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Article on OpenBSD and Theo de Raadt
Marcos Lopez writes "Good article on Theo de Raadt and his developement of the OpenBSD system and why he is based in Canada due to crypto laws in the US. Well written article/interview, was printed todays in the Calgary Herald, Theo's home town.
" A generalist overview of OpenBSD and its security-conscious direction.
hey lexi!
I work at that shop (in the bunker) and know for fact that not only are there quite a few people there that know and use linux free/net/openbsd, but also that (some of)these operating systems are used in production!
my favorite example of how the free os is used there is as a go-between for services running on 'incomatible' operating systems (re: m$ and the rest of the world).
the way you make it sound, there are only two operating systems being used. in truth, that comapany uses:
aix, nt (ws & server), sunos, solaris, redhat, mklinux, aux, macos, qnx, dos, win 3.11, and win 95.
that's not including the embedded operating systems running in routers, switches, plcs' and the like!
perhaps you did'nt get much oppurtunity to check the plumbing and server rooms...
ps: what did you do while you were there?
posting anonymously 'cause I still work there...
Were not the coldest place in Canada, but it's snowing out right now?
I had no problem with the OpenBSD install, which is more than i can say about the many times i've installed FreeBSD. OpenBSD had a dhcp installation ong before FreeBSD too.
Unfortunately, Jordan Hubbard, a Walnut Creek employee, is threatening legal action against anyone who wishes to make a new FreeBSD distribution. Walnut Creek is determined to maintain a monopoly of ownership of FreeBSD. Hubbard and Walnut Creek CD ROM want to chill investors in any competitive value added versions of FreeBSD. Anyone who uses the code to create a new FreeBSD distribution will be threatened with lawsuit. A terrible legal battle is in the offing for the BSD world, and it will make the USL lawsuit look like a child's game of mumblety-peg.
Level with us, Hubby. IRC channels have been buzzing with Brett's side of the story. Transcripts of your threats have been zinging back and forth. Don't BS us. You have tried to chill the investment group. You threatened Brett that if he so much as changed the installation procedure you would have lawyers down his and the investment groups throat. These transcripts are public knowledge and should be posted here but I was too lazy to save them (anyone with Hubbard's remarks please post them, thanks!). You are a discredited liar. You know damn well that you have done everything in your power to chill Brett and the Group.
Unfortunately, Jordan Hubbard, a Walnut Creek employee, is threatening legal action against anyone who wishes to make a new FreeBSD distribution. Walnut Creek is determined to maintain a monopoly on ownership of FreeBSD. Hubbard and Walnut Creek CD ROM wants to chill investors in any competitive value added versions of FreeBSD. Anyone who uses the code to create a new FreeBSD distribution will be threatened with lawsuit. A terrible legal battle is in the offing for the BSD world, and it will make the USL lawsuit look like a child's game. BSD has failed, and all the king's men can not put it back together again.
It's not abuse, probably just marked incorrectly.
It should be "redundant" (or possibly "offtopic" - although that is a bit of a stretch.)
At any rate, it got marked down because it deserved to be. The reason is just wrong.
nuff said.
What Calgary needs to be a tech. wonderland is a good university like Waterloo, UofT.
Its too far from _anywhere_ important to be a center of anything, except for oil fields and farming.
Canada kicks because of its crypto and prostitution laws!! Plus it has BETTER beer than the States. Bud is like water!!
I think they sell tickets at the border.
Then of course they club you like a baby seal, take 50% of your cash, and force you to drink Labatts.
But, yeah, I wouldn't mind living there either.
It's true because OpenBSD doesn't come with any software :)
:)
once you compile your first server program off the net you may have problems
Well- I'm not too sure about FreeBSD 3.3. I downloaded the latest ISO when it came out, and X was pretty crippled- and this occured for both my friend and myself. I am happily running 3.2 on my home intel box, and 3.3 (w/ no X) on a school machine. I also run NetBSD on my sparc at home, which I am also quite content with. /little/ bit more than FreeBSD- its a bit more complicated in some instances (take the install for example). Plus, there are less packages (ports). But none the less, its still an excellent OS, and I highly recommend it. I do all my programming (gcc), email (mutt), and word processing (with LaTeX 2e and gnuplot), all in a very stable port of X running twm. And it works. And it's never crashed.
So here's the skinny:
-FreeBSD is good if you want a really supported OS for running lots of stuff like Netscape, X, Apache with its infinite modules, etc.
-NetBSD is good if you want something that will force you to understand the internals a
-No matter what anybody tells you, the configuration of any of the BSDs are _very_ similar in most instances. They are all solid OSes, and are really all based off the same stuff.
I've never used OpenBSD, and everybody has their own favorite. Go pick your own. Unlike Linux, it doesn't require 20000 hours to download the base installation. You could actually get a pretty packed install in under 100 megs- less than 1 evening of downloading. And that comes with compilers, X, twm, perl, and your basic set of unix apps. I know this is true for NetBSD and OpenBSD in terms of small base install size, and it should be the same for FreeBSD.
-ethan
like openBSD says, secure by default...
The first time I went to the OpenBSD site and saw his "email thread" of why he split from NetBSD, I wondered why the H*LL anyone would post anything like that one their web site... I mean, you read the thing and Theo's attitude comes across like a flaming a**hole. I wouldn't want him with that attitude on my project either... too much ego. I've never posted looking for help on the OpenBSD site, but I've heard stories of people getting blasted for asking a "stupid" question, or just not getting an answer... this has never happened to me on NetBSD's site. They are far more professional about it.
In essence, OpenBSD is just NetBSD with better crypto so it can be exported. Basically all of the security "holes" that were fixed in OpenBSD were fixed in NetBSD as well, so other than perhaps that the defaults on the install are more secure, and the crypto deal, I'm not sure OpenBSD is inherently any more or less secure than any properly configured BSD.
Of course, with all the stuff changing in the US crypto laws, OpenBSD may not have the crypto advantage to tout very long... only time will tell.
Lets just say the OpenBSD install is a bit lacking. The linux fdisk completely blows away their feeble disklabel. Don't get me started on the NetBSD sparc installer. Other than that, its an excellant OS. My sparc2 is rock solid, not a single lock up or crash.
Does anyone know where I can download OpenBSD 2.5 iso images? I've been looking for a while and can't find any.
i like papa smurf =]
Brrrrr.
Don't start a flame fest over this. I'm interested in the *BSD's, and want to start learning about that neck of the Unix world.
So far, I've installed and poked around both Solaris and Linux. Compiled kernels, set up networking, plugged some security holes, added the international crypto patchs, Procmail, Fetchmail, Squid, Leafnode, yadda, yadda, yadda. No guru yet, but I'm working on it.
Q. With my _1_ spare machine, what flavor of *BSD should I start out with?
I was going to buy FreeBSD 3.3 CDs when either LSL or Cheapbytes came out with them, but I can be swayed.
Dammit, Canada kicks absolute ass. Someone help me emigrate.
adr
it's about to snow in Quebec too (ummm....doesn't remember if it's 4 degree C or -4 C i heard in the news,but ask my dog,the daily walk was VERY short !!)
Canadian AC CanadianAC@NOSPAM.telebot.net
I have all of OpenBSD downloaded onto my computer. I was going to duel boot between Linux/OpenBSD. I figured the installation would be a breeze. But when that fdisk/label editor came up I was lost. Normally I would mess around with it till I figure it out. But due to having 2 gigs of stuff on my Linux partitions that I dont want to lose i opted not to fsck around with it. I've looked around and not found any decent documentation on OpenBSD installation. Its ashame, I was really wanting to give OpenBSD a try. I've heard a lot of good things about OpenBSD. Anyone have any similar stories or solutions? Links to some good documentation?
Secondly, Linux has only beat FreeBSD in terms of popularity, not quality (don't reply that popularity -> quality, as I will simply reply that Win95 installs still outnumbers linux 50 to 1).
Yes, I'll grant you that Linux has far outpaced FreeBSD when it comes to little installation gizmos where an animated Papa Smurf tells me all about disk partitions...but thats about it.
Security (OpenBSD), performance (FreeBSD), and portability (NetBSD) are much better in *BSD land than in Linux.
I could care less if FreeBSD is sold at Fry's.
FreeBSD lost the PR battle. Thats what Jordan said. FreeBSD isn't going anywhere, it will always have a nitch in the foreseeable future, but its clear that the momentum is with Linux. Don't kid yourself.
I can't believe I'm even replying to an anonymous coward who flamed Linux.
I didn't HEAR anything, I read in the article that this story is about that DeRadt was critical of the development of Linux. I'll quote the original article so as not to inconvieniance you to actually read what you are talking about.
De Raadt has earned a reputation for not mincing words. He's openly critical of the process by which Linux has been developed.
In my original posting, I asked,
I was curious about the comment that Theo has been openly critical of the development of Linux. Does anyone have any information about this?
Its very clear from the article and my posting that I was refering to the development of the OS, not the actual technical merits. Both you and the Coward seem to have not seen this.
What I was looking for was a quote or further information on how DeRaadt has been critical of the development model of the os's, and how openbsd is differently and supposedly better developed than Linux.
I wasn't putting out a call for DeRaadt to defend himself. I never accused him of anything. I want to hear what he has to say instead of third person rumors.
Seems to me like you anti-linux people are a little defensive and quick to take everything as a personal attack.
I was curious about the comment that Theo has been openly critical of the development of Linux. Does anyone have any information about this? I think Theo reads slashdot, so whats you beef with linux theo?
One of the reasons I like Linux more than BSD (other than the GPL), is that in the past the development of Linux has been more open and distributed than that of the various BSDs. I know that Jordan Hubbard has said that this was a mistake of the BSDs and a big reason why Linux beat freebsd.
kfort
Yes we see that. They problem is that if you break
laws they try to put you in *JAIL*. And I don't know about you but when they ask where do you want to go today the Federal penatentery is not on the top of my list.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Realize that de Raadt's notion of a "vulnerability" is somewhat different than a lot of people's ... there was a thread on Bugtraq maybe 6 months or a year ago (? I'm too lazy to look) where Theo was trying to convince the list that an OpenBSD exploit which allowed unpriveledged users to crash the system was really a minor matter and was *not* an "exploit."
Of course, not to minimize OpenBSD - what they've done is certainly impressive and the most secure system out there. But, take anything Theo says with a grain of salt.
Is this true? No OpenBSD exploit?
Impressive.
I am also from Calgary and perhaps he is not doing it for 'Celeb' status. Perhaps he doesn't care about words printed..
Its not always about being a 'celeb', he does good work and is respected in the industry that matters to him. Calgary has lots of technology and perhaps you could focus on the positive and not the negative.. Ever heard of Jaws.. They get lots of print in the local paper.
If you purpose is to be a pessimist then so be it, if that tickles you fancy. Some of us are doing cool work in Calgary even if your not.
-7021
At one point, on a mailing list, someone pointed out a recent (at the time) OpenBSD security fix that fixed a problem that had never been in the original *BSD source tree.
I mentioned this. I got flamed by Theo for spouting FUD. I quoted the original message, including the specific pointer to the specific bug. I never heard back.
I'm not really convinced it's all that much more
secure. I hear a lot of things that have the sound of FUD to them; I don't see a lot of solid, empirical, evidence.
Curiously, someone told me never to say anything like this in public, or people will attack my machines to show me how important security is. Well, if they do, it does send a message, but the message is "we need to get rid of assholes", not "security is important".
:)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I did part of my undergrad at U of C way back when Theo was hanging around there. He's never been the type that really valued self-promotion, at least not directed at people who he didn't consider smart. To say he often comes off abrupt or arrogant is an understatement.
If the "oil and gas" crowd are willing to spend the time talking with the media and helping them to deliver stories, and the open source hackers aren't out looking for opportunities to talk, at least until the people they're talking to are deemed worthy of talking to, what would you expect the stories to be about?
OpenBSD usually requires a little more unix knowledge than linux. I find it a lot easier to install open/netBSD. If you know whats going on, then the install is really nice and doesnt get in the way. If you don't, they don't care just like linus doesnt care about the install. Someone else has to "fix" it.
The *BSD's are all very well, thank you very much.
:)
Check out the replies to the troll (if you could find the original, please do post a _real_ link to it...).
Nice attempt at flamebait, tho
Cool I am moving today!. Less taxes and free health care!. I wonder if I would miss the Cold winters in Montana or the wackos holed in cabins tho.
War is necrophilia.
They all support FTP based installation.
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
First off in Canada the conservitive views are actually more liberal (confusing, but it should make sense). Of course we have oil money, but thats not why we have such conservitive(eg right wing economics) views. In fact in the west our conservitism is more based on freedom then tradtion, and is thus far more liberal on the ture political system. We want freedom and democracy. We do not want to be told what hospital to go to, or what daycare our children should attend (public daycare, not here, but comming).
As far as a tech town, Calgary is one of the best in Canada, this is because of our low taxes, the only problem is that the US is still lower. When us Calgarian are pushing for a less representitive system of government, then the negitivly toned conservitives.
The oil and gas sector is what made Calgary what it is today. I have worked for oil firms since graduating cs at the UofC. Without it we would be a slightly warmer version of winnipeg.
Second, Conrad Black does not control the entire newpaper industry, he is the major source, but it is not overwellming. His papers tend to be better quality reporting, with more represntaion of the west, but you can still get the globe and mail. It's just that in Calgary the only real paper is owned my him
Not to mention that he is the largest publisher of dailies in the world.
The Calgary Hearld is an excellent paper, it provides excellent, fair coverage. I have been reading it as long as i can read, and i've never had a problem with it.
This comment just about sums it up for me.
D'oh! The link gives me a blank page now. Serves me right for trying to ref an archived comment.
Here's a copy:
[BEGIN QUOTED COMMENT]
BSD failing (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 02, @12:56PM EDT (#177)
I agree that FreeBSD is dying. And while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer. NetBSD and OpenBSD are dying too.
I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...
Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"
That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a Vax port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.
The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD is on the skids. Which BSD will be first to go under is anyone's guess but The culling has already begun.
[END QUOTED COMMENT]
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
This comment just about sums it up for me. No, I didn't write it.
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
Does the fact that some moron was viewing the page at the time Rob was updating it - mean that the same moron is cool or what!?
No... But since I reloaded 3 times before posting that I figured I might as well... Humph, I wanted to be marked 'Flamebait' or 'Troll' though, it's kind of demeaning to have the first post of the first thread marked 'Redundant'.... Oh well.
Now, for an on topic blurb:
Do you think this guy enjoys some kind of 'celebrity' status in his home town? Or did he just happen to catch a blurb in the local paper?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
For workstation I like it best, for performance maybe FreeBSD, for extreme portability NetBSD.
FOR SECURITY OpenBSD
Theo posted on bugtraq a couple of times about net/free securitybugs that where already fixed in OpenBSD. But hey I do respect other BSDs. They have their strengths too:
FreeBSD -> speed of light (say yahoo.com/cdrom.com)
NetBSD -> more plataforms than any other else.
I work for the worldslargest web hosting company. We have over 280 thousand websites in 45 states(besides providing bandwidth) 50 thousand in Europe.
We host in NT and all *.nixes. We keep all sorts of statistics on reliability and needed tech time by OS. The main reason we keep these is because we want to forecast our need for techs for certain OS's as we grow. Well, the most stable and economical has been *.BSD. Yes, you can rent a linux box from us or even co-lo your own.
I run Linux at home and love it. It is very stable and it has been a great intro into the world of Unix. But we manage 8,000 customers in my state on Free-Bsd and there is nary a problem. Did I mention we have three Unix techs? Only three.
My frontline two cents.
Frizzo
"you can take the chicken and put it between your knees"
That was the first, and only mention I ever saw in the paper about Theo! I first read about Theo - online. First found out he was local - online. This city prefers to verate people who start schools for getting a MSCE rather than people who are intellegent. When I was in school, maybe two people I knew had heard of OpenBSD, and one of them because he had met Theo.
This city is an over-grown hicktown. This city was founded by Ranchers who found oil. This city is more interested in large dividends and big profits than ideas. If I was to go downtown to the office buildingd today, I bet I would find maybe a dozen people in thier it departments that would know about the existance of OpenBSD. It is not a big money making venture!
I want to move, perhaps after I go back to school and get my degree, I will go to place where ideas are more important than if your grandpappy was a cattle baron who happened to find oil.
--
I am glad of the young people who have ideas locally. And I am glad the University and Mount Royal are still teaching computer science on Unix based system (MRC was using redhat 5.2 when I was there).
:) A thanks to so many of the volunteers, and others who made the BBS work! I miss some of you. :)
:)
This city though can not pick up on idea when they see them.
Case in point:
Back in the early to Mid 90's - my mom and her boyfriend had a computer bbs, and after all the late nights talking to the kids online about thier problems, including a couple suicide attempts, they changed the focus of the bbs to a teen help bbs. They made the bbs free, and got government funding. The funding only lasted a year, although thier plan was to slowly port it to an internet based teen help system and to hopefully find other cities to co-ordinate a larger project like this with.
Funding ran out, the goverment thought that this new fangled idea of using a computer to help teens to talk anonymously wouldn't work. They missed out on a great idea.
Foundation/Cybercrisis BBS was great while it existed, we even got some local press. My photo was in the paper for that!
Later on, I went back to school, (MRC) to start my computer science degree. I got a summer job with NOVA Gas Transmissions Ltd. This company was not bad at all. The main server was AIX, and NT was for the workstations. I had fun there until Transcanada pipelines took over. Not a soul there who I knew, knew about OpenBSD, linux or any other free OS's. Perhaps the Unix guru did, but I was a grunt, I didn't get much of a chance to chat with him.
Oh well - I have blabbed enough.
--
Ah... I have been dragged way off topic... but Calgary was not always a Microsoft town. I remember the days when geophysical data was crunched and displayed with SGIs (pre-O2 and Octane time). At the time I worked for a great company that was innovative and cutting edge. What happened? Well, Microsoft walked through the door flashing money and said "We'll sponsor a project using our technology." From that moment on it was less and less about finding the best solution for the project and more about using "our new partner's innovative" technology. On the up-side, Calgary has the western Canada Java development center and a decent CompSci program at the UofC where James Gosling did undergrad. Oh, please don't flame me because I love Java... I love Linux too!
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
If cryptography were good enough, laws wouldn't matter!
Don't you people see that these laws are just a way of restricting the production of software? It's an invasion of privacy if the government says that you can't hide something well enough to where we can't find it, see it, read it, or change it. It's as bad as Microsoft's EULA./P.
Brad Johnson
Advisory Editor
Brad Johnson
> In fact I am shocked they even wrote about open
> bsd in a city where money talks - esspecially
> oil and gas money.
I think that you will see more of these articles as the writer is young and isn't blinded by the money of oil and gas. I think he also realizes that technology in our city isn't limited (anymore) to oil and gas companies...especially since most oil and gas companies are no where near the leading edge, let alone bleeding edge of anything technology releated.
OpenBSD also takes some of the userland enhancements from FreeBSD and includes them in their package. To some, it means that you get the best of both worlds (NetBSD and FreeBSD).
The Calgary Herald is his hometown?
I would imagine, it's a bit cramped in there.
What happens to him, when I fold up the paper or burn it?
The government has police, soldiers, judges, guns, tanks, jails, etc. Microsoft only has lawyers.
Microsoft's EULA is a voluntary agreement between Microsoft and you. The government on the other hand can involuntarily bind you to a law and throw you in jail if you violate it. This is hardly equivalent. If I don't like Microsoft's rules I can always go to Mac, Linux, OS/2, BSD, etc. If I don't like the laws, however, I'm SOL.
But you argue, Microsoft can still sue you. So what? I can sue them as well if they violate the EULA (my chances are slim, but I can do it). What Microsoft does NOT do is come to your house with guns.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
While it's true that we are much less fettered by export regulations than our neighbours to the south, we still do have some restrictions on the export of software here in Canada. For more information, see the following web pages:
Canada's Export Controls
Excerpts from the Export Control List of Canada
The Wassenaar Arrangement, which Canada has signed
Crypto Law Survey of Canada
And, more generally,
Electronic Frontier Canada
I can't believe how long it took a local paper to recognize a local innovator.
I am a Calgary resiedent and actually I am not too shocked. The majority of the classified ads under technology are for Microsoft based products. Calgary, lately has been trying to pretend it is no longer an oil and gas town but a new technology mecca. I don't believe it.
The conservative attitudes of the aging oil elite prevail. The tone of the article was more a statement that OpenBSD exists rather than the glowing writing about another twit opening up a school to give people MSCE certificates for a really sick price. (That article I think was last week some time).
In fact I am shocked they even wrote about open bsd in a city where money talks - esspecially oil and gas money.
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