6 ms·

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 com

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, ego-maniac. As such many people are going to see this and laugh and think "good riddance", and will be happy to see OpenBSD disappear. That will only be enhanced by the fact the books are closed, the shortfall on the electric bill is inexplicably $20k, and nobody is prepared to explain the detail. In essence rudeness + shady accounting practice != open source community that should feel a sense of entitlement from non-core users It's a shame because the code (especially the crypto code) is really good. Seriously, go read it: I used to love reading the OpenBSD source, but I never contributed anything because Theo was such an absolute jerk. I hope the guys who work on the crypto stuff at least either keep doing so elsewhere (Free- or Net-), or a new project without the need for $20k in electricity bills spins up to keep going.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
You're entitled to your view and I won't disagree with some of it ... but shady accounting practices? What are you alleging exactly?
rubiquity 13y ago
We're in a post-NSA revelations world and you're happy to see a project like OpenBSD disappear just because the people behind it aren't nice?
- PaulRobinson 13y ago
  Yes, because other projects will rise in its place run by people with better social skills, and they are more likely to build tools of use to a wider audience, and we'll see wider acceptance of crypto. I genuinely believe my non-tech friends and family have such a poor approach to security, because the people who have a good approach to developing security tools have such a poor approach towards my non-tech friends and family.
dredmorbius 13y ago
I've been called an insult to idiots or similar by Theo de Ratt. Once. I use OpenSSH every fucking day. I'll take the insults. And apologize to the idiots. And pitch in when I can.
- transitionality 13y ago
  This is a good attitude. All of us have failings. Most of us fail at being geniuses. Theo fails at being diplomatic.
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
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 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134850) I know this is what RMS does, and actually I'm sympathetic with his views, but in that context it was bullshit. This is just one incident, who knows how much Theo has to deal with other people wasting his energy on non-issues, trivialities and misconceptions? For what it's worth, he isn't any less of a dick than Linus. Yet Linus consistently earns hero praise and adulation, the criticism of his personality being secondary and written off as justified. So why isn't Theo's justified?
- anthonyb 13y ago
  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 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 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.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    If you read through some of the OpenBSD pages, you can detect a lot of dislike for RMS. Example: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43
sliverstorm 13y ago
the shortfall on the electric bill is inexplicably $20k Quick back-of-the-envelope: At $0.12/kWh, the shortfall is about 20kW of continuous power. Do they have significant HVAC requirements? I don't think I see 20kW of iron in the two racks that get pictured.
- tobiasu 13y ago
  Yes, AC is required. Machines need to be shut down whenever it fails.
- chrissnell 13y ago
  For every watt you put in, you need to cool that watt, which requires a high percentage of a second watt. Some of that equipment is almost 20 years old, maybe more. One those old machines could warm an office back in 1994. On top of the electricity for the servers and for cooling, there is also maintenance: replacing ancient drives and other system components when they fail (which may require paying out the arse for some gear on eBay), fixing cooling equipment (ever replaced a dead AC unit in your house?), network maintenance and upgrades, internet connection, etc., etc. The list goes on and on. $20K seems reasonable to me. He's not asking for $20MM or even $200K, guys. He's not mining bitcoins. Please be reasonable.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    $20k is not inherently unreasonable, but I won't donate if I don't have a better idea of what is going on "behind the curtain", which is why I'm idly musing.
  - ars 13y ago
    > which requires a high percentage of a second watt. It's requires 1/3 of a watt. For every watt of heat you need 1/3 of a watt of cooling. (For typical A/C's.)
parennoob 13y ago
" Linus' rants on the Linux kernel lists are almost cookie cutter copies of Theo's." Linus is a jerk towards experienced maintainers. Theo is a jerk towards everyone. There is a big difference. I can't be bothered to look for it right now, but there was an email on lkml where an inexperienced contributor basically asked "should i just give up?" and Linus chipped in with quite a friendly manner and mentioned how important contributions from everyone were to the project.
- justin66 13y ago
  > Linus is a jerk towards experienced maintainers. Theo is a jerk towards everyone. There is a big difference. Plenty of us have had positive interactions with Theo.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    I get the feeling the people Theo yelled at are the same people Linus would yell at. Given Theo's behavior when RMS was trolling the misc list, Theo seemed quite calm.
    - justin66 13y ago
      There's a lot of fuzzy thinking in this thread. The idea that the emails which somehow come to our attention because they appear on internet blogs or something due to their OMG WTF value are representative of their author's normal, everyday output has as much merit as assuming, for example, that that photo of rackmounted OpenBSD computers on the openbsd.com page represents the entirety of the project's electricity usage.
      - nknighthb 13y ago
        I notice that yet again, only bald assertions come forth, never evidence. What do Theo and the project have to hide, exactly?
wbl 13y ago
The code quality and the fact that maintainer is blunt about problems are not unrelated.
- Fomite 13y ago
  Neither is a project getting shut down because they can't raise money and one of their public faces being a jerk.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    I highly doubt they are falling short of cash because of personality issues. I'm going to go with the fact that OpenBSD is much less popular than Linux and more niche, thus has a lot smaller userbase. And an even smaller userbase that is willing to donate money.
asdasf 13y ago
>So let's deal with the elephant in the room: the OpenBSD project is run by complete and utter jerks Really? Could you give me an example of that? Because from where I sit, as someone having been around the openbsd world for ~15 years, I don't see it. I see lots of people bitch about it, but never any examples of it actually happening. It is just something people seem to assume will be taken as gospel.
- PaulRobinson 13y ago
  I once offered to help work on some docs to make them a bit more user-friendly because at the time they were quite obtuse. Theo responded with something along the lines of requesting I please go away, as this project doesn't need people like me, and then a liberal sprinkling of lots of rude names and insults suggesting I was from under a rock/an idiot/etc. I offered help and enthusiasm for the project. He called me a lot of names and suggested OpenBSD wasn't for people who weren't like him. That's just me. Fine, I'm a big guy, I can take it. But I then watched for months as he did the same to countless other individuals. Newb: "Hey, we could do 'X'" Theo: "No, go away, I hate you", is pretty much the tone. Then there is the more public stuff. The stuff that is historic but a little larger. He created OpenBSD because the NetBSD core ousted him for his attitude and demeanour towards other developers. There is a whole section of his Wikipedia page dedicated to his "Outspokenness" which is a polite way of calling what is actually his "Obnoxiousness": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt#Outspokenness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt#Outspokenness Nobody doubts he can write code, and that OpenBSD - and OpenSSH in particular - was a bonus to the open source World, but my point is that he and his inner circle are hostile to the rest of the community who aren't quite like them. It's a clique. And cliques can't ask outsiders for help once they're established: they made up the rules, and they will live (and die), by those rules. Theo had a choice: compromise, and be nice to people and understand other people's needs; or, don't compromise and be a bit of a jerk and piss people off but stay true to your own values. He chose the latter. Fine. He should not be surprised that they are not running to their wallets when he needs $20k for electricity bills to continue running the project in that same way. I'm not being rude about this, I'm being pragmatic. I don't particularly want to see OpenBSD die, but I can't see many people rushing to save it, and that's because the top hierarchy are perceived as - and are documented as regularly behaving as - complete jerks. If Theo had been a little more temperate to more people, it's quite likely his $20k (and then some) would have been raised in under an hour. I know some FreeBSD guys have raised similar/larger amounts for smaller projects in the past within a day or two. How? By being nice people that other people want to support.
mrweasel 13y ago
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 was a bug report and the other was a few questions for a project I did while studying, but he was friendly and helpful. Even if Theo had been a jerk, that doesn't change the fact that I've gotten a lot of value from OpenBSD in the past, without being asked for anything back, until now. The closed books doesn't really bother me, I doubt that Theo or someone at the OpenBSD Foundation is going to run of to Cuba with the money. Maybe we should just accept that the people that they are asking for help are people like me who see a value proposition in: I give them €20 a month and OpenBSD doesn't go away. Only takes 1000 people like me to solve this and surely there has to be 1000 people in the world for who this is a great deal.
- ams6110 13y ago
  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.
davidgerard 13y ago
If you EVER use OpenSSH for ANYTHING, you can cough up $20 for grumpy Theo. (I've interacted with Mr deRaadt once. He was perfectly lovely and helpful.)
- nknighthb 13y ago
  > If you EVER use OpenSSH for ANYTHING, you can cough up $20 for grumpy Theo. Theo provides negative value. There are no circumstances (least of all extortion) that would make me give him money or aid of any sort. > (I've interacted with Mr deRaadt once. He was perfectly lovely and helpful.) Most of us will never know. His public attitude has ensured that.
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    If you don't want to aid him, that's quite alright, but I'm not sure how OpenSSH balanced against his abusive comments to select users on mailing lists is somehow a net negative... It's not like we're talking about Wagner's antisemitism vs his music here!
protomyth 13y ago
Really, the times I dealt with them they were quite pleasant and helpful.
forgottenpass 13y ago
There is "opinionated software" and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious, ego-maniac. They're more or less the same thing, one is how you see people you like, the other is how you see people that rub you the wrong way.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

You're entitled to your view and I won't disagree with some of it ... but shady accounting practices? What are you alleging exactly?

rubiquity 13y ago

We're in a post-NSA revelations world and you're happy to see a project like OpenBSD disappear just because the people behind it aren't nice?

PaulRobinson 13y ago
Yes, because other projects will rise in its place run by people with better social skills, and they are more likely to build tools of use to a wider audience, and we'll see wider acceptance of crypto. I genuinely believe my non-tech friends and family have such a poor approach to security, because the people who have a good approach to developing security tools have such a poor approach towards my non-tech friends and family.

dredmorbius 13y ago

I've been called an insult to idiots or similar by Theo de Ratt. Once. I use OpenSSH every fucking day. I'll take the insults. And apologize to the idiots. And pitch in when I can.

transitionality 13y ago
This is a good attitude. All of us have failings. Most of us fail at being geniuses. Theo fails at being diplomatic.

vezzy-fnord 13y ago

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 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134850) I know this is what RMS does, and actually I'm sympathetic with his views, but in that context it was bullshit. This is just one incident, who knows how much Theo has to deal with other people wasting his energy on non-issues, trivialities and misconceptions? For what it's worth, he isn't any less of a dick than Linus. Yet Linus consistently earns hero praise and adulation, the criticism of his personality being secondary and written off as justified. So why isn't Theo's justified?

anthonyb 13y ago
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 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 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.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  If you read through some of the OpenBSD pages, you can detect a lot of dislike for RMS. Example: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43

sliverstorm 13y ago

the shortfall on the electric bill is inexplicably $20k Quick back-of-the-envelope: At $0.12/kWh, the shortfall is about 20kW of continuous power. Do they have significant HVAC requirements? I don't think I see 20kW of iron in the two racks that get pictured.

tobiasu 13y ago
Yes, AC is required. Machines need to be shut down whenever it fails.
chrissnell 13y ago
For every watt you put in, you need to cool that watt, which requires a high percentage of a second watt. Some of that equipment is almost 20 years old, maybe more. One those old machines could warm an office back in 1994. On top of the electricity for the servers and for cooling, there is also maintenance: replacing ancient drives and other system components when they fail (which may require paying out the arse for some gear on eBay), fixing cooling equipment (ever replaced a dead AC unit in your house?), network maintenance and upgrades, internet connection, etc., etc. The list goes on and on. $20K seems reasonable to me. He's not asking for $20MM or even $200K, guys. He's not mining bitcoins. Please be reasonable.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  $20k is not inherently unreasonable, but I won't donate if I don't have a better idea of what is going on "behind the curtain", which is why I'm idly musing.
- ars 13y ago
  > which requires a high percentage of a second watt. It's requires 1/3 of a watt. For every watt of heat you need 1/3 of a watt of cooling. (For typical A/C's.)

parennoob 13y ago

" Linus' rants on the Linux kernel lists are almost cookie cutter copies of Theo's." Linus is a jerk towards experienced maintainers. Theo is a jerk towards everyone. There is a big difference. I can't be bothered to look for it right now, but there was an email on lkml where an inexperienced contributor basically asked "should i just give up?" and Linus chipped in with quite a friendly manner and mentioned how important contributions from everyone were to the project.

justin66 13y ago
> Linus is a jerk towards experienced maintainers. Theo is a jerk towards everyone. There is a big difference. Plenty of us have had positive interactions with Theo.
- protomyth 13y ago
  I get the feeling the people Theo yelled at are the same people Linus would yell at. Given Theo's behavior when RMS was trolling the misc list, Theo seemed quite calm.
  - justin66 13y ago
    There's a lot of fuzzy thinking in this thread. The idea that the emails which somehow come to our attention because they appear on internet blogs or something due to their OMG WTF value are representative of their author's normal, everyday output has as much merit as assuming, for example, that that photo of rackmounted OpenBSD computers on the openbsd.com page represents the entirety of the project's electricity usage.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      I notice that yet again, only bald assertions come forth, never evidence. What do Theo and the project have to hide, exactly?

wbl 13y ago

The code quality and the fact that maintainer is blunt about problems are not unrelated.

Fomite 13y ago
Neither is a project getting shut down because they can't raise money and one of their public faces being a jerk.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  I highly doubt they are falling short of cash because of personality issues. I'm going to go with the fact that OpenBSD is much less popular than Linux and more niche, thus has a lot smaller userbase. And an even smaller userbase that is willing to donate money.

asdasf 13y ago

>So let's deal with the elephant in the room: the OpenBSD project is run by complete and utter jerks Really? Could you give me an example of that? Because from where I sit, as someone having been around the openbsd world for ~15 years, I don't see it. I see lots of people bitch about it, but never any examples of it actually happening. It is just something people seem to assume will be taken as gospel.

PaulRobinson 13y ago
I once offered to help work on some docs to make them a bit more user-friendly because at the time they were quite obtuse. Theo responded with something along the lines of requesting I please go away, as this project doesn't need people like me, and then a liberal sprinkling of lots of rude names and insults suggesting I was from under a rock/an idiot/etc. I offered help and enthusiasm for the project. He called me a lot of names and suggested OpenBSD wasn't for people who weren't like him. That's just me. Fine, I'm a big guy, I can take it. But I then watched for months as he did the same to countless other individuals. Newb: "Hey, we could do 'X'" Theo: "No, go away, I hate you", is pretty much the tone. Then there is the more public stuff. The stuff that is historic but a little larger. He created OpenBSD because the NetBSD core ousted him for his attitude and demeanour towards other developers. There is a whole section of his Wikipedia page dedicated to his "Outspokenness" which is a polite way of calling what is actually his "Obnoxiousness": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt#Outspokenness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt#Outspokenness Nobody doubts he can write code, and that OpenBSD - and OpenSSH in particular - was a bonus to the open source World, but my point is that he and his inner circle are hostile to the rest of the community who aren't quite like them. It's a clique. And cliques can't ask outsiders for help once they're established: they made up the rules, and they will live (and die), by those rules. Theo had a choice: compromise, and be nice to people and understand other people's needs; or, don't compromise and be a bit of a jerk and piss people off but stay true to your own values. He chose the latter. Fine. He should not be surprised that they are not running to their wallets when he needs $20k for electricity bills to continue running the project in that same way. I'm not being rude about this, I'm being pragmatic. I don't particularly want to see OpenBSD die, but I can't see many people rushing to save it, and that's because the top hierarchy are perceived as - and are documented as regularly behaving as - complete jerks. If Theo had been a little more temperate to more people, it's quite likely his $20k (and then some) would have been raised in under an hour. I know some FreeBSD guys have raised similar/larger amounts for smaller projects in the past within a day or two. How? By being nice people that other people want to support.

mrweasel 13y ago

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 was a bug report and the other was a few questions for a project I did while studying, but he was friendly and helpful. Even if Theo had been a jerk, that doesn't change the fact that I've gotten a lot of value from OpenBSD in the past, without being asked for anything back, until now. The closed books doesn't really bother me, I doubt that Theo or someone at the OpenBSD Foundation is going to run of to Cuba with the money. Maybe we should just accept that the people that they are asking for help are people like me who see a value proposition in: I give them €20 a month and OpenBSD doesn't go away. Only takes 1000 people like me to solve this and surely there has to be 1000 people in the world for who this is a great deal.

ams6110 13y ago
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.

davidgerard 13y ago

If you EVER use OpenSSH for ANYTHING, you can cough up $20 for grumpy Theo. (I've interacted with Mr deRaadt once. He was perfectly lovely and helpful.)

nknighthb 13y ago
> If you EVER use OpenSSH for ANYTHING, you can cough up $20 for grumpy Theo. Theo provides negative value. There are no circumstances (least of all extortion) that would make me give him money or aid of any sort. > (I've interacted with Mr deRaadt once. He was perfectly lovely and helpful.) Most of us will never know. His public attitude has ensured that.
- scott_karana 13y ago
  If you don't want to aid him, that's quite alright, but I'm not sure how OpenSSH balanced against his abusive comments to select users on mailing lists is somehow a net negative... It's not like we're talking about Wagner's antisemitism vs his music here!

protomyth 13y ago

Really, the times I dealt with them they were quite pleasant and helpful.

forgottenpass 13y ago

There is "opinionated software" and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious, ego-maniac. They're more or less the same thing, one is how you see people you like, the other is how you see people that rub you the wrong way.