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NTP's Fate Hinges On "Father Time"

Posted by samzenpus on from the time-will-tell dept.

Esther Schindler writes In April, one of the open source code movement's first and biggest success stories, the Network Time Protocol, will reach a decision point, writes Charlie Babcock. At 30 years old, will NTP continue as the preeminent time synchronization system for Macs, Windows, and Linux computers and most servers on networks? Or will this protocol go into a decline marked by drastically slowed development, fewer bug fixes, and greater security risks for the computers that use it? The question hinges to a surprising degree on the personal finances of a 59-year-old technologist in Talent, Ore., named Harlan Stenn.

15 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Fewer bug fixes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What the hell is there to fix in a protocol solely designed to return a string of numbers?

    1. Re:Fewer bug fixes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If it is not broke, fix it until it is.

      Is this what keeps projects alive?

      Yep. New is always better, because shiny.

    2. Re:Fewer bug fixes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Everybody loves us," Stenn said. "But people with money say, 'We don't give to open source projects.'"

      They don't give to GPL projects.

      They hire BSD developers (CUPS, Clang, etc) because they can keep the parts closed they want.

  2. /. is not kickstarter by borcharc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    stop hitting us up for money

    1. Re:/. is not kickstarter by snowsnoot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes but there are an assload of companies out there making a shit-tonne of cash using these FOSS programs and not contributing in any way whatsoever. Its a complete disgrace and they should be exposed for the cheapskates they are.

    2. Re:/. is not kickstarter by inflex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I really don't see the internet collapsing from him walking away. If it was a legitimate issue it'd be quickly picked up by another party, commercial or otherwise. I'd suggest he does just walk away from it. Even if a lot of money was pushed his way, I'm willing to speculate that he's burned out from all those hours (100/wk?) over the years and now wants to just set things up for a new person, step out, and close the door; been there, done that.

      If we ceased having any NTP servers, then there's a more likely internet collapse scenario. The current NTP software seems to have been doing pretty good over the last couple of decades; or is there something that's progressively changing?

      I appreciate that the guy has put a lot of work in to it, a lot of us (OSS developers) have and it's a passion more than anything else; if you get money out of it, it's a bonus, but one should never engage in it thinking there'll be any rewards other than seeing that the software itself grows and maybe a little bit of acknowledgement of what you've done. The OSS community can't get all up in arms with disgust when large corps use our software to help them progress, while not all corps give back to all projects, there's still a lot of stuff that is given back, or donated, even when not legally required.

      The ethics of earning money off the back of OSS could be debated, but that's a whole different sphere. A lot of us already donate a lot of money already to various OSS projects as a nice feel-good gesture as well as a way to encourage further developments.

  3. Not stable yet? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No offence, but NTP simple time protocol as it is is surely reliable enough that it doesn't need more maintenance (after IPv6). Don't fix what ain't broken.

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  4. Not only finances are an issue by macraig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At 59 years old, statistically Mr. Stenn isn't going to live long enough to maintain NTP for another 30 years. Perhaps something so crucial should be a voluntary communal effort?

  5. Protocol vs software that implements it by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The summary makes the mistake of conflating the NTP protocol with the messy NTP software developed by ntp.org.

    .
    Hopefully the ntp.org software fades away.

    However, the Network Time Protocol should live on in more secure and more easily maintained implementations (e.g., NTimed and OpenNTPd).

    1. Re:Protocol vs software that implements it by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Even if OpenNTPd wasn't broken it's a very poor substitute for NTPD...

      You say OpenNTPd has been broken "for years", yet do not say why or how. -1 for your efforts.

      .
      For my needs, OpenNTPd has been an excellent replacement for NTPD. I do agree that NTPD has some features that are not present in OpenNTPd, but my usage does not require those more esoteric features. What I do need is the ability to sync my server clocks within a few milliseconds, OpenNTPd does that quite well. And OpenNTPd does have one major feature that NTPD has lacked of late - security.

      ... I had not heard of NTimed until just now.

      You should try to keep up. :)

  6. Re:100 hours a week? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For someone who's so deeply invested in managing the Network Time Protocol, this dude really doesn't seem to be able to manage his time very well.

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  7. Re:I have two problems with this article. by dAzED1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you, know - you're right. Instead of having a simple, lightweight protocol that keeps time accurate across the globe, to the tiniest portion of a second...we should have every single time-sensitive thing on every single machine everywhere re-write their own time service. That way, not only will everything suddenly become substantially more noisy, but risk factors will go through the roof and code complexity across all of the IT universe will dramatically increase! Or, we could just use the tiny, lightweight, extremely accurate tool that's been doing it very well for decades. Damn, such hard decisions...

  8. Re:There are 3 types of time that matter to comput by dAzED1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm just staring at your comment and blinking, because...wow. Even if I ignore #1&2, #3..."and is typically only an issue for calendaring and scheduling." How about queuing? How about clustering? How about expiration of millions of things (tokens, certs, leases, etc). How about practically everything your computer is doing? Unless you're meaning to say that everything really does boil down to "calendaring" and "scheduling," and you're not just making some Outlook comment. If timing wasn't important, there wouldn't be circuits dedicated to keeping it, on practically every electronic device on the planet.

  9. No business sense by melchoir55 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is absurd to expect a corporation of any size to "toss something your way". He should have told apple, when it mattered to them, that they could pay a service fee to have him delay the patch for their benefit. No, this isn't how you want to deal with individual people. Yes, this is how you must deal with a corporation.

    Life lesson: mega corps don't even care for the people they employ, and much less people outside the corporation. A corp is an abstract non-human entity. It doesn't deserve your charity.

  10. If you want Bugs,... YSou got it ! by stooo · · Score: 1, Insightful

    >> That's the problem: not enough bugs. Time to replace it with the Apple Watch Protocol.

    No. If you want the most buggy and incomplete reference implementation, then take the microsoft one.

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