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OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

marc.info

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Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#281

Post by cdcarter »

gtaylor wrote: post #42
orbitur wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm donating I would like to know exactly where the money is going, and what options have already been explored. OpenBSD should have referenced, full documentation about these things if they want to maximize donations. Apparently, there isn't very much documentation/open accounting, and they aren't willing to discuss options to reduce the bill. That doesn't inspire confidence.

> Apparently, there isn't very much documentation/open accounting, and they aren't willing to discuss options to reduce the bill. That doesn't inspire confidence. It is a lot of work for a small team to itemize and publish every expense, but some rough breakdown of monthly expenses that my donation would be going towards would really help.

If their books are clean, this is actually pretty easy. Just pulling an annual operating budget should be much easier, if they have good financial practices and controls in place.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#282

Post by fencepost »

wglb wrote: post #142
tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A somewhat related note about branding. My first "real" job was in the mid-90's; I was the first technical hire at a small Chicago ISP (EnterAct) that grew into a relatively large ISP (when I left, we were default-free peered to several tier-1 providers and had more POPs than I can name). It was great, and the team that started it --- two Big-5 accounting firm programmers --- was inspiring, particularly when it came…

Useful info. Fortunately for me, I never had a CSR interaction with them. I used them until they augured in. wgl@mcs.com

I don't recall if I stayed to the bitter end, but I started making provisions for a move after I ended up arguing with Karl over whether inbound mail was being corrupted, maybe around the time of a conversion to (from?) maildir.

I think I started when it really was only Karl, was Dawn his first hire? Hmm, I probably still have the t-shirt as well.

ajm@mcs.com (or .net)

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#283

Post by anthonyb »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #71
PaulRobinson wrote: post #50

So let's deal with the elephant in the room: the OpenBSD project is run by complete and utter jerks. Not just Theo, but he has set the bar quite low when it comes to friendliness and tolerance of questions from younger/less experienced contributors. Linus' rants on the Linux kernel lists are almost cookie cutter copies of Theo's. There is "opinionated software" and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious,…

Don't associate the entire project and foundation with the actions of their figurehead. Honestly, Theo can be an asshole, but often his temper is warranted when he's faced with idiocy, like when RMS was unapologetically trying to persuade the removal of all mentions of non-free packages in OpenBSD. ( http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134850 ) I know this is what RMS does, and actually I'm sympathetic wit…

I don't think Theo's reaction is really warranted. I mean, really? "slimy hypocritical asshole"?! And the follow up later on when someone calls him on this is pretty telling: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134896

I don't know the full history of that thread, but it's not mentions of non-free packages that RMS was talking about - it was ports in OpenBSD that allowed people to easily install non-free packages.

Ah, found the original: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119730630513821&w=2

And FWIW, I think Linus is a dick, too - but Linux has a much larger following, mainly due to reasons other than Linus.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#284

Post by throwaway2048 »

riffraff wrote: post #139
hhw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Theo's comments on the mailing list: "On a regular basis, we find real and serious bugs which affect all platforms, but they are incidentally made visible on one of the platforms we run, following that they are fixed. It is a harsh reality which static and dynamic analysis tools have not yet resolved. " "Regarding shutting them down, there other social problems. Yes, we remove about 10 of the architectures. We'd…

which other BSD would that be? If the answer is "NetBSD", let's consider that the expenses in 2012 for the NetBSD foundation were $6k [0]. Either they don't support the architectures the same way or they are spending the money in a smarter way. [0] http://www.netbsd.org/foundation/reports/financial/2012.html

They absolutely do not support the architectures in the same way. Most NetBSD ports are cross compiled and not tested, you are lucky if they boot before hard locking.

OpenBSD has a strict policy that supported architectures must be self hosted, tested, and built against HEAD constantly.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#285

Post by ninjin »

jxf wrote: post #10

Just to make the call to action a little more direct, the donation link is here: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html

Since PayPal won't accept donations from where I live (Japan), here is an alternative way of donating through the Calgary Computer Shop:

https://https.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/order

Having just donated I would like to say that the man pages are wonderful. I like them so much that I have a oman alias and made a quick (and dirty) script to fetch them.

https://github.com/ninjin/ppod/tree/master/hck/openbsd_manpa...

Try them out when coding C or when writing portable shell-scripts, they are a blessing. There is also the official web interface:

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#286

Post by jnazario »

i used to have commit but was kicked out (along with a bunch of other people over the years). i even wrote a book on openbsd. what i see from afar is that obsd alienated a lot of people with theo's behavior, theo's gone and surrounded himself with sycophants, and the rest of the world caught up to them (largely) in features. as a result the userbase has shrunk - why put up with tirades if you have a secure platform elsewhere - and the features have remained stale.

theo was a visionary, and together with some other really brilliant folks (not counting myself as one of them) accomplished what people said no one could. since then he's been fine tuning that vision but has more or less kept it at around 2003. the world has changed, theo - and as a result the project - hasn't. so, the world caught up and users moved on.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#287

Post by vinceguidry »

coolnow wrote: post #247
vinceguidry wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they should totally just get their PR person on it. Oh look, now they're asking for $40,000

You don't need a PR person; you just need someone who's not a dick.

I daresay any of their developers would quickly turn into dicks having to deal with that kind of public exposure.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#288

Post by bashinator »

wmf wrote: post #210
openbsddesktop wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you perfectly sure that it will represent the same quality then?

If I had a choice between, say, donating $10 to OpenBSD of which only $2 goes towards OpenSSH development and letting Google take over OpenSSH, I'd take my chances with the latter. I don't see why Linux or OS X users should subsidize OpenBSD.

I'm sure Google would be able to figure out how to monetize OpenSSH.

Re: OpenBSD will shut down if we do not have the funding to keep the lights on

#289

Post by nknighthb »

justin66 wrote: post #164

I get that a lot of people don't care. I even get that some people have an unrealistic expectation that they should know how every dime of their donation is going to be accounted for, an expectation that must either not extend to their other charitable donations or serve as an indicator that they don't give a lot of money to charities at all. What I don't get is where people - presumably people involved in informatio…

> unrealistic expectation that they should know how every dime of their donation is going to be accounted for

This is done routinely by both for-profit and non-profit organizations. In fact, it's done routinely by individuals like myself.

> What I don't get is where people - presumably people involved in information technology - conclude that $20k/year is a lot of money to spend on electricity.

Where I live, that would pay for the equivalent of 10-11 120-volt 20-amp circuits running at 80% capacity (per electrical code) 24/7. Some googling suggests Calgary rates are similar, which isn't surprising. We both get most of our power from hydro.

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