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OpenBSD Looking At Funding Shortfall In 2014
Freshly Exhumed writes "Today the OpenBSD mailing list carried a plea from Theo de Raadt for much needed financial aid for the OpenBSD foundation: 'I am resending this request for funding our electricity bills because it is not yet resolved. We really need even more funding beyond that, because otherwise all of this is simply unsustainable. This request is the smallest we can make.' Bob Beck, of the OpenBSD Foundation, added: 'the fact is right now, OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on.'"
The electricity bill in question is $20,000 a year for build servers located in Canada.
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
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 [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] 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.
Apple only cares about FreeBSD, not about OpenBSD.
If he was magnetic enough, he could produce his own electricity.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The SSH that comes bundles with every Mac is OpenSSH, also made by the OpenBSD people. No idea what else has OpenBSD fingerprints on it within Mac OSX.
Trolling is a art,
I think the phrase you are for is "Holding hostage"
Reminds me of the scene in Blazing Saddles... Nobody moves, or the nigger gets it.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
RMS donated a quarter.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
That he found stuck to the bottom of his foot.
You know, it's really too bad. I was an avid OpenBSD fan until I interacted with Theo and he was extremely belligerent regarding pretty routine matters that required no hostility. Then his followers jumped on me as well, as if it was necessary to back up their fearless leader in what was perceived to be life or death combat.
In the past I had donated regularly to the project, but after that incident I began to give to the FreeBSD community instead. Who by and large seem to be a much more friendly bunch and certainly don't seem to be sweating massive power bills.
Seems to me that Theo's inability to conjure up the slightest bit of charisma in the face of utter defeat is symptomatic of why OpenBSD is dying. They needlessly humiliate and scorn their own followers over minor perceived philosophical or technical differences, thus the only path they can end up on is one with less and less support.
They will probably fail in the long run as a result of this behavior and their inflexibility to re-locate or distribute their build servers. Theo has ranted about how they must be in what amounts to his garage, but I don't buy it. I'm pretty sure they could easily be re-located -- but don't mention that in his presence or he'll surely burn you, too.
The firewall in OS X, pf, is also from OpenBSD.
1. the nature of OpenBSD means build servers are the word of god on the lips and hearts of every developer and user. their physical verifiability and integrity is sacrosanct. finding a remote build location in this the year of our NSA 2014 would prove difficult if not impossible.
2. this is controversial. its not an attempt to stoke a flamewar, but it i feel must be said. the BSD license itself hinders the visibility of the projects its designed to protect. It allows corporations, the very entities that theo wants his electric bill 'on their books' to ignore the project entirely and slurp down releases whenever a security hole shows up on their product. Other than a README most corporations arent required to think twice about the code, let alone where it comes from, under the BSD. IMHO only when openbsd.org starts returning srvfail will these companies know what theyve lost. GPLvN remind companies on a per-release basis where the bread for which their butter goes comes from. code must face the scrutiny of developers, engineers, legal teams, managers and a multitude of other stakeholders.
Good people go to bed earlier.
this shows just how irresponsible we all are. openbsd is arguably the most relevant/important OSS project after the linux kernel.
Trolling is a art,
Solar panels!
I know it's different in other countries, where the grid is nationalized and people can choose between one of many providers, and maybe it's different in other parts of Canada, but at least where I am you usually only have one choice for a given area.
Theo et. al. might turn up their noses at the idea, but a $40,000 kickstarter to keep OpenBSD going might not be a bad idea.
Rewards might include: kudos for contributions, limited edition (kickstarter only) t-shirts/posters/soundtracks, CD sets (duh), and for big contributors ($2500-$5000) a customized VDD set up for whatever purposes you want, yours to keep or share as you like.
Finding God in a Dog
Apparently there's free as in speech and free as in beer, but there is no free as in electricity.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
At least this time he didn't eat it
ipfw was replaced by pf in 10.7 Lion. Their man pages sometimes lag, I think. For 10.9, see: ipfw.8 pf.conf.5
They actually have a pretty reasonable reason for this.
Theo responds (in his usual patient and understanding manner) later in the linked thread when someone suggests trimming some of these old machines with these reasons, but the basic gist is:
Having such a diversity of platforms makes errors more apparent (some bugs which while they might impact all platforms might only be obvious one one platform for whatever reason) and the interest of some devs might be tied to these weird architectures.
Here's a link to a photo on OpenBSD Journal of the build server racks and all the great (some quite old) machines being used:
http://www.openbsd.org/images/rack2009.jpg
Lots of memories looking at some of those machines... I'd be a bit concerned about the longevity of some of those.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Didn't they do this last year as well? I seems Theo isn't drawing the dollars anymore and has to have a funding drives every few months.
But I agree with others, turning down offers of free hosting for the build servers then refusing and begging for money doesn't engender sympathy.
The question remains, whether the benefits of this diversity are worth the price, especially when they are out of money.
Sure, and I suspect that Apple would be happy to pay someone to maintain OpenSSH (and OpenSSL, which, I believe, was also an OpenBSD project?). I don't see why they'd care about the rest of it.
Of all those security vendors who use OpenBSD in their proprietary security appliance boxes why can't any of them give some money back?
Does Theo work in IT end user support?
I'm a developer, and I deal with other developers on a regular basis. I do come by an occasional dumbass, but it's certainly not a regular occurrence, and it still doesn't justify hurling invectives at them. You just shrug and move on.
OTOH, if you treat everyone as a dumbass, and proudly proclaim that to the world, then you don't get to bitch when the end result is such as described in this article.
That server collection is a dump, that looks about identical to my wiring. I love it. It tells me two things. The admin is not some OCD creep that obsesses over the wrong things. But it also tells me that there isn't a person with a marketing bone within 1000 feet of that server collection. I am not a fan of the MBA mentality but gathering money is what they do (usually for their own selfish gain).
The horrible truth is that a tech company with all marketing people will generally do better than a tech company with all tech people. The key is to make sure that you have the minimum number of marketing types and that they are sufficiently neutered so as to prevent them from taking over as they are like Money Tribbles who will quickly find and eat your storehouse of value turning it into more Tribbles(MBAs) until all the value is gone.
So if you want OpenBSD to get out of the swamp get a marketing guy. But keep him on a short leash or OpenBSD will swell up and then burst in the next bust.
Theoretically that's the situation in the UK, although in practice there appears to be collusion between the big six companies to effectively fix prices....
Way more expensive than $20k, plus OBSD will likely produce other items in the future that are viable. Hell, there's even some parallel between De Raadt and Jobs, Apple should on a somewhat personal level understand both the difficulties and benefits of working with a competent uncompromising technological visionary.
That might make sense if they were selling their product. While they do sell some things, it's more akin to a Boy Scout bakesale because their main product is still given away.
I assume the answer is yes since the alternative is bugs, and there's no reason to ever ship bugs.
This is only true if the same amount of money cannot be better used more efficiently to the same purpose elsewhere. Even then, I very much doubt they have zero bugs, yet they ship anyway.
And, of course, it only makes sense if they do have the money. Which they don't. So, as it is, if the choice is shipping with more bugs vs not shipping at all, well...
Yes, Linus is guilty of a similar thing. But Theo's attitude problem is an order of magnitude more than that of Linus.
That's not quite right. Netflix utilizes FreeBSD heavily. See: https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software
Please enlighten me:
1. Why do you need to so many computers for your build servers?
2. Why does it cost $20,000 a year to power these computers when it takes a whole order of magnitude to power my entire house for a year?
Something doesn't make sense.
Further ideas for funding levels:
"Theo Happy Day" - for each person who contributes at that level, Theo behaves like a responsible, polite, civil, empathetic human being for an entire day.
"Fire suit" - for this contribution, you are entitled to one (1) interaction with Theo where he does not insult, belittle, demean, or behave in a condescending manner, towards you.
Please help metamoderate.
Sweden comes to mind, also the UK.
Not sure if it's actually nationalized in Sweden or if they have a system where one company owns the infrastructure for an area and other providers pay a fee to use it (kinda like telecom), but you have a choice of provider.
The GPL does not require companies to give back. A company may use a GPL based product internally, fix it, adapt it and never share a line of code. The GPL only applies when someone wants to distribute their derivative work.
It seems that (judging from the picture) Theo keeps everything in one spot. I don't know how Debian and Gentoo distribute their build servers, but they spread it out among multiple developers and entities. Has Theo considered listing a university for help? I know OSU helps out with some Linux distributions.
I don't think what Theo proposes in his e-mail is going to garnish any sympathy from a business. A company isn't going to want to offload his costs onto their books with no strings attached.
Personally, I'd say they should cut down on some of the architectures that are supported. Some of the older ones (like VAX) aren't the most energy-efficient architectures nowadays. Running a few new x86 servers is going to be better for the electric bill than running a bunch of discontinued platforms. Bitrig is only focusing on x86 and ARM and that's allowing them to do things such as making clang the default compiler instead of having to stick with GCC 4.2.1 forever.
Problems with donating to OpenBSD
(1) The donations are being requested after the end of the tax year
Most charitable donations occur in October/November/December for tax reasons. This is true of both deductible and non-deductible donations.
(2) Donations are not tax deductible
This isn't a huge problem, if the OpenBSD Foundation were willing to invoice the company for the amount; then it could still be deducted as a business expense, but then the OpenBSD Foundation would have to claim it as income and pay tax on it. This isn't terrifically onerous for them in any case, as they are not a charity, and thus have to pay tax anyway, unless they can just get someone to pay their power bill directly instead (something they've requested).
Another option would be to have a U.S. OpenBSD non-profit that could then support work by OpenBSD under contract, even if that work were something like "provide nightly builds of OpenBSD binaries in exchange for grant funds". They don't seem interested in/able to utilize, this approach.
(3) Invoicing would not exactly require some measure of editorial control, but...
There would be at least an implied expectation of quid-pro-quo, even if none exactly existed, since an audit of the company that was invoiced could require at least a paper justification for the value obtained in exchange for the invoiced amount. It doesn't have to be a great deal for the company, and it could actually be a completely lopsided deal, but there would need to be a token exchange of goods and/or services for the invoiced amount.
(4) If someone is willing to pay their power, they demand they be a Canadian company
I can understand the ramifications for this coming from a non-Canadian company; OpenBSD needs to understand the ramifications of "any port in a storm". There really aren't that many Canadian technology companies in this sector, compared to the U.S.; the highest percentage of OpenBSD-based products are in fact German.
(5) There are not a large number products based directly on OpenBSD
The companies that do have products based on it are generally not hugely profitable, and the small number that there are are listed here: http://www.openbsd.org/products.html which gives you some indication of their market penetration.
(6) The OpenBSD folks don't have the most stellar relationship with the rest of the Open Source community
Without assigning specific blame, this should probably be addressed sooner, rather than later.
--
All in all, it's rather difficult to set up a legal fiction that would let it be advantageous to a business to donate.
It's not that they do not provide valuable software, it's just that most of the value they provide is not in the OpenBSD OS itself, it's in the ancillary projects that are associated with the same people.
US $ 20,000 = € 14800 ( I convert to euroland givens, as I have no idea about the price of a kWh over there ). In euroland, a kWh costs more or less € 0.20. Hence, € 14,800 purchase 74000 kWh. 74000 kWh / ( 365 days *24 hours / day ) = 8.53 kW.
Now - I like the picture. But I refuse to believe that even these power-guzzling old machines draw a steady 8.53 kW on a 24/7 basis. No way. A quick look-up in wikipedia shows me that kWh rates in Canada are even lower than here in Europe. What is Theo hiding ??
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Wow, that bad?
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Judge for yourself.
I assume the answer is yes since the alternative is bugs, and there's no reason to ever ship bugs.
Tell that to Microsoft, Oracle, et al.
Having such a diversity of platforms makes errors more apparent (some bugs which while they might impact all platforms might only be obvious one one platform for whatever reason) ...
I absolutely agree. As someone who simultaneously developed for Windows/x86 and MacOS/PowerPC I definitely saw bugs manifest more easily on one system or the other. However, past two or three hardware architectures there is probably quite the diminishing return.
... and the interest of some devs might be tied to these weird architectures.
Well people tied to these "weird" architectures can make a donation. Take a look at the supported architecture list, quite a bit of trimming is possible if the respective esoteric communities can't at least pitch in for the electric bill.
Given the fragmentation in the non-commercial BSD market, it might not be so bad for one of them to die off. I'd even argue that the remaining BSD projects should unify their userland and instead focus on kernels.
Gotta agree. A full order of magnitude worse then Linus and still a full order of magnitude better than RMS.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
New Zealand and Australia.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Linus doesn't need someone to pay his light bills.
He's not "dealing" with Stallman, he's plainly trolling him. By spamming, no less.
$20k isn't even the cost of a single developer to maintain it. They are far better of paying the $20k to keep the lights on then commiting to supporting a developer to maintain OpenSSH. less money commitment for a company that is struggling so badly.
20,000 USD (or 20k CAD for that matter) pays for A LOT of electricity, so this sounds really fishy.
Your comment is so stupid it makes my head spin.
Before you spout off idiotically on free market and socialism, read up on the terms "freeloader" and "tragedy of the commons".
Add "Gift economy" to that list as well.
And, finally, read on the DARPA vs OpenBSD funding controversy. Yes, a government interfered with OpenBSD funding - the US government.
Full Disclosure: I have been donating to OpenBSD and buying the release CDs for a long time. and I will donate to them again (including this time).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Reason #0. They are in the USA or run by companies based in the USA. Which means that the USA government can do anything they want with National Security Letters and Theo would not be notified that the systems have been compromised. Now CSIS might do/have done the same thing, but not legally.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Why not ask GitHub, Atlassian, and Gitorious as well? They each have a sizable dependency on SSH.
The link to the picture does say this "see eg this picture, which shows a subset of the machines involved in building OpenBSD releases." . So it isn't clear just how much equipment Theo is "hiding" but it isn't all in that picture.
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=138972987203440&w=2
Meaning the project won't be able to cover 20 thousand dollars in electrical expenses before being able to use money for other things.
...they should ask for donations to buy power-generating equipment. PV-panels, a wind generator, anything which fits the budget and is a feasible option in the area where they are active. The generated power can either be used directly to keep those servers running or it could be used to run the meters backwards. If you give someone a kilowatt hour she runs her server for a few hours. If you give him the capacity to generate his own power he will become free.
--frank[at]unternet.org
I assume the answer is yes since the alternative is bugs, and there's no reason to ever ship bugs.
Unless you can't ship anything because you have no money.
Just to remind everyone that these are the guys that produce OpenSSH.
http://www.openssh.com
If OpenBSD is not worth it, then maybe OpenSSH might be?
The OpenBSD project is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. The electrical grid is provincially regulated but owned and operated primarily by a number of different investor owned corporations.
Alberta residents can choose from multiple distribution companies-in Calgary Enmax is most common. Further to that you can lock in on a contract rate where the price per kwh is constant throughout, or you can avoid a commitment and pay a spot price called the "regulated rate option".
If you pick R.R.O. then it is really no choice since all Providers offer about the same price. Contract rates vary more between Providers but often the lowest contract rate at a given time can be more expensive due to long contract terms and bigger exit penalties.
Overall though the choices do not significantly reduce energy cost. The more effective solution is to reduce consumption. If the bill is too large upgrade to more efficient modern hardware where possible and do load shedding of sorts, powering off certain architecture machines and scheduling builds of different architectures on alternating days and off peak hours.
20k seems steep to me but maybe not if it is residential rates...the picture looks like it might be in Theo's basement...
He wants to find a Canadian company that will, on an annually recurring basis, shift all the hydro expenses from one utility account to said company's utility account.
This is such a specific ask that I doubt it will be successful.
He needs to do something like a Kickstarter campaign or just accept donations. It's not difficult to setup a not-for-profit in Canada such that your tax implications would be negligible (if anything). The whole thing is considered an R&D expense, anyway, if he wanted to go the for-profit route. If anything, he'd receive a tax credit for it if he booked it on his personal or small business expenses.
I know this maybe a non-solution for OpenBSD, but for future projects, would it make sense to use servers with low-power mobile processors, such as mobile quad core i7 or would this slow down builds too much?
Old machines are much less power-efficient than modern ones, and it is wasteful to have them on 24/7. If OpenBSD were adapted for cross-compiling, all the builds could be performed on a single high-end Xeon server, and the old machines switched on only occasionally when it is necessary to do a native build for verification or testing.
I love OpenBSD, a *lot* of good has come out of it. (hello, ssh?) I used to run OpenBSD religiously for firewalls. However the 20,000 USD for electricity bit sounds fishy. If it really does cost that much, drop the old platforms that may have 1-3 vocal users. Drop hppa, drop vax, drop old pizza box sparc's, drop alpha. Those platforms were neat back in the day, but now there is no useful point. (they really can't even keep up with modern 100MB/s, 1GBps traffice, I tried vintage hardware plus OpenBSD a few years ago) This sounds less like Theo wanting to keep the project alive and more about him wanting to keep a huge inventory of crappy systems to play Admin with (holding OpenBSD hostage) Let it die, and from the ashes maybe a newer, leaner OpenBSD will fork.
Can you name a single vendor who actually uses OpenBSD?
In Canada?
Those are EOLed computers: I spotted an AlphaServer under HP's logo, which HP no longer makes. Also some Suns. Looks like these were all donated equipment, which have been clustered together to form this rack.
Between that, and the Magnetic North pole in the NorthWest Territories, he should be able to produce enough - if he can be a South pole
And Theo's abrasive personality
Yawn!!! The usual 'they tell users where they can get unliberated software from outside, so they are not as clean as we are'
We used to have a nationalized grid with only one provider to choose from on the whole territory (hint : France). Now that it's been somewhat opened, prices are driven up. Traditionnally the prices are the same over the whole territory (at least for ordinary citizens and businesses), which is why slashdot discussions about expensive and cheap areas in the US read funny to me.
Of course there's quite a scale difference, huge territories with varying climates and resources, federal administrations so I don't suggest Canada-wide or US-wide fixed prices make sense but I believe you have at least one example of that philosophy with postage stamps.
France too, but it's pointless for the consumer and even risky as leaving the State provider once to suscribe with a private one means you lose the regulated-by-law price rates forever. The State provider is technically now a private firm owned at 85% by the State. Funnily, the private providers and producers are heavily subsidized : wind power etc., the european-wide rule that wholesale wind/solar power always must be purchased first on the interconnect grids, and the State provider (by large the largest electricity producer in the world) is forced to sell much of its nuclear electricity at a loss to all its competitors.
So, really, a market was mandated by law foremost for compliance with european treaties, and they made one up. On the other hand the huge company maybe feels more free when they want to gobble up european actors or invest in Europe and the rest of the world.
I've realized the company in question operates 73 nuclear reactors when you count the UK ones, that's a bit hilarious.
If they are just for building occasionally why do they need to be powered 24/7 for a 20k energy bill? If its a ghetto rack, get a powerstrip from ubiquiti that you can SSH to. I use the 3 socket one and it cost me ~40â. I use it for remote reboots and it has already paid for itself several tomes over in saved gass money.
We're all vampires up here, there's no sunlight most of the year :)
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
For those who want to know numbers: http://www.ontario-hydro.com/index.php?page=electricity_rates_by_province
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
In security software, shipping nothing is preferable to shipping bugs, especially when shipping a product does not net you any more revenues.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I don't know. Perhaps you can download the source and take a look at it yourself?
I do know that OpenBSD keeps meticulous man pages, and if it's wrong, it's treated as a bug and fixed. I once saw Theo rip out code in the dev environment because there wasn't a man page. This was after the developer was reminded multiple times that man pages come first.
Ssh, let him be, he needs to have a good anti-Apple rant every now and then or he'll explode.
FreeBSD's pf still came from OpenBSD...
In security software, shipping nothing is preferable to shipping bugs, especially when shipping a product does not net you any more revenues.
We're talking about OpenBSD and every software product has bugs. Show me a software product that is 100% guaranteed to be bug free.