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Microsoft Thanked For Its "Significant Financial Donation" To OpenBSD Foundation

McGruber writes: Microsoft has donated a considerable amount of money to the OpenBSD Foundation, becoming its first-ever Gold level contributor in the process. From the OpenBSD Journal: "The OpenBSD Foundation is happy to announce that Microsoft has made a significant financial donation to the Foundation. This donation is in recognition of the role of the Foundation in supporting the OpenSSH project. This donation makes Microsoft the first Gold level contributor in the OpenBSD Foundation's 2015 fundraising campaign."

46 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by halivar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Probably because you haven't yet realized that the Halloween Emails were 17 years ago.

    Maybe it's time to move on.

  2. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by bloodhawk · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft has a hidden agenda behind this donation?

    Microsoft wants to see BSD succeed, that is hardly a hidden agenda. They have leveraged BSD assets greatly over the years (as well as contributed back to them).

  3. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by wasabiiiiiii · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're adding SSH support into windows. It behooves them to make sure the foundation is well supported.

  4. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by ClaraBow · · Score: 2

    I'm trying -- but it's hard!

  5. Question by PNutts · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can we start calling them M$ again?

    1. Re:Question by Sowelu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As the evil empire of this decade, we really need a snarky nickname like that for Google.

    2. Re:Question by just+another+AC · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry but evil empire of this decade is definitely Apple, they just need to finish locking everyone in to their services on every industry (including financial), before they really turn the screws. They are like Google in the early 00's where they are only showing hints of their future evils.

    3. Re:Question by westlake · · Score: 2

      Can we start calling them M$ again?

      No.

    4. Re:Question by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      Apple would never, ever, want to lock everyone in to their services. They seek to sell to the richest 20% of the people. Look at their product line: they never make anything at a price even close to the average for that classification of device type.

      Their whole marketing scheme involves letting people feel elite for buying their products. That's how cult deals work.

    5. Re:Question by aliquis · · Score: 2

      My Macbook Pro was used for 1.5 year and performed poorly after 1,

      What's your point really? Nothing magical about Apple gear. The specs in your Macbook are weak and I know lots of Apple users has complained about how the latest OS is slow on their devices.

    6. Re:Question by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2

      My mother's Dell Vostro (2009) is still like new and my Thinkpad X200 (also 2009) is also doing fine, the only parts I have replaced were the HDD (still worked but I wanted a SSD) and the battery.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  6. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm trying -- but it's hard!

    Actually, it's not hard, and it's very very tiny.

  7. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by ClickOnThis · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm trying -- but it's hard!

    Actually, it's not hard, and it's very very tiny.

    That's why they're called Microsoft.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  8. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by sexconker · · Score: 2

    We used to be able to call out bullshit posts like yours just based on the mention of "wife".
    However, with gay marriage now legal in all 50 states...

  9. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Time to move on...but still realize they're a for-profit corporation. It's not like they're all all warm and fuzzy now, sounds like they're tending toward neutral.

    In any case, the bottom line is that anything they do will always be based 100% on a profit motive. Whether through ultra-aggressive illegal techniques like in the past, or perhaps now by simply competing smartly and innovating (yes Virginia even for Microsoft it's possible!).

  10. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by the_B0fh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If Theo is willing to give up the $2million DoD grant because he felt he should speak up against the Iraqi war, what makes you think a piddling $50k is going to affect Theo's code or design?

  11. Re:Well isn't that nice. by the_B0fh · · Score: 2

    You are just one of those fucking assholes who like to shit all over people. If Theo was willing to give up the $2million DoD grant because he wanted to speak up about the Iraqi war, he sure as hell isn't going to be influenced by $50k.

    Assholes like you are what give ACs a bad name.

  12. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Holi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one has driven more profits into the PC industry either.

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  13. Re: OpenSSH on Windows by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

    They've already announced they want to add SSH/SCP to Windows Server 10/2016.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  14. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In the classic essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' the people writing the Cathedral code were the GNU Emacs development team.

    Just sayin'.

  15. Re: OpenSSH on Windows by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    that's funny, ssh works just great on VMS and it doesn't have bash or GNU utilities or anything like that.

  16. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by petermgreen · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do they really need one?

    I can't find an exact figure for the donation but according to http://www.openbsdfoundation.o... it was in the $25K to $50K range. That may be a lot for an opensource project running on a shoestring budget but it's pretty trivial to MS. If they get some good PR and some help with the windows port of openssh out of it then it's probablly money well spent.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  17. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Pseudonym+Authority · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Putting an operating system that you don't like does not make the money tainted. Simplifying licensing by issuing site licenses to PC makers is not evil. Get over yourself and get some perspective. Much more horrible things have been done in the pursuit of money than making a bunch of hippies at the FSF pissed off.

  18. Microsoft loves Unix by FranTaylor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft at one point was the #1 vendor of Unix software. They wrote the Unix for a Radio Shack system that was the #1 selling Unix system in the whole world at the time.

    Microsoft inherited a huge BSD infrastructure when they bought Skype, they maintained it for years.

    Microsoft is the #1 vendor of software for the #1 selling Unix system in the whole world, OSX.

    1. Re:Microsoft loves Unix by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It was Hotmail, not Skype, and it ran on FreeBSD for a few years after the acquisition. Microsoft was, apparently, fairly happy with it, but it coincided with their attempts to push Windows NT into the server space and their customers kept asking 'If Windows NT is so good, why do you use UNIX to serve Hotmail?' THey tried to migrate to NT4 and it was a complete disaster, which was what led to a lot of the features in Windows 2000 Server. They successfully migrated it to 2000.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  19. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Pseudonym+Authority · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That is a much bigger contribution than giving some amount of money that doesn't even affect his lifestyle.

    That's stupid. A bigger personal sacrifice perhaps, but there is no way that it's a bigger contribution. Suppose you donate time to a soup kitchen on a Saturday. That's great, good for you[i]![/i] You fed maybe fifty bums. A million dollar donation, though, could keep twenty people doing it full time employed for an entire year. That's over 18,000 hungry bellies filled.

    So, which is a ``bigger contribution''? Being visible while helping so that everyone knows what a good person you are, or maximizing the amount of good actually done?

  20. 10 LET M$ = "Microsoft" by tepples · · Score: 2

    Slashdot comment subjects are limited to 50 characters. Microsoft sells Visual Basic, which is the descendant of a language in which string variable names ended with a dollar sign: A$ or B$ or M$. Until these facts change, I'll keep referring to Microsoft as M$ in comment subjects. Think of it as variable interpolation analogous to "thank $DEITY".

  21. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Hadlock · · Score: 3, Informative

    More specifically, Powershell is getting native SSH support. They didn't announce PS 5.0 will get it, but it's possible 5.1 or 6.0 will see it, version releases have been getting more frequent. A major change like full SSH support would warrant jumping a whole version number, I would think. Maybe released with the next version of Windows Server, sometime next year? That would be great news.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  22. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by FranTaylor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The linux developers have collectively donated the value of Linux, (roughly estimated at $10.8 billion), to the community.

  23. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    BSD software can be forked to GPL anytime, and then that fork is closed to commercial use. If MS makes OpenBSD great and then becomes a shit, OpenBSD can be forked to a GPL state and MS gets to keep the pieces it paid for.

    Seems like a great relationship to me.

  24. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by brianerst · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Whoooosh!

  25. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft has a hidden agenda behind this donation?

    Because Microsoft has stated they wanted to use OpenSSH for Powershell and remote desktop in future versions if you Google past stories here. In essence they are paying them to do the heavy lifting for them and the community wins too.

    THis is something desperately needed as it could be a great vulnerability if someone can crask the SAM database and impersonate a domain admin and do major damage via powershell which by the day is more and more powerful. In Server 2016 they will really hit taking out the GUI hard and have 100% of every task from the command line in Powershell.

    OpenSSH will create a much needed additional step to do the damage and could be the next killer feature of WIndows Server 2016.

  26. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by AJWM · · Score: 2

    It probably comes from reading the licenses, which you should try sometime. Note also the word forked.

    You take some BSD-licensed code, make changes to it (creating a derivative version), then GPL-license the derivative. Anyone is still free to find the original BSD sources and make their own derivative, but they can't do anything with the GPL-licensed fork without following the GPL -- which includes GPL'ing any work derived from that.

    Of course unless the changes introduced by the fork are particularly compelling, nobody is going to care. But it's still a possibility. The BSD licence allows it, just as it allows someone to make totally proprietary derivatives.

    --
    -- Alastair
  27. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is the new slashdot. An AC makes a pretty good but old joke and stays at 0 moderation. Someone else ruins it by explaining the joke and gets +5 informative.

    Next up, something about Natalie Portman and breakfast food gets moderated -1 for being a sign of the patriarchy systemic in STEM.

  28. Re:Ouch & what _is_ "gold level?" by shking · · Score: 2

    You didn't look very hard for that number. It took me less than a minute. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Iridium amounts (and donors) are found here http://www.openbsdfoundation.o...

    --
    -- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
  29. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by lucm · · Score: 5, Funny

    what does SJW mean?

    Software Justice Warriors. The SJW are people who are mad because they were born too late to fight the actual software injustices of the past, such as the Netscape debacle or the decision to call the unix command "umount" instead of "unmount", so they join digital lynch mobs at the slightest hint of possible software controversy, hoping to fill the void in their existence with strongly worded paragraphs of significantly misinformed opinions about problems that either don't exist or that are blown out of proportions.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  30. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You should add a net on top of your head so you can catch all the things soaring over it.

  31. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 2, Informative

    Show me someone from the open source community who has helped and donated more towards charities than Bill Gates. Uh huh, that's what I thought.

    Bill - is that you? Don't forget to lodge your claims for charitable donations - we filed it under "the spit shield fund".

    the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (foundation) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. Both entities are tax-exempt private foundations that are structured as a charitable.

    One good thing Bill Gates has done. Though not everyone agrees.

  32. Re:Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Has Netcraft confirmed it?

  33. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by unapersson · · Score: 2

    And there was me thinking it was satirising all those people who throw around the term SJW as though they're the new reds under the bed.

  34. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

    Can we get a "-1000, Mutilated The Joke" mod?

  35. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
    You have omitted to mention that pretty much all software was open source till Gates came along: When you got an OS (or compiler), you got the source code - and had to patch it, possibly daily. If you invented the patches yourself, you normally shared them via the user group.

    It was not (necessarily) "Free as in Beer" - you might pay very big bucks for the OS, but the code was open. (EG RSX11, BSD, Ultrix, George 2, 3, 4, OS9).

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  36. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    In practice it means anyone's whose views on women is more progressive than Bill Cosby's.

    Too soon?

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  37. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Informative

    For fuck's sake... it's been how many decades and you people still can't get this right?

    Godwin's Law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." That's it! None of this "losing the argument" bullshit.

  38. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

    Wow talk about self righteousness.

    Here it is in a nutshell.

    1. A lot of the Internet and a lot of other services depend on OpenSSH for security. This includes Microsoft.
    2. OpenBSD the developer of OpenSSH is short of funds to pay developers to work on OpenSSH.
    3. Microsoft gives a big "to OpenBSD community but small to Microsoft" pile of cash to OpenBSD.
    Result
    OpenBSD can pay the developers to work on OpenSSH, Microsoft gets a better OpenSSH, everyone else gets a better OpenSSH, and Microsoft gets good PR.
    This is great outcome and I see no need to quibble about who did more.
    It is in fact a win win for everyone.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  39. Re: Why do I get the funny feeling that by Talderas · · Score: 2

    Quit being a Godwin Nazi, Hitler.

    --
    "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork