Winter has ended in Melbourne but I’m not the sort to venture out without at least a sweater. However, the cold doesn’t seem to bother Theo de Raadt as Sam Varghese sit in the lobby of the city’s Duxton Hotel, a day after the end of the annual summit of the Australian Unix and Open Source User Group.
Theo: Staying on the cutting edge
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Why do websites link to other websites that require registration to read articles? It’s not only annoying but it’s wasting your readers time. I’d say most will skip the article anyway because of the stupid registering to read scenario.
The Age did NOT ask me for a registration. Go here:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Theo+de+Raadt&ie=UTF-8&s…
and then click the interview from there.
i agree with both the previous posters. it is ultimately annoying. i don’t register ever (listen up advertisers, i have plenty to spend in a more tasteful manner). i never enable cookies – some sites don’t work, too bad, their loss.
i’m sure it would have been an interesting article. especially as openbsd is seeing soem fierce progress in netbsd and freebsd.
Oh, cut the whining alright. I told you, TheAge did not ask me for a registration. Just click the link above, they seem to allow google referrers.
Any more comments going off topic will be deleted.
both articles linked to from google did ask me for a password. (fairfax, theage). i use firefox 1.0pr, mandrake 10.0.
Works fine here: IE, XP.
This is the last off topic comment I allow.
I can read the article no problem. Running Firefox 1.0PR.
I’m not overly familiar with OpenBSD but…
While its security credentials were not hyped in this piece its good to consider a balanced argument. OpenBSD appears to attract extra attention from the blackhat community because it has an outspoken leader and touts its security loudly. (cf. Linux).
http://lists.immunitysec.com/pipermail/dailydave/2004-September/000…
That said, this is probably a good thing since competition (between say crackers and OS developers) can only generate better security. Given that systems will be compromised regardless, its better to raise the bar above the reach of the unskilled (of who there are likely many) exploit writers.
You can view the article if you create a fake identity (false name, phoney email address, etc.) and then press the “Register” button at the bottom of the page. Nice interview. 🙂
yea, but the point is that it DOES require registration =oP
At least from his perspective the whole history and the corporate support issues kind of make sense. However I can understand that other people are less simplistic and highly critical of him. He sounds like the kind of person who is considered difficult, opinionated and stubborn.
That said, he does raise some issues of corporate involvement in open source. Some popular projects (linux, apache etc) seem to be flourishing with dynamic vibrant communities and enough money to expand. But at the end of the day the corporate sponsors are trying to sell something, for them it can be just a financial investment. Other projects are less popular from a corporate perspective and rely on community goodwill for finances.
I’ve always been a fence-sitter so I can’t decide which sort of community I would prefer. Does it even matter? Is it just a matter of key personalities that differentiate between a “good” community and a “bad” one? Or is it really all about the software?
I’m glad Theo isn’t burning out. OpenBSD has replaced much of the funtionality lost by focusing on security, SMP for example. Things are getting exciting for the BSD crowd even if all the hype is about Linux these days. BSD benefits from open standards and increasing support for non-Windows OSs.
The difference between leaders that still care and leaders that only do the minimum to keep their projects alive can be seen in Xorg vs. XFree86. Motivated leaders and their projects make more progress in months than burned out ones make in years.
The Age requires you to register to view articles (Tho it appear somewhat random)
Another link to the article.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/07/1097089476287.html?onecli…
Listen moron – I know how to bloody click on a link thanks. The actual link in the main story links to a registration page. Yes, you can enter in dummy details as someone else as said, but the original posters queried why so many links are to articles requiring registration, and quite frankly it is annoying.
Eugenia – that you posted the google link is fine – replace the link that’s in the main article with your link would be a good idea, no? Most probably what has happened is that very early on, the article didn’t require registration. Later on in the day it does. Your browser cache is storing the previous visit (and initial visit) I suspect. Empty the cache on your browser and then try again – I strongly suspect that you will get a page that requires registration.
It makes no difference what browers you use, it’s a link. Nothing more, nothing less. Both of the google links work fine (Windows XP sp1, Mozilla FireFox v1PR)
Dave
If you visit the front page you are usually allowed to view one news item before registering.
Usually.
That’s Theo de Raadt? Man I feel like an idiot! I always thought that dude’s name was Steve or Clark or something. No wonder he always blows me off at LAN parties.
10/7/04
Eugenia,
I must say you picked an excellent article.
Very informative, and it almost seemed like a personal blog of Theo’s thoughts.
The writer excellently integrated the quotes and citations from the interview. Those Aussie’s certainly know how to write.
An American Admiring Good Newspaper Style,
Pasa
P.s. To the general forum, what online news periodicals do you enjoy–that have brilliant flare, good word choice, diction and style, and technical merit. I enjoy the “Circuits” section of http://www.nytimes.com, What are some other mainstream newspapers that have a strong technology component.
Sometimes, one wants more than news.com or newsforge or slashdot. American and International newspaper websites are welcome.
The writer of the article did a very good job at channeling Theo’s enthusiasm for his work and passion into the written word. It left a smile on my face. It’s definitely one of the better articles/interviews I’ve read in the technology press in a long time. It’s nice to see the story behind the scenes of a project that has given some interesting concepts and code to the computing community at large.
As a side note, if you’ve never given OpenBSD a try even if it’s just for curiousity value, it would be well worth your time to download it and check it out on a spare system.
Oh, cut the whining alright.
Eugenia: The Age and other Fairfax related media agencies are requiring web registration in future. Sometimes the link will work, or it can be bypassed, or sometimes you will be asked to register.
I almost couldn’t believe I was reading this in a daily newspaper. I think I have noticed before that The Age has good tech coverage. Kudos to them.
Yes. Very nice article/interview
Since the interview does in fact require registration & login, you might wanna try the handy “Bug Me Not” service, which provides username/password pairs for websites that require free registrations (out of a public database): http://www.bugmenot.com/
They offer a really nice Firefox extension – right-click the form fields, chose “Bug Me Not” and you’re in.
Of course this is only for free registrations, not commercial pages.
There are more comments about the linking OF the article then the actual article itself.
So people will stop whining about having to register.. use this..
User : latimes
Password : latimes
I’m still not happy. Bug Me Not works nicely, but since I refuse all cookies (the site tries to set about 20 of them, no joke, and most have obviously no technical justification whatsoever) it still kicks me out.
This is not a complaint to you Eugenia; just an attempt to vent my frustration among people who understand me.
I like Theo, he is passionate about what he does and it is wise to listen to his opinions.
Regards,
Marc
And everyone’s going to find the real reason why people buy a HP box or an IBM box today is pretty much one piece of equipment – the power supply. Why? Because the grey box vendors haven’t discovered that when you make a 1U rackmount machine, you have to put in a power supply that can run 24/7 for four years. And if you can do that, they’ll buy your box. That’s what HP and IBM and Sun do. They just put a power supply in it, with a good fan so it doesn’t break. Otherwise the machines are identical.”
You know what, he’s right (on one level anyway)!
Cheers
he sure does have a way of pissing people off.
I think from reading the article I can understand his frustration, but he still might be going about things the wrong way. According to him, if he says nothing hardware vendors won’t help. He also believes that, if he voices his opinions he can scare hardware vendors into helping. I wonder if that’s working. Probably not.
I wish the OpenBSD project did get more help. They are doing some really neat things. PF is awesome. I don’t have a use for CARP myself, but that’s great software too. They’re working on OpenNTPD and working on OpenBGP as well. That’s awesome. Funny though, seems like OpenBSD is becoming less of a server OS and more like a Cisco IOS or PIX OS.
What I would like to see out of OpenBSD. I would like to see more usability bells and whistles (i.e. tab name completion in sftp and stuff like that), more performance advances, better multithreading, everything replaced by BSD licensed software, their own DHCP implementation, etc.
One thing I could use would be an interface into pf for URL filtering. A faster, better Dan’s Guardian type of thing. Although, they keep telling me that pf doesn’t do things at the application level. I figure it could if you make it.
That would be interesting to tie into authpf somehow so that they would have to authenticate before getting out to use the web. Then the URL filtering kicks in to filter out the bad sites.
That’s one thing I can do on a PIX that I can’t do with PF. I can watch the log files of the PIX and see the URLS (sites) that people in my organization are going to. It’s more of a raw way of looking at things. Using a product called Websense with a PIX can generate web usage reports and stuff. A PIX can interface with Websense. Actually, Websense does all the tracking of good or bad URLs. All Websense does is tell the firewall to block it or allow it. Websense is very expensive though.
We actually use a crappy software called Web Inspector. It’s not so good. It does the job most of the time though. But it also hiccups every once and awhile.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up and code. If I could, I would.
should have flown north to Calgary instead of across the Atlantic to Amsterdam
And “Open”BSD is the exact wrong name for their flavour; that is, if they are looking for potential users, and not just developers. (And they seem to be looking for paying users judging by Theo’s reaction (elsewhere) to lack of CD sales.) You want to tell the world what’s unique about your OS, not about your community. But I guess OpenBSD has always been a “we do it for ourselves” kind of OS anyway.
A great article, far better than the usual fare. Details is what makes it useful and interesting. I’m currently reading Absolute OpenBSD, which is an extremely well-written (and humorous) book. I’m learning a lot, and it looks like fun. Theo and the OpenBSD team are to be congratulated.
Cheers
Fellow geeks should check out http://www.bugmenot.com and forget
about those stupid “free” registration spamtraps. The bugmenot Firefox extension makes it the best thing since sliced bread (or grep)
Really a nice article, shedding light on the spirit and motivation of the OpenBSD founder.
The comments above are true: the writer did a very good job.