DARPA pulls OpenBSD funding
Posted by configure on 18 April 2003 - 01:36 · 7 comments & 374 views
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(4 replies)
#1 Posted by GoogolPlex on 18 Apr 2003 - 06:47
- [QUOTE]"In the U.S., today, free speech is just a myth," de Raadt said.[/QUOTE] Bad mouth the company you work for and not expect to get fired...what do you expect? He's obviously free to say what he said (he wasn't imprisioned), you just don't bite the hand thats feeding you.
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#1.1 Posted by pctuk on 18 Apr 2003 - 14:42
- But surely you don't expect everyone who works for the government to have to seal their lips of any political opinions. Sure, certain jobs need to be politically neutral, but apart from these few jobs government officials (in the UK) are free to express any opinion they like, their wages paid for or not by the government. This guy wasn't even directly employed by the government, he just recieved grants!
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#1.2 Posted by GoogolPlex on 18 Apr 2003 - 19:08
- With the freedom of speech comes responsibilities. Yes I do expect everyone who works for the government to be responsible and if they are not, they should suffer the consequences for irresponsible behavior, just like the rest of us.
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#1.3 Posted by pctuk on 18 Apr 2003 - 21:36
- So expressing a political opinion about the war was irresponsible? Surely you can't be serious
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#1.4 Posted by GoogolPlex on 19 Apr 2003 - 01:07
- Yes, it was irresponsible and, yes, I am serious. He was being interviewed about his work concerning OpenBSD not the war in Iraq. They is no reason for a comment about the war in Iraq. He should not use opportunity afforded him by his work on OpenBSD that was in part funded by a DARPA grant to make a political comment. Chances are he would not have been interviewed solely on his political opinion, he was interview because of OpenBSD and it was inappropriate for him to comment outside of that scope for a political opinion. If he were interviewed only for his political views especially concerning Iraq, then there is no problem. But using the "limelight" from this project to do so, is wrong.
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(1 reply)
#2 Posted by dkg_ctc on 18 Apr 2003 - 15:10
- [QUOTE]Earlier this week, de Raadt said he was told that officials from DARPA were concerned about statements appearing in press reports that indicated most of the grant was being funneled to foreign researchers, an apparent no-no for government-funded projects.[/QUOTE] So let's see...we have actual facts here; the DARPA officials were concerned regarding the money going to foreign researchers. Ok, good... [QUOTE]Moreover, de Raadt believed that the U.S. government took exception to comments he made indicating that the money spent on his project meant that fewer cruise missiles were being built.[/QUOTE] Oh, well, de Raadt believes...who needs any more evidence than that. Quite simply, de Raadt is a jackass, and all he's doing is playing up the whole "They don't like me any more because I made anti-war statements" to attract more attention to himself.
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#2.1 Posted by dp123 on 18 Apr 2003 - 18:20
- Considering our Secretary of State got slapped for comments he made about Chile, and a lesser ranking State department issued statements contradicting and overruling his own opinions about something which is essentially a documented fact (our overthrow of Allende to put in place Pinochet), I think its a bit narrowminded and dogmatic to presume that politics and opinions expressed don't factor into such decisions.
The project's leader, Theo de Raadt, said Thursday he was informed by email that the remaining portion of the $2.3 million grant has been pulled. An email from a professor who is managing the grant did not provide a reason, but de Raadt said he believes the cancellation was prompted by concerns about the money going to too many foreign developers and antiwar statements that de Raadt made to reporters.
"They decided that they didn't want (our project) anymore," de Raadt said Thursday, less than hour after he received notification. "This is it. It's over."
DARPA, the arm of the U.S. Department of Defense that funds research and development and is best known for funding the project that later became the Internet, awarded the grant in 2001 as part of its Composable High-Assurance Trusted Systems (CHATS) projects, said de Raadt.
About $1 million had been allotted to add new security features to OpenBSD, an open-source OS that many consider to be the most secure free implementation of a Unix-like system. The project had finished most of the work in the first three months of the grant and had been recently using the money to fund more security enhancements to the software, de Raadt said at a recent security conference.
A University of Pennsylvania computer science professor, Jonathan Smith, had originally applied for the grant under the title, "Portable Open-Source Security Enhancements," or POSSE. About $500,000 of the money went to several U.K. researchers to do a vulnerability analysis on OpenSSL, a widely used program for encrypting communications, especially to and from Web sites. A handful of flaws were found, de Raadt said.
Smith refused to comment on the funding, citing the sensitivity of the issue. An email to the POSSE project’s DARPA representative wasn't answered.
Earlier this week, de Raadt said he was told that officials from DARPA were concerned about statements appearing in press reports that indicated most of the grant was being funneled to foreign researchers, an apparent no-no for government-funded projects. Moreover, de Raadt believed that the U.S. government took exception to comments he made indicating that the money spent on his project meant that fewer cruise missiles were being built.
"In the U.S., today, free speech is just a myth," de Raadt said.
He estimated that about 85 percent of the money has already been spent and that the remaining portion would have continued the project for another six months. "The only money that I got was my salary," he said.
With nearly 60 OpenBSD hackers traveling to Canada to take part in a hackathon--a week's worth of solid programming sessions--the project now finds itself about $30,000 short of the money it needs to house the attendees.
"We are left in the lurch very seriously...and will need to struggle to keep our conference facilities in some way," de Raadt said.
The project will ship version 3.3 of the OpenBSD system on Friday. An acknowledgment of the role that DARPA played, which was to appear on the back of the box, will instead be covered by a sticker, he said.