DARPA Cancels OpenBSD Funding

[Posted April 23, 2003 by corbet]

[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

If you follow the news at all, you've probably already heard about the OpenBSD project losing the funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). What's less than clear is why the funding has been pulled. In fact, it's quite a test to figure out who's actually responsible for pulling the plug, much less the reason. DARPA is, essentially, just an intermediate agency for the funding, which is passed on to the University of Pennsylvania. The funds themselves come from the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Most speculation has gone to comments made by OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt. The comments in question come from an interview in The Globe and Mail, where de Raadt is quoted as saying he's "uncomfortable" about the source of the grant. De Raadt also told the Globe and Mail that, "I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built," which might not sit well with U.S. military types. A few days after the comment appeared in the Globe and Mail, de Raadt was contacted by University of Pennsylvania professor Jonathan Smith. According to de Raadt, Smith objected to the comment, but wouldn't give a specific reason why. The funding was pulled on Thursday of last week.

If that is the reason for the cancellation, it's not the official story from DARPA, in as much as DARPA has or will give an official story. A statement forwarded to LWN by de Raadt, attributed to DARPA spokesperson Jan Walker, claims that the funding is under review.

As a result of the DARPA review of the project, and due to world events and the evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states, the Government [sic] on April 21 advised the University to suspend work on the "security fest" portion of the project.

Walker did not respond to e-mails or phone calls requesting confirmation of this statement or requests to elaborate on or clarify the statement.

The most immediate consequence is that the OpenBSD project has had the rug pulled out from under them with regards to the upcoming hackathon in Canada. 60 OpenBSD developers are scheduled to travel to Canada for the event, almost all of whom have already purchased tickets based on a go-ahead given in January. The hotel was contacted and told to cancel the reservation, despite the fact that an 80% cancellation fee is in effect. According to de Raadt, this amounts to about $24,000 Canadian. De Raadt also reports that the hotel was instructed not to allow anyone to pay the remaining balance to keep the reservation. However, de Raadt said that the hotel has agreed to cut the OpenBSD project a deal for the hackathon, even if they cannot apply the cancellation fee to the bill.

Fernando Pereira, chairman of the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania sent this statement to the OpenBSD "misc" mailing list to explain why the cancellation fee cannot be used towards the hotel costs:

When the contracting agency requested that work be stopped on the security fests component of POSSE, the only expenses that they would still allow are documented losses to the conference hotel due to cancellation. Any other use of funds, including use of the cancellation costs in partial support of conference accommodation, would not be an allowable contract expense. Contrary to a widespread misconception, the University of Pennsylvania could not have "allowed" that use of US Government funds. The funds belong to the US Government, not to the University.

Apparently, quite a few people in the OpenBSD community have already sent letters of protest to the University of Pennsylvania, newspapers and other sources. If you'd like to write a letter to complain or comment on the decision to official sources, de Raadt notes that it's helpful to have the contract number. The contract was granted by the Air Force Research Lab, Material Command, and is DARPA contract number F30602-01-2-0537.

With the exception of the hackathon, the loss of funding may not be as dramatic as it sounds. On Monday, de Raadt said that the OpenBSD project had already received about $7,000 in donations, and more was "in the mail." The OpenBSD project has been around for eight years, and has done just fine without the DARPA funding. In addition, the funding was set to run out within four months anyway and de Raadt noted that he works through a Canadian contracting company that should ensure that he receives the rest of his pay for the next four months. The major losers appear to be the University of Pennsylvania grad students who were also receiving money from the grant, as well as the 60 OpenBSD developers who are wondering whether there will be a place for them to stay when they arrive at the hackathon.

to post comments

The real major losers are...

Posted Apr 24, 2003 5:54 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (6 responses)

...the citizens of the USA who have elected a government that will pull a last minute fund-yanking stunt like this. The real losers are the citizens of the USA who have managed to elect themselves a government who would decide not to fund OpenBSD development for either of the speculated reasons: because Theo said something essentially irrelevant to the grant which our government doesn't like, or (potentially even more alarmingly) because the government has come to think that capable and secure open source software being available is primarily to the benefit of terrorist nation states.

I hear all the comments about "free speech has consequences" and so forth, and have a hard time with them. It's one thing to pull funding from somebody. It's a different thing to pull funding with no warning at the last minute when many people around the world have committed nonrefundable expenses based on the promise of that funding. Isn't there some sort of breech of contract going on here? Longer term, the grad students who lose their funding could be in the lurch too. I don't know anything about this specific situation, but I do know that grad students in general are broke anyway, and suddenly not having even the pittance that you thought you'd been promised as a grad student can leave you in a bad state. Whether or not you think Theo's comments were advised, I have yet to see anything that convinces me that what DARPA did in this situation is defensable.

-Rob

The real major losers are...

Posted Apr 24, 2003 12:18 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (5 responses)

The current US government was not elected, just took over.

The real major losers are...

Posted Apr 24, 2003 13:33 UTC (Thu) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] (4 responses)

It _was_ elected. Even if you might not be in favor of this decision, it was elected in a democratical way, according to US laws and rules.
You might not think those rules are good or right, but many others do, and they have evolved over time, and were decided by democratic decisions.

I'm no US citizen, and I'm glad I didn't have to vote because it's quite hard to chose between two awful choices, but the US people made their choice, as I said, in a democratic manner.

Well, anyway, that's not what this discussion or this article is about...

I think it's not a good thing to speak out against people funding you, especially in a situation where you need the funding for a project. OTOH, it's bad decision to pull the plug just because of one person saying those things one time.
Well, it seems we can't change it anyway, let's go back to work and hack up some code, we can achieve more doing that :)

Re: The real major losers are...

Posted Apr 24, 2003 14:06 UTC (Thu) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link] (2 responses)

Actually, the rules were applied unevenly and were completely unclear about what should be done in such a situation. The Supreme Court decided to step in to avoid a Constitutional crises. I have questions about how they made the decision myself. So, I kind of agree when people say Bush wasn't elected. But I don't agree that it was a takeover or coup.

Re: Supreme Court didn't step in; election still an embarassment

Posted Apr 25, 2003 23:21 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

The Supreme Court decided to step in to avoid a Constitutional crises

This is a misstatement. The Supreme Court's decision was not to act. The Court was petitioned to order Florida officials to recount votes. The Court denied the petition, leaving interpretation of election laws up to Florida.

I don't see that a Constitutional crisis was ever in the offing.

By the way, for those who believe technicalities of vote counting laws shouldn't matter and the person who got the most votes should simply win, I'd like to point out that an army of journalists did finish an accurate count of every single Florida ballot a year later. It showed that by any interpretation of the unclear ballots (hanging chads, etc.), Bush got the most votes. It is true, though, that in the precincts that were in controversy just after the election, Gore won by some counts.

If you want to take pokes at the election results, it is much better to look at 1) Ralph Nader certainly split the vote. Asked to choose between Bush and Gore, voters would have chosen Gore by a landslide. 2) It is quite clear that hundreds of voters using the butterfly ballot preferred Gore but marked their ballots otherwise by mistake. 3) Voting by states achieves no desirable purpose these days; had the vote been a simple popular one, Gore would have won by a wide margin.

Re: Supreme Court didn't step in; election still an embarassment

Posted May 1, 2003 21:01 UTC (Thu) by ffeirtag (guest, #10976) [Link]

>>The Supreme Court decided to step in to avoid a Constitutional crises

>This is a misstatement. The Supreme Court's decision was not to act.
>The Court was petitioned to order Florida officials to recount votes.
>The Court denied the petition, leaving interpretation of election
>laws up to Florida.

Even though this thread is off topic, I can't believe this posting, which
is so utterly wrong, has gone unchallenged.

Far from deciding "not to act," in
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/ELECTION/2000/resources/uscdecision1212.pdf

The majority wrote:
"The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is reversed,..."

Dissenting, Justice Ginsburg wrote:
"Time is short in part because of the Court's entry of a stay
on December 9, several hours after an able circuit judge in
Leon County had begun to superintend the recount process."

Dissenting, Justice Breyer wrote:
"By halting the manual recount, and thus ensuring that the
uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any standard,
this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted
harm. And that remedy harms the very fairness interests the
Court is attempting to protect."

From: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-10-recountchrono.htm

"Dec. 8: The Florida Supreme Court orders manual recounts to begin in
Gore's election challenge and adds 383 votes to his total.

Dec. 9: Counting begins of 43,000 statewide "undervotes" and then halts
when the U.S. Supreme Court, divided 5-4, orders the manual recounts stopped.

Dec. 11: U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Bush's appeal of
Florida Supreme Court's decision ordering recounts.

Dec. 12: In late-night, divided opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court rules
Florida high court erred in its order for a further recount of contested
ballots. The justices send the case back to Florida but indicate there is
no time to fashion a new effort to pass constitutional muster, all but
assuring Bush of victory. Earlier, the Florida House approves 25 electors
pledged to Bush."

OT: Election 2000

Posted Apr 24, 2003 16:43 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> It _was_ elected. Even if you might not be in favor of this decision, it was elected in a democratical way, according to US laws and rules.

This is factually incorrect.

I call your attention to the *extensively* footnoted proof offered in the book "None Dare Call It Treason", written by former (104:1 record) LA County Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.

No, Bush, et al, were *not* elected pursuant to the US Constitution and Code and the Florida Statutes.

Before blaming U. Pennsylvania ....

Posted Apr 24, 2003 6:56 UTC (Thu) by fyodor (guest, #3481) [Link] (5 responses)

Before blaming Jonathan Smith or UPenn ... read This /. Post by Jonathan Shapiro. I like Theo and admire his work tremendously. But if speculation as to the reasons of funding loss are accurate, this is only the latest in Theo's extensive track record of losing cooperation from his supporters by viciously attacking them in public. I agree with Theo about the War and was somewhat impressed that he risked his funding by speaking out in the press that the agency funding him "just sickens me". But I don't think he should act so surprised and offended when the agency he publicly attacks stops funding him.

All that being said, I also agree that the US is going way too far in seeking revenge against people, countries, and organizations that promoted peace and restraint. A currently running New Yor Times Article starts out with: "The Bush administration is pursuing steps to punish France for opposing the United States on the war in Iraq"

Give it a rest! The whole point of multinational organizations like the UN is to debate and air differing opinions. If the US is going to openly bribe countries into submission, and threaten/"punish" those who resist, the US might as well just ignore the UN and let "do what thou wilt be the whole of the law". Oh yeah, that is what we (the US) did do.

Sigh,
Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner

Before blaming U. Pennsylvania ....

Posted Apr 24, 2003 15:03 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (3 responses)

Theo's extensive track record of losing cooperation from his supporters by viciously attacking them in public.

While Theo's remarks about the source of funding can be safely categorized as "critical" of DARPA and the Air Force, they hardly rise to the level of "viciously attacking them in public."

Further, one should not feel that they "risk" funding by speaking their mind. Theo was being paid to do work on OpenBSD. If he fails to do that, by all means yank the funding. If he's producing work, let the man work. He's not being paid for his political opinion.

Also -- pulling funding doesn't just punish Theo, it punishes a bunch of people who were depending on funds for the hackathon and grad students who were being paid out of that money. I see this as a pretty messed-up reaction to one mildly critical comment by one person related to a larger project.

Before blaming U. Pennsylvania ....

Posted Apr 24, 2003 16:45 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> can be safely categorized as "critical" of DARPA and the Air Force, they hardly rise to the level of "viciously attacking them

[ Who the hell is this lyrical person? ]

[ Looks ]

[ Oh: Zonker. ]

:-)

Before blaming U. Pennsylvania ....

Posted May 1, 2003 18:39 UTC (Thu) by oconnorcjo (guest, #2605) [Link] (1 responses)

A simple rule: "don't bite the hand that feeds you". Theo should either have taken the money and shut up or rejected the money and said whatever he felt like saying. It is just stupid to say I will take your money but I hate your guts. As much as LWN seems to take de Raadt's side, I believe the blame rest on OpenBSD's leader. It is not good morally or politically to "bad mouth" the people who are doing you a favor (and one should bear the consequences for doing so).

Before blaming U. Pennsylvania ....

Posted May 5, 2003 20:13 UTC (Mon) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Sorry -- I don't buy it. Accepting a government grant absolutely should not be a tacit agreement not to speak out against the government. The blame lies solely with DARPA and the Air Force for not being able to tolerate a bit of criticism, if in fact that is the reason that they cancelled the funding.

I would also, strongly, disagree that it "is not good morally" to speak out against an employer or benefactor. That attitude implies that one's morality and opinion is for sale -- which is utterly wrong as far as I'm concerned. I believe that people have a duty to stand up for their political opinions, and if they happen to run counter to a benefactor, so be it. If your employer does something you don't agree with, you should be able to criticize them without fearing for your job. If we allow the government to work according to your principles, there are a lot of people who work for companies that do government contract work who would be sacrificing the right to make political statements just by taking a job with Boeing or some company that does work for the government. That's not right.

Again, the funding was for the work -- not Theo's political opinion. As long as he met the criteria of the grant, and no one has suggested that he hasn't, then the funding should have remained untouched. If they wish to rebut his opinion, well and good, but pulling funding (particularly without being straightforward about it and admitting the real reasons) is just cowardly and unjustified.

Before blaming U. Pennsylvania ....

Posted Apr 24, 2003 16:45 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Ah... you're on here.

Kudos on nmap, dude. *Very* handy tool.

You're non-USAdian, right? So the DMCA can't get you? :-)

DARPA Cancels OpenBSD Funding

Posted Apr 24, 2003 10:27 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

At least Mr. de Raadt won't feel uncomfortable anymore. But I wonder how did he feel when the contract was made?

Bye,NAR

DARPA Cancels OpenBSD Funding

Posted Apr 27, 2003 13:22 UTC (Sun) by mly (guest, #2171) [Link]

I imagine that the contract was written before USA invaded Iraq.

In many ways, the U.S. has been a beacon of light in a dark world, but this is nothing that is guaranteed to last. Freedom has to be won, over again, all the time. And we don't create a free society with guns, but with tolerance and respect.

It seems that the fear and anger in the US after September 11 have led to a severely reduced tolerance towards people who express their thoughts and feelings, if they are not aligned with those of the government. This is not what one would expect from the worlds greatest democracy.

Also, remeber that Hitler was elected by a majority. I'm not trying to compare any current US politician with Hitler. Not at all. I just want us to remember that we need more than the support of a majority to ensure freedom and a sound society. Compassion and understanding for all people, also those who are different, and a tolerance towards people of different views.

Regardless of what you think about the U.S. war against Iraq, I think you should be worried if the U.S. government will cut funding, or otherwise try to sabotage for people who express their thoughts and feelings.

A country where everbody agrees with the great leader can never be a free, democratic country.

DARPA Cancels OpenBSD Funding

Posted Apr 24, 2003 13:59 UTC (Thu) by freelsjd (guest, #250) [Link]

Should know better. What is the name of the funding agency. Along with contracts comes responsibility.