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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

#271

Post by ams6110 »

mrweasel wrote: post #166
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,…

The OpenBSD developers are very direct, and will hurt your feelings if you can read the documentation. Honestly though, it seems reasonable for the most part. If you read the misc mailing list, I think you'll find that the people who are getting a rough treatment are those who didn't stop a think for a moment or who are them self giving bad or unrequested advice. I only ever had a few email exchanges with Theo. One w…

One thing new arrivals should know about OpenBSD: the man pages are good! Really. It took me a while to get out of my linux and windows habits of of immediately going to google or a mailing list or a forum when I didn't know how to do something. With OpenBSD, read the man page first. In most cases you won't need any other resources.

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

#272

Post by bashinator »

crististm wrote: post #182
takeda wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a picture posted on Slashdot how they server rack looks like. There are many very old machines, I am sure that at least one reason is fear that they break during transportation. Found it: http://www.openbsd.org/images/rack2009.jpg

The AC instructions note made me smile. It reminded me of a post-it I left in the company lab with a diagram for how to do proper gigabit cross-overs. I could still find it there five years later after they rearranged the lab several times.

I thought most (if not all) gigabit Ethernet implementations auto-detect host-to-host connections and handle the crossover for you.

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

#273

Post by jsz0 »

takeda wrote: post #45
jdludlow wrote: post #23

> The OpenBSD project uses a lot of electricity for running the > development and build machines. A number of logistical reasons > prevents us from moving the machines to another location which might > offer space/power for free, so let's not allow the conversation to go > that way. I don't understand this comment. If the choice came down to moving versus shutting down entirely, why is moving an unacceptable answer?

I've seen a picture posted on Slashdot how they server rack looks like. There are many very old machines, I am sure that at least one reason is fear that they break during transportation. Found it: http://www.openbsd.org/images/rack2009.jpg

There must be more to it than that. Two racks aren't using $20k in electricity.

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

#274

Post by ams6110 »

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

There's Dragonfly BSD, which is doing several interesting things.

http://www.dragonflybsd.org/

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

#275

Post by chris_wot »

chrissnell wrote: post #114
olouv wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That bothers me too, what if they are mining bitcoins with the energy/funds? That wouldn't seem too far-fetched for unaudited tech-savy people.

I'm sorry, but that is just absurd. Some of the servers in question are coming up on 20 years of age. We didn't have the power-conserving hardware back then that we have now. Those old SPARCstations put out heat like a hair dryer. That stuff uses a lot of power and remember that ever watt of power you put into a server needs to be cooled. So, basically double the electricity costs for any given piece of gear. This ra…

Cool. I won't then. If you want money, then (as has been pointed out quite a few times) you need to be able to give an explanation for what your hardware does.

You're expecting a medium to large size company to donate to you. Those companies have a moral and fiduciary duty to know what they are spending their money on. It seems odd that the "Open"BSD project doesn't feel the need to be open about the hardware they use!

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

#276

Post by cgh »

wpietri wrote: post #163
justin66 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more transparency you have in your discussion, the more supportive people will be. I think that's total, obvious nonsense and if you need to be convinced, here's an exercise: consider how much money the average nonprofit would raise if people knew where all that money went.

You mean like publishing accounts? Maybe even including salaries for the highly paid people? Because every US nonprofit is required by law to do that. You can browse it all on line: http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finder/

OpenBSD is developed and released in Canada. I'm not sure if they are a US non-profit or not so maybe these laws don't apply.

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

#277

Post by rantanplan »

gabeguz wrote: post #202
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.

And suppose OpenBSD wanted to know exactly wtf you were planning on doing with OpenSSH after you downloaded it... what servers are you planning to connect to, what keys are you planning on using? You know, if you're going to use OpenSSH they want to know exactly what for. Just leaching off the project doesn't inspire confidence. OpenBSD releases quality software that all of us use EVERY SINGLE DAY as far as I'm conce…

Yes he can(and probably should) buy a yacht. What you're missing though is that by not being transparent they miss out on a lot more contributors. So it's not a super smart move.

Also keep in mind that a lot of contributors might not use OpenBSD, yet they might be interested in offering some small amount if they believe it's for a good cause and they know where that money is going.

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

#279

Post by markmark »

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.

Yeah, there's plenty of people here saying "hey, you use OpenSSH on x86, you should donate". But the the reason they need the donations is to pay the power bills for running things like Vax servers for OpenBSD development on ancient platforms? Not the most convincing argument.
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