OpenBSD Foundation At Risk Of Shutting Down

[frostwarrior]

OpenSSH is the implementation of SSH used by pretty much every linux distribution. It may be a relatively small project, but in terms of importance it's hard to understate. Their 2014 campaign page puts it fairly nicely (they're aiming to raise $150'000 over 2014):

There's also OpenSMTPD

They also worked around a patent in an IETF standard by writing the the Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP): the explanation of the details is here (on the left hand side).

pf was the firewall that they wrote, which has been incorporated into FreeBSD (source).

(ex-OpenBSD user here :-))

Sadly, their OS is not part of those achievements.
Most of the widely praised openBSD merits are from tiny utilities made secure as hell. Most vendors say "well thanks! Now I can put that thing into my Linux/Darwin system!".

Is there any vendor who will back up OpenBSD devs and say "hey, I need this secure thing, here's the money and get it done"? That happened with the Linux kernel, most of the gnu userspace, Gallium3D-powered mesa and even third party floss projects like Wine.

[Sergio]

I know, Sergio. However, times are changing and if something stays in the same place it looses. It's stupid to compete and give your advantages to competitors for free. It's exactly how stupid politics looks like. The talk isn't about academy vs industry. It's about product vs product. Be it OpenBSD vs Windows, FreeBSD vs OS X, DragonflyBSD vs Linux. Every BSD is on the lost position here, because of its academic-like license.

Maybe everybody do not see this as a 'competition', maybe not everybody care... The BSD license precisely LACKS any stupid political-related issue: More coding, less politics. If it is GNU's mission to destroy proprietary, well good; that does not imply in any way that other ways of thinking about and promoting FREE software do not exist. You are nobody to force people to share your view of freedom; I consider BSD licensing as free. So, if you care so much about politics, go on with your endless attempt to show people how good GPL is and how bad BSD is. Other people (the ones actually leading the way) prefer to focus on actually DOING something.

You know that BSD-like licenses far predate the whole FLOSS vs proprietary war, right? It grows in the academic context; academy is about PRODUCING knowledge, not stupid politics. Academy is NOT an enemy of industry. We ought every single progress in technology (including software) to both academy and/or industry, so you might want to consider that when bitching about an academic-like license like BSD.

Last, BSD code is FREE; it is there, and NO ONE CAN CHANGE THAT.

I know, Sergio. However, times are changing and if something stays in the same place it looses. It's stupid to compete and give your advantages to competitors for free. It's exactly how stupid politics looks like. The talk isn't about academy vs industry. It's about product vs product. Be it OpenBSD vs Windows, FreeBSD vs OS X, DragonflyBSD vs Linux. Every BSD is on the lost position here, because of its academic-like license.

[JX8p]

As a general observation, Linux seems to be more pragmatic and OpenBSD more dogmatic.

Linux is a kernel and OpenBSD is an OS. If one compares OpenBSD to, say, Fedora, then you are very right-- OpenBSD is more dogmatic with regards to freedom. However if you compare OpenBSD to, for example, Trisquel GNU/Linux, you will find that both are similarly concerned with Freedom and will do their utmost to include only Free Software.

Those who continue to blindly lash out at OpenBSD may do well to educate themselves with http://openbsd.org/faq/faq1.html#ReallyFree -- and please stop applying their own standards of 'Freedom'.

[archibald]

I haven't seen anything about OpenBSD apart from "OpenSSH" and "ntp". To me, those sound like nice but tiny utilities (very complex in nature, I lend you that. But still tiny).

OpenSSH is the implementation of SSH used by pretty much every linux distribution. It may be a relatively small project, but in terms of importance it's hard to understate. Their 2014 campaign page puts it fairly nicely (they're aiming to raise $150'000 over 2014):

If a penny was donated for every pf or OpenSSH installed with a mainstream operating system or phone in the last year we would be at our goal.

There's also OpenSMTPD

They also worked around a patent in an IETF standard by writing the the Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP): the explanation of the details is here (on the left hand side).

pf was the firewall that they wrote, which has been incorporated into FreeBSD (source).

(ex-OpenBSD user here :-))

[frostwarrior]

Sorry my ignorance, people. But I have a question:

I haven't seen anything about OpenBSD apart from "OpenSSH" and "ntp". To me, those sound like nice but tiny utilities (very complex in nature, I lend you that. But still tiny).
Compare them with Linux and FreeBSD used for almost everything in the industry.

Developing "netstat" things are nice, but far from enough to support an OS and their entire foundation.

[Sergio]

No, it seems you have no clue about licenses at all. Linux/FLOSS ecosystem is competitor to proprietary software. It makes BDS licenses unacceptable in most cases, because they automatically support proprietary software. It's stupid to fight and support the one you're fighting same time. However, it seems it's not obvious for some people.

You know that BSD-like licenses far predate the whole FLOSS vs proprietary war, right? It grows in the academic context; academy is about PRODUCING knowledge, not stupid politics. Academy is NOT an enemy of industry. We ought every single progress in technology (including software) to both academy and/or industry, so you might want to consider that when bitching about an academic-like license like BSD.

Last, BSD code is FREE; it is there, and NO ONE CAN CHANGE THAT.

[nslay]

No, it seems you have no clue about licenses at all. Linux/FLOSS ecosystem is competitor to proprietary software. It makes BDS licenses unacceptable in most cases, because they automatically support proprietary software. It's stupid to fight and support the one you're fighting same time. However, it seems it's not obvious for some people.

Do you fold your tin foil into cool hats, or do you just kind of mold it onto your head?

As a general observation, Linux seems to be more pragmatic and OpenBSD more dogmatic.

Well, I couldn't agree more.

[nils_]

No, it seems you have no clue about licenses at all. Linux/FLOSS ecosystem is competitor to proprietary software. It makes BDS licenses unacceptable in most cases, because they automatically support proprietary software. It's stupid to fight and support the one you're fighting same time. However, it seems it's not obvious for some people.

As a general observation, Linux seems to be more pragmatic and OpenBSD more dogmatic.