“Theo de Raadt is the project leader for OpenBSD, a Unix-like operating system. We spoke with Theo about the upcoming release of OpenBSD, 3.9, the financial state of the project, and about companies that profit from free software without contributing back.”
If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame.
I agree, this is incredible. Capitalism. Absurd.
How is that “Capitalism”?
Freeloading off the backs of others is just as much in the hearts of socialists as it is of the capitalists.
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“Freeloading off the backs of others is just as much in the hearts of socialists as it is of the capitalists”
Well, Socialism is a socioeconomic pattern already out of reality nowdays. It is history. So no point bringing it back to justify or denay anything not related directly to that…
Anyway you are completely wrong! We could say that:Freeloading off the backs of others is just as much in the hearts of human being, or natural competition itself…
But Freeloading off the backs of others is not as much in the hearts of socialists as it is of the capitalists. This is a simplistic, demagogic, blatant, utter lie and stupidity.
Socialist concepts grow in the context of first capitalist age when extreme explotation was current and legal (12 years children commonly working 12-16 hours in mines just to earn to survive for instance)…
So Socialist theories were born just to fight the Freeloading off the backs of others created during the development of capitalism.
Only ignorance, stupidity or paranoia can justify simplistic and demagogic assertions like the one you have done… Try to read something about history, economics, sociology and politics before saying such kind of things, that insult all those who suffered from explotation.
If you want to extrapolate that to the nowdays context to justify your ideas, you could talk about the capitalist “explotation” of chinese workers in a country that utterly call itself socialist, and where the human rights are so diminished. Or the indecent explotation of workers, even children in many asian countries by US corporatons when outsourcing their workforce …
That would be a more actual, realistic, and current comparison of “Freeloading off the backs of others”…
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Only ignorance, stupidity or paranoia can justify simplistic and demagogic assertions like the one you have done… Try to read something about history, economics, sociology and politics before saying such kind of things, that insult all those who suffered from explotation.
And for this utterly pathetic attack on me, I take the opportunity to vote you down.
It seems you have a chip on your shoulder, I suggest you lose it at some place other than at OSnews.
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It seems you are a demagoge scarcerly instructed and complexed…
There were not attack at all. Just some assertions, well proved, andbased on verifiable facts.
I did told you, and I repeat it again: educate yourself, and try to read something about history, economics, sociology and politics, objectively, before saying such kind of things, that insult all those who suffered from explotation..
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So now I’m a demagoge?
Implying that I am stupid is not an attack?
Implying that I insulted people who suffered from exploitation (twice) is not an attack?
No – it seems my only crime is suggesting that socialism is not the panacea we can assume you believe it to be.
While you suggest that I go and read, I can but suggest that you get some real-life experiences before lecturing and ridiculously hurling insult at others.
You won’t be heard here dude. Just not enough culture out there. Give up.
Nobody made the OpenSSH developers give their product away for free. It was a choice they made. If they wanted money from it, they should be selling binaries or selling source licenses.
Stop begging.
No one’s begging. Did you read the interview?
Theo is complaining that Sun is using the BSD licence as it was intended. If he wanted Sun to play nice, he should have used the LGPL or something similar… whining that corporations are acting in their own best interest is not really that productive.
“Theo is complaining that Sun is using the BSD licence as it was intended.”
This has nothing to do with the license. Stop trolling for flamewars.
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As much as I love all the BSD distros and think they are solid, quick and good, I have to say that I have to disagree with they kind of Philosophy and licence model.
I also do not understand that others post claiming similar views are quickly accused of trolling by the BSD zealots… Sure there are GNU zealots, but if they prove their views with logic and empiric demostrations, why they should not do it?
The zealots of the explotation, the greed, the ultracompetitive social and economic models do not need troll too much, they simply are in power, and take what they need, and I you give it easy, so much the better…
Pretending that companies are going to contribute just because they are using what you relase for free based on good will is having too much confidence in the humang being…
And also ignoring some basic facts of economics (specially the neoliberal US and anglosaxon model), psicology, sociology, history, philosophy, and even biology and how life on earth was developed and the extrapolation of ecological niches and competition with/to the social and economic organisations…
I respect Mr. de Raat, and all the people making BSD distros, but I can not agree with thei philosophy and licence.
I would recommend the lecture of some basic text of Thomas Moore(Utopia), or Nieztche to start with…
I am not saying that they should change to the GPL licence model, it is their right not to do so, but I am afraid that many of their efforts will be fruitless.
Most companies will keep on using their soft without contributing, or contributing back, but just until they do not need it anymore. I wish I was wrong, though!
At the end the BSD model is empowering the people with their software, and many companies in which there are people with moral patterns of behaviour, but also empowering all the companies and people that do not give a damn about all that, and just take what is convenient for them and simply go away (at best, or simply use what you give to f**k you up)…
The problem is that the later kind of people and companies are already powerfull, and I do not see the reason to empower them even more. They will never contribute back, and they will use what you give them to own you, and to surender and dominate you…
Each one has to follow his way, his mind, and his soul. And if BSDs people feel like that, there is not much to do, but trying to explain why you think their model is not the appropiate one. They can listen if they want to, though…
Only that for those that have the power and the means to contribute back and do not do it, it is a good present, and as they probably know: divede and you will win …
Has anyone heard about the Lemmings in Scandinavia, throwing themselves to the death from the cliffs… That is what happens when your model is not substainable!
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Indeed.
Nobody pays if they don’t have to. In a corporate environment, it’s hard to justify spending on products with a price tag, encrypted license keys et al. Now try to justify spending when you don’t have to !
Theo should tap in the sponsoring budget of tech companies, not their ‘good tech citizenship’ budget.
“I also do not understand that others post claiming similar views are quickly accused of trolling by the BSD zealots… Sure there are GNU zealots, but if they prove their views with logic and empiric demostrations, why they should not do it?”
Because it is trolling. The license, be it BSD or (L)GPL, has nothing to do with financing. They only deal with the freedom of the source and has no provisioning WHATSOEVER for licensing fees. I’m sure a lot of people find discussing the pros and cons of the different licenses fascinating but it still has nothing to do with the money side of things. Using the GPL, for example, does not stop people from using your code and not giving back money or otherwise help your project financially
Edited 2006-03-29 08:35
I have never said in many of my post tha it was a question of money ..
So you can give it a negative point if ur a BSD Zealot , but you are wrong… I just talked about licence, moral and economy sociomogy , IT etc, but not cited finance even once… (Still some BSD zealots are votin my post negatively..
…funny never recieved such negative points for much more strong posts in other threads; and here for a moderate and reasoned post BSD zealots hitting hard… (keep on guys, if you want.. but read the posts carefully before acting, Please !!!)
The fact that your wrong, and act like real zealots wont make bad the BSD distros!! and I still ill like and use them.
Distros are binaries, not votes …
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“I have never said in many of my post tha it was a question of money .. ”
Well, this entire article is about MONEY.
“(Still some BSD zealots are votin my post negatively..”
because your post is offtopic.
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” The license, be it BSD or (L)GPL, has nothing to do with financing. They only deal with the freedom of the source and has no provisioning WHATSOEVER for licensing fees. I’m sure a lot of people find discussing the pros and cons of the different licenses fascinating but it still has nothing to do with the money side of things. Using the GPL, for example, does not stop people from using your code and not giving back money or otherwise help your project financially ”
—
Absolutly right .. I could not agreee with you more!
Just tell me why did you answer my post with the above metioned text if I have never said the contrary in any of my posts… ???
I still thing that many people shoukd finish reading the whole post before answering in a hectic way!
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“Has anyone heard about the Lemmings in Scandinavia, throwing themselves to the death from the cliffs… That is what happens when your model is not substainable!”
Lemmings dont actually do this. It’s just another popular but untrue myth. Maybe you should read up on the animal kingdom.
<offtopic>
Lemmings dont actually do this. It’s just another popular but untrue myth. Maybe you should read up on the animal kingdom.
The way I understand it, is that in case of overpopulation (every 4 years or so), they mass migrate elsewhere, but always to lower regions for some reason. And if they are in sufficient numbers, they will occasionally blunder off of cliffs en masse.
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“Lemmings dont actually do this. It’s just another popular but untrue myth. Maybe you should read up on the animal kingdom”
I am quite interested in ethology.
Ok, maybe your right.. can you enlight us briefly about what Lemmings do, please?
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This is offtopic but here we go…
Yes, lemmings dont jump off cliffs en masse. What happens is that in times of overpopulation and starvation large numbers of lemmings tries to migrate to new areas. Since they are moving into unknown territory accidents happen and due to the large numbers some are occasionally pushed off cliffs and such but it is actually much more common that they kill eachother.
It has EVERYTHING to do with license. With BSD license, which was their OWN choice, nobody owes them monetary copensation for their efforts, and yet Theo whines that the project doesn’t get anything in return. Sure, some might donate them money out of pure generosity, and that will be a Good Thing(TM) – but REQUIRING generosity is stupid and childish.
Here’s the relevant long quote for those who haven’t bothered to RTFA:
———————————————–
If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that incorporate OpenSSH directly into their products, saving themselves millions of dollars? Companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies — we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent.
Of course we did not set out to create OpenSSH for the money — we purposely made it completely free so that the “telnet infrastructure” of the 1980s would die. But it sure is sad that none of these companies return even a fraction of value in kind.
If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame.
I will say it here — if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.
———————————————–
Sun does NOT owe them anything.
Sure, they didn’t break the law. They don’t owe them anything. But they are still jerks, Sun relies on some guys work and they could at least return a favor.
It’s nice to be able to get a bit of insight into how the inner circle of development on OpenBSD works. I can definitely understand where they get their security-strong reputation given the projects general distrust of it’s own code. I particularly enjoyed reading his comments recuarding his dislike of Sun and their shady business. As far as drivers go, I hope they keep pushing just as hard for vendor documentation, although I doubt there is little to wory about as they seem pretty committed. And congrats on the fantastic job finishing the NVidia Ethernet driver, and a good driver at that. I’m looking forward for 3.9
Are these reverse-engineered drivers back-ported to other BSDs?
http://www.onthenet.com.au/~q/nvnet/
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nve
I haven’t seen anything being back-ported lately to other BSDs but I admit I’m not familiar with NetBSD and Dragon Fly, maybe they did something.
Regards, Daniel
nve is a binary blob driver, it uses Linux’s binary blob, nfe doesn’t have a blob, OpenBSD developers did the hard thing and reverse engineered.
‘TdR: I don’t really take any position of advocacy. People should use what they want to, and I am not the right person to say anyone “should” do anything. But hey, if someone is adventurous, check it out.’
All the OS zealots out there should listen to this man.
I agree
Is Linux For Losers?
http://www.forbes.com/intelligentinfrastructure/2005/06/16/linux-bs…
“All the OS zealots out there should listen to this man.”
I listen real Open Source and Free software advocate :
Those that build and contribute and pay to build GNU/Linux.
Moulinneuf, the resident OSNews GNU/Linux Prior, has spoken.
Tom K , I know I showed you that you where duped by an individual who does not represent what he claim to be and what you admire in him. If he did not care about it then why is he attacking it and why is he not dual licensing is software in order to finance them into existance?
BTW , thanks for the religious lessons I had no idea what a prior was , I aint one and GNU/Linux is not a religion , its a choice made by people who where wronged before by the proprietary software and BSD’s. Its also a working solution.
You were “wronged” by the BSDs? I laugh heartily at you.
What, did the BSDs come into your room at night, and touch you in bad places? Which one of them was the worst? One would assume that Beastie is the most devilish, but then again the pufferfish could perform mightily-unfriendly gestures as well. God forbid me even thinking about what’s possible with the flag and its pole.
“You were “wronged” by the BSDs?”
Yes , I am one of the fool developper who believed that BSD whas Open Source and Free Software. I know better now. Nothing like having is software development closed on you and not beeing used anymore , because a manager believe its shit and the company made you sign away your development to them and whont allow to use it again, and not being able to use it , to make you change your view about BSD. As for your personnal sexual fantasy keep that for yourself , I aint interested in hearing them.
Canada or Quebec?
Both Quebec is a province of CANADA
Both Quebec is a province of CANADA
I believe JMcCarthy forgot the irony-tags
“Both”
When it suits you.
Quebec or Canada.
To quote the article:
“I will say it here — if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.”
And these guys are mentioning money? They can practically take down Wall Street.
Edited 2006-03-29 00:34
Agreed.
This is no different than say building a ‘Linux From Scratch system,’ making no changes to the source and selling the resulting binary system (with source provided), keeping all the money you make from it, giving nothing back to the people who wrote the software.
Different licenses, same result. Let’s try to put a little more thought into our arguments people…
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only that there are not many companies that would not make some changes to the source to improve it, if they can, or to suit it better for their needs…
So, once they make the changes to the source, and they want to use it for whatever they want (resell it, for instance), they do not have any moral or legal obligation to contribute back to the author of the sources, if they have tale BSD type licence sources, as it is stated in the licence!
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Unfortunately the GPL *still* doesnt have any clauses about licensing fees. How hard is this to understand?
Both these licenses (and most OSS licenses) ONLY deals with the source code, not with any monetary matters.
Edited 2006-03-29 08:38
“This is no different than say building a ‘Linux From Scratch system,’ making no changes to the source and selling the resulting binary system (with source provided), keeping all the money you make from it, giving nothing back to the people who wrote the software.”
Due to the thread breakage, I’m not sure if you imply that this is a bad thing. To me, it’s using the license exactly as it is intended, and therefore completely OK…
“Due to the thread breakage, I’m not sure if you imply that this is a bad thing. To me, it’s using the license exactly as it is intended, and therefore completely OK…”
I was trying to say that it does not matter in this case which of the two licenses are employed, as such is irrelevant to the issue of the project needing more money. BSDL or GPL, the real problem is going to remain. GPLing OpenBSD isn’t going to make Theo’s electrical bills any smaller, nor will it make Sun or whoever else feel obligated to give OpenBSD more funds.
License here is irrelevant. Managing what money they do have, or finding out a way to bring in more is what’s important.
/RE[2]:
I like OpenBSD, tho it is not my primary system. I am fairly neutral when it comes to TdR. I’d like very much for their work to continue.
It’s been said that the OpenBSD Hackathons have been wildly productive affairs. Personally, I can’t see why you can’t just have all the devs using VOIP and supplying their own beer and avoiding the costs of travel altogether, but that’s just me.
Google ads on the OpenBSD site, could be another minor option to help increase income. Retiring some of the more ancient and power hungry machines in his basement and move the continuing development of the more uncommon architectures on virtual harware and so on.
Sure, none of my suggestions are perfect, and some of them would have drawbacks, but for the time being it seems that they can’t continue as they have and still be productive.
EDIT: can -> can’t
Edited 2006-03-29 10:34
> Different licenses, same result.
You mean, the world only has gpl/bsd or mozilla licenses?
How about write something that fits your need?
Even the donation itself can probably hire some lawyer to get some draft up, especially if he likes working on open source for a cheaper fee.
Theo didn’t complain that Sun forked and closed OpenSSH, that is within the BSD license. He complained that they didn’t pay for one developer to attend Sun’s interoperability event. That has nothing to do with the BSD license and all with being nice.
How dose that relate to capitalism? Not at all, you are neither required to be nice or mean to be a capitalist, but if you read some basic business texts you will find that it is better to act nice since you don’t want to build ill will towards yourself. Makes sense? All this capitalist communist software stuff is a big load of FUD and you should not take an ounce of it serious.
Theo said: I will say it here — if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.
I’m sorry, but that is just plain childish and extremely unprofessional. It’s like a kid refusing to do anything his mother tells him to because he doesn’t get a cookie.
If Theo wants people to take OpenBSD seriously, he should stop making pointless comments like this one. If you really care about security and open source, you help anyone using your software (if that anyone has done nothing to break the licensing of course). If you let personal grudges stand in the way of seeing the bigger picture (*cough*Amiga), then you have no place in the corporate world– or in any world, for that matter.
Grow up.
“I’m sorry, but that is just plain childish and extremely unprofessional. It’s like a kid refusing to do anything his mother tells him to because he doesn’t get a cookie.”
Really. Isn’t it Sun’s job to make sure their codebase is up to date, not OpenSSH’s?
Why should the OpenSSH’s guys go out of their way to help Sun, a gigantic company with wast resources, keeping their sh1t together? It’s not like they’re hiding anything, the code and release information is there for Sun to find all by themselves.
“If Theo wants people to take OpenBSD seriously, he should stop making pointless comments like this one.”
The irony of you making this statement is so thick you could slice it with a butterknife.
“If you let personal grudges stand in the way of seeing the bigger picture (*cough*Amiga), then you have no place in the corporate world– or in any world, for that matter.”
OpenSSH/OpenBSD is not a corporate entity and does not exists to please corporations. It exists because
the developers are interest in working on it.
If Theo wants people to take OpenBSD seriously, he should stop making pointless comments like this one. If you really care about security and open source, you help anyone using your software (if that anyone has done nothing to break the licensing of course). If you let personal grudges stand in the way of seeing the bigger picture (*cough*Amiga), then you have no place in the corporate world– or in any world, for that matter.
That’s silly. Sun forked the code, and it’s not OpenSSH at this point. He has no obligation to help them out or to notify them of any problems they may have caused with their changes. He already helped plenty by providing OpenSSH for free. It would be nice if they reciprocated and paid for some airfare and perhaps sent a few pieces of hardware his way. They choose not to, which seems pretty shitty and/or childish in it’s own right.
Again, I ask that anyone that really has so much crap to sling about Theo should immediately cease using OpenSSH in protest.
…should realize a deeper truth about large corporations: they are not really capitalist, and they are not necessarily well-run businesses. They exist because they have learned how to manipulate the government and social system(s) in question, as much as anything else. In the case of Sun, I’m sure much of this involves some nice long-term government contracts.
So saying such things as “why would a company pay when it doesn’t have to?” Betrays a lack of understanding of strategic thinking. There are plenty of times a company will pay when it doesn’t have to, *if* that payment provides a strategic advantage to that company, *and* if that company actually perceives a need for strategic thinking. For most reasonable (medium-to-smaller) technology business owners, contributing to something like OpenSSH is a no-brainer: it provides good publicity, and it ensures that this particular product will be available in the future. If I were a Sun stockholder, I would be outraged that this company is behaving so irresponsibly with my capital. Many non-technical industries spend a lot of money and effort at open infrastructures that benefit all. This is simply good strategy, and in fact validated by applied game theory.
But companies like Sun have proven time and time again that they do not approach business in a logical manner. They tend to operate purely on impulse or reaction. For example, Java was turned from an embedded OS for your coffee machine into an enterprise applicating platform mainly because Sun thought they needed to do something, anything to combat Microsoft. Did this make any sense? Not if you a) give the JVM and JDK away for free and b) make it run on your competitors’ OS and hardware. What were they thinking? The fact that Sun is in business at all is more due to the weight of legacy systems and political shmoozing (and the fact that they do have some great engineers), but not in any way due to their amazingly shrewd management.
Would a company like Sun have any difficulty paying for a couple OpenSSH developers to come to their interoperability event? Not in the least. It wasn’t a financial decision, nor was it a strategic decision. It was simply some middle manager’s snap decision, with complete lack of courtesy and forethought.
Sun is not known for courtesy or forethought, though. For example, while giving Linux developers and easy path to providing licensed Java binaries for users, FreeBSD users are still forced to spend half a day compiling their own binaries. At one point Sun actually agreed to license Java to FreeBSD, and then quickly reversed their decision. Why? If they want Java to be used everywhere, why keep FreeBSD out in the cold? Again, it makes no sense on a strategic level. This company seems driven by emotional responses rather than any semblance of strategy. Don’t blame capitalism. True capitalism would have weeded out companies like Sun a long time ago.
The bottom line is that this guy is an asshole and nobody in the corporate world wants to deal with him. I can’t blame them either. Its a real shame too, openssh is an awesome utility but I won’t support any project that has this prick as its leader.
Sadly I have to agree. I donated hardware and funds years ago, and when we were working out the shipping details, Theo was very unpleasant about it. Never even said a simple “thanks”.
He’s not getting anything from me again.
There is something that the GPL advocats will never understand, and is that BSD distros licences are really free, and GPL is not really free!
Theo de Raad was not begging in the article, just asking for something absolutly normal that had been forgotten by greedy corporations, and voicing what actually is a superior moral and professional behaviour
that will, in due time,rule the IT company relations!
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=7083&tstart=15
Yea, he’s gotten things from them. Now quit spamming my mailing lists!
“Now quit spamming my mailing lists!”
Maybe you should ask “Lars” to do that. He’s not an OpenBSD developer so what he is doing has nothing to do with the OpenBSD project.
He’s not the only one, and that’s not the only mailing list. Thanks.
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I have posted that in another thread but, here I go:
BSD
Bad Sofware Developpers
Badly Squeeezing for Dollars
🙂
Sorry, I could not help it!
!!!
!!!
Beware! Some Despicable
BaStarDs sons of UNIX
Begging for Some Dollars!
—
This one was bad at all neither !
—
Yep.. its true.. No exuse.
Only perhaps these:
– Montepulziano d’Abruzzio ” Denominazione d’Origine Contallata”, La Rinalda 2004 – 1 Bottle
– Vitoria “Gran Reserva” 1997, Valdepenas, denominacion de Origen, Tempranillo – 2 Bottles
– Cotes du Rhone 2004, Denomination d’origine – 2 Bottles
– some still to come…
that we are finishing here !!!
It is being a great night here! We have also been trying the DesktopBSD 1.0 distro. Pretty good actually… Not all the good stuff is Linux…
!!!