Military Drops OpenBSD Funding Because of de Raadt's Antiwar Comment

[Major Variola (ret)]

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - The U.S. military's research agency cut off
grant money for helping to develop a secure, free operating system after
a top programmer made anti-war statements to a major newspaper.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency halted the contract
less than two weeks after The Globe and Mail of Toronto published a
story in which programmer Theo de Raadt was quoted as saying he was
"uncomfortable" about the funding source.

"I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise
missile doesn't get built," de Raadt told the newspaper.

Within a few days, de Raadt said he received an e-mail from Jonathan
Smith, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania
and the grant's lead researcher, expressing discomfort over the
statements.

On Thursday, Smith notified de Raadt of the cancellation.

"A tenured professor was telling me not to exercise my freedom of
speech," de Raadt said.

Smith declined to comment on the matter, and DARPA did not return
telephone messages Friday. De Raadt's suspicions about the cancellation
could not be confirmed.

The $2.3 million grant had funded security improvements to the OpenBSD
operating system since 2001 as well as related projects.

OpenBSD, a variation of Unix designed for use on servers, is touted as
so secure that its default installation has had only one bug in the past
seven years.

Thousands of copies of OpenBSD have been downloaded in the past six
months. It's not clear, however, how many are in use.

De Raadt estimates about 85 percent of the DARPA grant has been spent,
with about $1 million being used to pay for OpenBSD developers. Much of
the work has been handled by a team of 80 unpaid volunteers.

Another $500,000 of the money funded the work of United Kingdom-based
researchers on a related project called OpenSSL, which is used to
encrypt data.

DARPA, which oversees research activities for the Pentagon, is best
known for developing the network that evolved into the Internet.

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