding for OpenBSD. It would seem logical that if OpenBSD is no longer a viable project then OpenSSH should be spun off so it's development can be funded. I am sad to see this happen because I have heard good things about OpenBSD and would like to see it stay around but if it can not survive then OpenSSH needs to take on a life of it's own.
I wouldn't worry too much since it is OSS. If OpenBSD dies then SuSE, Red Hat, Sun, or IBM will probably step up and continue the OpenSSH project.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Theo de Raadt is an arrogant asshole."
I might point out that arrogance isn't exactly a rare trait in these circles. To make the argument that "I shouldn't support these guys because their leader is arrogant" simply isn't sound. Not if you plan to turn around and say "Go Apple!" -- Steve Jobs isn't exactly known for his humility. While Linus seems to be a pretty humble guy, I think you'd probably have a hard time saying the same about Stallman (Yes, I know... you can use the Linux kernel without GNU software, but I'm pretty sure most of you aren't). I think most here would agree that there's also a measure of arrogance evident in Redmond as well.
As I see it, being in charge of something of this scale either attracts or breeds (I'm not sure which - perhaps both) a certain amount of arrogance. So is Theo arrogant? Maybe, but so are most of his peers. It's hardly fair to hold that against his project and not theirs.
Theo *has* shown himself to be a pretty smart guy. He and his team put out some pretty damn good software (OpenSSH's very wide acceptance is a testament to that). That doesn't necessarily make him a particularly good businessman. The project would probably benefit greatly from having one on board. I don't think anyone will try to tell you that making money on open source software is an easy proposition.
In the meantime I have no problem whatsoever sending a few dollars in the direction of the folks who made pretty good software that I use every day, particularly if they need the help. I don't really think it's asking a lot for the rest of the community to consider doing the same.
As much as I'm a fan of OSS, I realize that it takes more than idealogical slogans of folks like Stallman and company to keep a project alive. Hopefully Theo will let someone else do the buzzword talking with the next potential sponsors. Personally, I don't see a reason for the government to aide this project, but...I could see that a NSF grant for related work would be useful. Many goodies on the OpenBSD packages are often used in universities, so I see no problem with him getting that sort of government dole, so long as Stallman and other idiots are not involved. :)
-- Bridget
You don't.
You find the version that's out there under BSD license and run with it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nah, their assholes are filled with community.
Maybe you need to read up on OS history about spouting off about how Linux got popular just because Linus is a 'nicer guy' than leaders of other projects. About the time Linux was starting to get out and take off, the BSD's were all tied up in a legal battle over UNIX/derivatives. They were stuck in a limbo status for a while until the lawsuit was ruled in their favor. Linux was able to get a lot of grassroots expansion over the open-source-interesed user base during that time. If not for the lawsuits, the userbase distribution between the open source OS's might be much much different today.
OpenBSD sells for $45
2000 CDs purchased equals $90,000 twice a year for a revenue of $180,000.
Assuming a profit margin (expenses include the shipper, order management, CD production) of at least %50 and you are close to the desired $100k per year. T-Shirts produce $5000 a year and that barely pays the utilities for the development servers. Donations come in at $10 and $20, but don't do much.
The missing thing is the big bucks coming from the Switch/router vendors.
Problem is no one is buying, everyone is FTPing, and cash is drying up.
It works when they sell CDs, Hackathons happen and great ideas get coded.
NetBSD and FreeBSD put out calls for cash. OpenBSD hasn't so far because they keep it going through CD sales.
If everyone who used OpenBSD bought a CD, and everyone who uses OpenSSH made a donation, the Internet would be better off.
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.
They focus on security, hire student workers, and their software is used by giants like IBM, HP, Apple, Microsoft, and Redhat. Let us not mention governments' need for advances in cybersecurity. Now, all they need is 100K a year. Apply for a grant you lazy bastards. Yes, you have to answer to a lot a bosses and they will expect some results. Bite the bullet and write the reports! I work in science and that is how we put food on the table. I sure those companies and the government would fund advances in cybersecurity plus train students so that there are future developers with security expertise in the work force. I don't want to here some bullshit about freedom, money is not free.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Since I also have made an editor ;-) I'll reply to your post about my feelings regarding OpenSource founding. I effectively see no way how most OpenSource projects can earn any money. At least I see no way with mine. So that means I have to earn my money with other works which of course means commercial software. So it's my best believe that while OpenSource has its advantages, so has ClosedSource as well and both have to exist side by side.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Somebody needs to set up a site where we can donate money to the OpenBSD project through PayPal or some other convenient method.
From: http://openbsd.org/donations.html
We can also accept donations via PayPal
Next excuse?
Bring back Sirius Punk!
Maybe you should use your money to pay for reading lessons. The BSD license is GPL compatable already.
but his opinion about the Iraq war and the growing list of American war crimes in that country, is DEAD ON.
Well, at least that is the prevailing opinion of academia, the liberal intelligencia, secular internationalists (some EU countries like France and Germany), and fearful authoritarian states (Russia, China, Iran, Syria). More mainstream observers perceive the positive role that an international coalition of the willing can have on the destruction of tyranny and the spread of democracy. The greatest war crime would have been inaction.
an ill wind that blows no good
Free software isn't about 'I'll write the code and you throw money at me.' There are lots of ways to get a regular cash flow going. Open up a webbrowser and visit any one of the dozens of projects out there for plenty of ideas. First off would be getting some kind of non-profit organization setup for OpenBSD/SSH. These guys are just being lazy.
You are correct that OpenBSD isn't in wider use because loonix retards insist on downloading huge ISO images of shit they don't need for everything because they are too stupid to realize that you can transfer files over the network.
But, being in wider use doesn't help OpenBSD financially. They are worse off now then they were before it became so popular. Having fewer users was actually better for them.
And "takes too long to create openbsd install disks"? Seriously, how is burning an ISO image faster than burning a cd with a single directory of downloaded files on it?
Maybe the decision to not offer ISOs has finally bitten him in the ass?
Sorry mate, you need to read some LKM archives. Ending up on the receiving end of a Linus flame is not something I would wish to anyone.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I don't think I'd describe Theo as particularly arrogant.
:)
Maybe, maybe not. Sadly for Theo and OpenBSD though, since they usually resort to petty attacks on both GNU, GNU/Linux, Linux, and people using the GNU/Linux operating system, I will never ever support a BSD project ever again. I'd rather flush my money down the toilet. So until they stop being asshats, I'll just send my money to the Debian project.
-- Linux user #369862
The lawsuits had very little to do with it. The case was settled by 93, and really did not impact anything. The BSD ppl really tried to control things starting in late 80's. They were literally no fun to play with. Of course, standard Unix had long ago been closed down.
....
BTW, I was there. I played and worked on Linux starting in 1992. Linus being a nice guy made it fun. Linux in the 90's was what BSD was in the 80's; FUN!. Yeah, it got serious later, but BSD had already gotten serious in the 80's. The law suit is nothing but a red herring. It had nothing to do with BSD's downfall, in spite of what some would have you believe
Now, about spouting off,
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"No wonder why there are no major companies who have a commercial version of BSD for the public, unlike Linux."
;p
Except of course Apple
Even though I tend to be a Linux guy myself (as evidenced by the fact that I've got my own Linux distribution and everything), I have to say that OpenBSD is definitely one of my favorite systems... considerably faster than even Slackware, and I'd definitely rather have an OpenBSD system for ultra-secure stuff. And not to mention that I'm an obsessive OpenSSH user... makes me wish I had the money to support them myself, because I definitely don't want to see any of their projects disappearing any time soon...
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Sure, but where's the floppy image. Looks mostly useful to me for upgrading your existing installation.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I dunno, man. Why would Theo accept the FSF award then?
Point being, how much money did OpenBSD lose because BSD Mall couldn't do their jobs?
-- get on Freenet!
I have posts on the archives. Linus rarely flamed. Sometimes he had a few words, but they generally were not that harsh. I have had managers and co-workers that have said far worse than the vast majority of a Linus/Alan flame. It goes with the territory of coding. It was not that big a deal. OTH, I have played in the BSD world. A few of those guys were total A**holes. They really did not make it fun to code.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Throw a hundred megs of pr0n on each CD. Make sure it's worth my time, though...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I have been saying this for a long time and sometimes I get opposition - but the problem is that the telecommunications industry has morphed into an intellectual property distribution industry and they are not paying royalties for what they distribute.
This has happened in other areas as well - with Cable Television being an example. In this case, the industry felt they could distribute other people's signals without paying royalties and the situation continued for a substantial period of time before the problem was resolved.
Very simply, the OpenBSD project should be recieving a fee for every copy of OpenBSD downloaded from its servers and from its mirrors. When I pay my ISP I pay for this service. There would be no reason for me for instance to pay my ISP if they did not have any content available for me to look at on the web and to download. My ISP connects to a large telco and they have to pay the telco for access to the content. Why they telco feels they should not have to pay the content creators is a matter to be addressed.
In fact in this case the telco in question pays substantial amounts of money to American insterests to gain access to the internet content that flows from the USA. These payments are for connections to the POP's run by the US backbones. Why a Canadian company is willing to pay Americans for access to internet content while at the same time is unwilling to pay Canadian's for access is a question I would really like them to answer.
The last time I spoke with members of the OpenBSD group they indicated the bandwidth costs a substantial amount of money. If this has changed and they now have a peering arrangment and are being paid for access to the servers then I will shut up. However I think this is quite unlikely and until this happens I am going to remain vocal.
There are individuals I would rather avoid in both camps. Lunux has its Jeffs (no family name quoted as he is a well known litigation happy cretinous c**ks****r), Larrys and many others.
Similary, I have not had any trouble with the individuals from the FreeBSD crowd I had to communicate with when I worked with racoon, mpd, altq etc.
So arseholes are clearly not limited to a specific OSS-*nix camp.
And granted, flamewise, Linus is tame compared to Al Viro and Dave S Miller (as a russian speaker I have a special opinion on the his machine naming conventions).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
1) The Website sucks. Redoo with a professional Webdesigner. Sleek grafics, fonts and all. Gentoo sort of points in the right direction but only sort of. Check out csszengarden.com to see what people mean when they say "Professional Webdesign."
2) Put the Shop up front. With Webshop functionality. Design the shop together with the site.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oh, I never said that Linux did not have its a**es.I noticed more than there should be. Many were just trying to be what they were not.
But Linus (and Alan) never struck me as belonging to that category. Back in the early 90's, it was easy to get a reply from them. And rarely were they flames or putdowns.
As to some of the idiots on the LK, well, sometimes the water gets a little Merkey. But I would argue that there were far worse, and continue to be more. While I liked Han's work, he could really turn things upsidedown on the lists. But that is normal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Now there is the implied threat that if others (read: Linux companies) don't cough up the dough, he's going to yank OpenSSH away from us."
That's right! If you don't pay, Theo will send out his legion of 1337 repo men to confiscate all extant copies of the OpenSSH source and binaries!
Or... maybe they just won't work on it so much. It's really hard to "yank" BSD-licensed code, after all. (I seem to recall that's why he uses the BSD license.)
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Right here: ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/i386/fl oppy38.fs
ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/i386/fl oppyB38.fs
ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/i386/fl oppyC38.fs
The first will work in most cases, the B and C version include rarer drivers than the first one.
Did you bother looking? At all?
The meme police, They live inside of my head
You really DO need to look harder! Just go to the to the arch directory of your choice under the OpenBSD download directory e.g. http://downloads.planetmirror.com/pub/openbsd/3.8/ i386
Notice the floopy*.fs files?
They are floppy images.
Looky here:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#MkInsMedia
http://www.pantz.org/os/openbsd/makingaopenbsdcd.s html
(and I don't even use BSD... well, does OS X count?)
We may be assholes, but we're his kind of assholes.
I've heard of a guy named Someone Else that might be able to help. I keep on hearing about all the cool stuff this guy does:
Just one example, but I've heard people talking about him doing many other things too.
You know folks, free software developers work their asses off to bring you
a quality operating system. Sometimes a project needs money in order to
sustain itself.
It's funny... back when I used Windows and fought through nagware like
Winzip or Trillian, I shuddered at the thought of paying my hard earned
dollars for software. Now that I have a free software desktop, I've donated
to a lot of projects. I try to pick a new one every month or two, just
to send $20 their way.
This news about the OpenBSD project reminded me how important it is to
donate money to the great projects you depend on, in order to help keep them alive.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a donation link on kernel.org, so I sent
this month's $20 to Gentoo Linux. I can only hope that you'll choose
to do the same for your Linux distribution.
I just donated $SUM via PayPal. It was quick and easy, and it's not like I don't use their software every freaking day of my life, with several SSH sessions open 24/7.
As others have commented, donations are better than shirt/CD purchases. As much as I'd like to see a ton of orders pour in to OpenBSD, I'd rather that they just take the cash and get back to their (fine, important) work.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
I knew it! I'm surrounded by assholes.
Maybe people are deciding you're just too much of a douche to put up with.
p a.html
When pissing off the pentagon he was a hero to the folks here on slashdot. His traits of being honest and unpolitic were lauded as virtues, his not letting the Pentagon money keep him silent was considered exemplary.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/04/18/dar
I guess he should have remained silent and kept the pentagon money. The slashdot crowd is certainly not going to put their money where their mouths are.
So, please don't make it look as if any OSS project depended on money. It just looks bad (a bit like: "look, we'll stop developing this unless you send us some $$$").
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
So OpenBSD heads, what's the result of a day on Slashdot's front page?
Is it all hot air around here, or did the communtiy respond?
FreeBSD got 800 donations in Dec 04, will you tell us how it went?
PS answer this and I'll put in $50.
I agree, get a job Theo and crew. Not all of us are able to pursue our software projects on our own terms. I have to work for a living and when I have time I work on my software projects. Alter the business plan to make it workable so that you have clients who pay the bills. Alter the business plan so that free OpenBSD ISO's are available. Alter the business plan so that you have an annual funding drive.
I'm not swimming in cash, but I just dropped them a donation. I haven't upgraded to the very latest release, but I believe I am more secure running OpenBSD on my firewall systems. I really like the simplicity, and I like how pf is configured.
Keep on hacking guys!
Maybe a "PRO" OpenSSH version is called for. I don't know what features it could offer -- maybe a nice GUI or something. This way, folks in IT groups with a few bucks left in the budget can justify buying a few licenses thereby helping the OpenBSD group.
OpenBSD accepts donations to help the situation:
http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html
Vaadin - the best open source framework for building web applications in Java - no plug
because we all have boatloads of bandwidth nowadays. no one needs to buy the cd like they used too.
make openbsd 10gigs for the basic install. and cd sales will go up.
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
our comment reflects upon your inability to grasp simple facts.
I grasp the facts you assert just fine. I simply have a different point of view where the facts you mention are not that relevant. The point of view that I have is that the more people the more likely it is that there will be more people to contribute time, effort, resources and money to the project. It's an idea called marketshare.
Oh, if you don't think that marketshare matters just ask (for example) Coke, Pepsi, Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Apache, and FreeBSD to give up their marketshare freely without contest.
The ISO you pointed at is too small to be a self contained full copy of the OS (which usually is over 200 MB in size); a full copy of the OS on one or more ISO's is what I've been talking about as it allows for independent installs away from the network as well as being easier to the user.
FreeBSD, Minix, Linux, and many others have full freely available ISO of their OSes , why not OpenBSD? Oh, OpenBSD has an explicit policy of not having them just because of an outdated desire to sell the CDs. That's a policy I'd like changed (which is obvious from reading my posts).
I wrote: The more people the better.
You replied: Except that's complete and utter nonsense, as has been pointed out many times, and you simply refuse to listen. But I'm sure you know OpenBSD's finances, number of users, downloads vs cd purchases, etc much better than Theo does right?
Listening and agreeing are two seperate things. One can listen without agreeing and one can listen and have a different point of view.
I listened to your statement just fine, it's that I disagree that it has much relevance since market share is king just like cash is king.
A path to larger marketshare is to make it easier for people to use the system. When technicial people reject using OpenBSD simply because of it's lack of a full freely downloadable ISO or it's somewhat challenging (to many) install process it's clear that something must change.
Another path to funding solutions is an orgnaized annual donation drive.
Another path is grants from the Canadian or other Governments.
Another path is to find busineses that require security and sell them on OpenBSD. Oh it's interesting that Theo is located in Calgary, Alberta the Oil Capital of Canada. There must be many companies that have high security requirements ripe for the services of those in the OpenBSD community. Get out and pound the Calgary Oil pavement Theo.
Another path is ________________? (I invite you to fill in the blank with your constructive thoughts about how Theo and crew can fund OpenBSD further).
So there are many ways to financial growth for OpenBSD from contracting to increased marketshare, regardless of your repeated comments that more users won't make a positive difference to their cash flow. Remember that past performance doesn't necessarily equal future performance.
That makes me think of another path; actively search for and find new people to be involved in OpenBSD who are capable of contributing money or other resourses such as time and programming skills. Hey wait a moment, that's targeted marketing...
There are many benefits to using OpenBSD, it would be really great to see it increase it's marketshare many fold. More people = more opportunities, and opportunities in our captalist based society can mean more money.
It isn't a 501(c)3, so it isn't going to get "donations." And I'm thrilled that you give $50/year, I buy 2-4 CDs whenever I am doing an OpenBSD project, every 6-18 months. And guess what, your $50 didn't determine the continuation of the project in 1999, and wouldn't today. $50 just doesn't go that far.
I donate to charity, and purchase goods and services from busiensses. Which is OpenBSD? In fact, I don't see how a company would sue you because they purchased a "commercial license" under the BSD and more than they now could sue you for "selling" them "free" software.
There is no fraud, they can buy the good or service, or not.
Theo wants to have it both ways. He doesn't want to run a business and offer a good or service, and he doesn't want to run a charity. He wants to code what he wants and answer to nobody and get checks made out to him. Good for him if it works, but I don't have a moral obligation to support Theo.
I pay RedHat a per-server fee, and they run a massive system of updates. OpenBSD won't ever provide binary patches against the last known version of the OS. There is a lot lacking in the service department that someone connected to OpenBSD could roll-up and easily collect the same $300/server that RedHat does.
However, Theo's approach ISN'T working, or this article wouldn't happen, and to expect the projects that fundraise better to give him money is a bit absurd.
I hope this works out for him, as his software is great, but the customer service blows, and he doesn't offer a service that I know that I would pay more for, and others likely would as well. You can frame this however you want, but I don't cut checks out of my corporate account without a receipt to back them up, and I can't imagine that I'm the only one.
Alex
if veggies are so much healthier than chocolate, why does chocolate taste so much better than veggies?