back to article WHEW! OpenBSD won't CloseBSD (for now) after $100,000 cash windfall

The cash-strapped OpenBSD Foundation has raised $100,000, potentially saving it from the brink of oblivion. The Foundation has had pledges of "around" $100,000 from individuals and organisations following its appeal to cover a $20,000 server electricity bill. The group claimed 1,704 donations “large and small.” The Reg …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When they're all volunteers why do they need cash?

    Is OpenBSD Charityware?

    1. Spoddyhalfwit

      If you read the article you'd see they needed cash for the electricity bill.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yes, but open source should also pay for nuisances like those, shouldn't it? Or open source is viable only and only if someone pours money into it, or goes out of business?

        1. pierce

          how does 'open source' pay the electric bill and such ? I don't think the power company is particularlly interested in C code.

      2. Nightkiller

        They wouldn't need the cash if they moved their servers out of Ontario, Canada. Electrical rates in Ontario are skyrocketing, relatively speaking.

    2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

      Volenteers != free

      You've forgotten to take into account the hosting costs, which include space, power and bandwidth costs, and may also include a rental on the hardware for their servers and rental of an office space.

      They also appear to host developer events, which are unlikely to be free to arrange.

      Taking this into account, I do wonder how they managed to clock up a $20,000 power bill. How many servers are they running?

      Mind you, the picture at the foot of their home page makes it look like their test servers are in someone's garage!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Volenteers != free

        Nevermind. Same pic as mentioned above.

      2. charlie-charlie-tango-alpha

        Re: Volenteers != free

        "Mind you, the picture at the foot of their home page makes it look like their test servers are in someone's garage!"

        They probably are. I understand that TDR runs the build and test servers himself.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: Volenteers != free

          Someone needs to pay the legals, too.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        RE: Volenteers != free

        They were offered free hosting and gave some vague response of "the logistics make that impossible". It sounds like they've got a pretty shitty hosting facility currently, but for unknown reasons don't want to move. What kind of hosting facility lets them get $20k behind on their bill? To me it smells like someone involved in the organization is providing the hosting for a fee.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: RE: Volenteers != free

          It's more likely that "free hosting" means "a few virtual private servers" which is nothing compared to the stacks of hardware they have now. More to the point, what they've got now probably falls apart if you blow on it gently. Moving to a hosting provider other than a colo that would let them simply dump their existing boxes directly would probably take months of trying to unsnarl the complex setups that tie the whole thing together.

          If the thing is hosted in someone's garage - as was suggested above - perhaps the whole thing is tightly integrated with someone's personal network. I.E. some of the equipment in question is actually running on the dude's personal storage, or reliant on it for backups. Maybe he feels he needs LAN-class network access to move files around, or gods only know what else.

          My point here is that what prevents folks from moving stuff in a situation like this is rarely outright financial cost. Nobody would begrudge the OpenBSD gang from paying a dude a salary if he needed one to keep the lights on. The "don't move the servers" think most likely has more to do with workflow disruptions and/or configuration nightmares involved in such a thing than it does anything else.

          Don't assume malice when simpler explanations are more likely.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I help run a small Charity and, bar a few paid employee's, the rest are working for gratis. Doesn't stop us having to raise a few hundred thousand a year for Rent, electric, gas, rates, equipment, rubbish disposal, training, statutory legal obligations and on and on and on.

    4. vmistery

      Yes opensource projects work on OpenElecticity, OpenBandwidth, OpenHardware built with Open materials.

  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Its base system includes a number of popular third-party packages such as SQLite, BIND, Sendmail...

    I thought OpenBSD had moved to OpenSMTPD?

    1. Irongut

      At least he got it the right way round and didn't say SQLite, etc includes Open BSD for the third time!

  3. batfastad

    Citrix

    I'm sure last time I deployed a Citrix NetScaler virtual appliance I remember it running an OpenBSD base. I also remember it cost ££££.

    I would think Citrix had more than $20k in profit lying around as a result of this product anyway!

    I do realise that most of these mega-corps already support many open source projects both technically and financially but surely they're are worth a bit more to them than is usually the case.

    1. Gert Leboski

      Re: Citrix

      Can you point me in the direction of anything that shows OpenBSD being the base for Citrix NetScaler? I've built firewalls/routers/web-filters/gateways using OpenBSD for several years now, it being the very best tool for the job, in my opinion.

      I'd be very interested to read about it being used in such high end kit. I believe Checkpoint's Firewall 1 was built on an OpenBSD base, also.

      1. Bainia

        Re: Citrix

        The Citrix Netscaler runs FreeBSD:

        > shell

        Copyright (c) 1992-2008 The FreeBSD Project.

        Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994

        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

        Nokia had IPSO which was also a heavily modified version of FreeBSD, that ran the FW1 software.

        Checkpoint's Secure Platform is Red Hat based with the FW1 RPMs included on the install disc.

        Checkpoint bought Nokia's Security division a few years ago, and combined the best bits from Secure Platform and IPSO together resulting in an OS called Gaia which is a Linux core and all the IPSO management, routing and configuration logic from IPSO.

        1. batfastad

          Re: Citrix

          Ah apologies, it was FreeBSD rather than OpenBSD. I knew it was one of them.

  4. frank ly

    Other possibilities for support

    Would it be possible (or desirable) for someone like Google/Amazon to donate some of their massive cloudy server resources for OpenBSD to use? They probably need live/real servers for performance testing but they might be able to do lots of other things in the 'cloud'.

    1. DougMac

      Re: Other possibilities for support

      If you look at the picture of their build racks, almost all of the boxes there are not PCs, they build for many architectures...

      alpha

      amd64/i386

      arm

      HPPA

      88k

      PowerPC(Mac)

      various 68k machines

      sparc

      sparc64

      vax

      etc. etc.

      I'd imagine running all of that old crud at once is what their main crises is.

    2. Gert Leboski

      Re: Other possibilities for support

      OpenBSD intentionally doesn't play well on a virtual platform, mainly for security reasons. It's the same in reverse, OpenBSD makes a terrible host for VMs.

      Get OpenBSD on bare metal, configure it right and you've got one hell of a secure, stable server. A lot of that security is thanks to its comparably simplified architecture. Putting it into a virtual environment where it doesn't have direct control of physical hardware is maybe seen as just the top of a long, very slippery downward slope away from the project's fundamental principles.

  5. MJI Silver badge

    How many are there?

    It seems there are quite a few BSD companies, can someone explain why please?

    1. foo_bar_baz

      Re: How many are there?

      You probably mean BSD OS's.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_systems

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re: How many are there?

        Thanks

        Still seems a bit of a pity they cannot all combine their resources, FreeBSD seems to be doing well.

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Headmaster

    because it is considered incredibly secure

    It is also considered incredibly non-GPL

    1. ByeLaw101

      re: It is also considered incredibly non-GPL

      So whats that got to do with the price of Giraffe feed?

      What's your point? Does the license being non-GPL make it any less secure?

      1. Irongut

        Re: re: It is also considered incredibly non-GPL

        Obviously being non-GPL does not make it any less secure. What he's getting at is it means you don't have to comply with the annoying GPL rules that most businesses do not like.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: re: It is also considered incredibly non-GPL

          > don't have to comply with

          This.

          > What's your point?

          Why does one have to explain this? It's like having to explain how a car engine works at a NASCAR meetup.

  7. poohbear

    Secure?

    When did BIND and SendMail become 'incredibly secure'?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Secure?

      Sendmail: http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-31/Sendmail.html

      BIND: Suggest you read Dan Bernstein's writings on the subject

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Secure?

      Around the time the war in Iraq was won.

  8. tempemeaty

    If they don't change something...

    ...they are doomed to another repeat...eventually. How many times can that happen before it's lights out for good. They MUST get out from under this situation.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BSD are broke

    Microsoft are rich.

    No justice in life is there?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bloody Cheapskates

    So many are so willing to use it but not contribute.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like