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

So let&#x27;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&#x2F;less experienced contributors. Linus&#x27; rants on the Linux kernel lists are almost cookie cutter copies of Theo&#x27;s.<p>There is &quot;opinionated software&quot; and then there is Theo being an intolerable, obnoxious, ego-maniac.<p>As such many people are going to see this and laugh and think &quot;good riddance&quot;, and will be happy to see OpenBSD disappear.<p>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.<p>In essence rudeness + shady accounting practice != open source community that should feel a sense of entitlement from non-core users<p>It&#x27;s a shame because the code (especially the crypto code) is <i>really</i> 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.<p>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.

Just to make the call to action a little more direct, the donation link is here:<p><a href="http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsdfoundation.org&#x2F;donations.html</a>

Useful (non-slashdot) links:<p>Initial ask for help: <a href="http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=138730448307723&amp;w=2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;marc.info&#x2F;?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=138730448307723&amp;w=2</a><p>How much it costs: <a href="http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=138972987203440&amp;w=2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;marc.info&#x2F;?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=138972987203440&amp;w=2</a><p>Why old hardware platforms matter: <a href="http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&amp;m=138973312304511&amp;w=2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;marc.info&#x2F;?l=openbsd-tech&amp;m=138973312304511&amp;w=2</a><p>Why not kickstarter: <a href="http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&amp;m=138973837906139&amp;w=2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;marc.info&#x2F;?l=openbsd-tech&amp;m=138973837906139&amp;w=2</a><p>And most importantly, the donation link: <a href="http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsdfoundation.org&#x2F;donations.html</a>

<p><pre><code> &gt; The OpenBSD project uses a lot of electricity for running the &gt; development and build machines. A number of logistical reasons &gt; prevents us from moving the machines to another location which might &gt; offer space&#x2F;power for free, so let&#x27;s not allow the conversation to go &gt; that way. </code></pre> I don&#x27;t understand this comment. If the choice came down to moving versus shutting down entirely, why is moving an unacceptable answer?

I feel like it&#x27;s useful to point that OpenBSD won&#x27;t say exactly <i>why</i> the bill is so high, and apparently they don&#x27;t have open accounting. That bothers me a bit.<p>Link to relevant reddit comment thread: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1vakm9/openbsd_developers_of_openssh_opensmtpd_pf_we/ceqoqse" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;linux&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1vakm9&#x2F;openbsd_develo...</a>

Can someone explain why I would want to support OpenBSD?<p>I get, from the comments, that: openSSH is great (sure, I can believe it) and Theo is an asshole but you should compromise and give them money anyway.<p>I don&#x27;t get why a parallel operating system ought to continue existing, especially one that comes from the same legacy codebase as several others. I also don&#x27;t get why, if openSSH is so good, the goal isn&#x27;t to write a new SSH or fund openSSH separately and drop the rest that can&#x27;t be supported. Why does the world needs OpenBSD instead of having the talent focused on making a smaller number (..Linux) better.<p>Certainly the answer might be &#x27;because that&#x27;s what the talent wants to work on&#x27; but that&#x27;s not a good reason to fund it.<p>I have also gotten the impression, from limited observation, that there are real problems in the open source community with too many people doing the same thing and not working together, and with people being jerks (or just generally anti-social or at least not-highly-personable) and making it hard to get involved or care about otherwise important projects. I don&#x27;t think supporting Theo, from what I&#x27;ve read here, helps that trend.<p>I know very little. Can someone fill me in?

all I want to say on this (to me, tiresome) topic is: if you or your company (especially if that is one and the same!!!!1) have ever used OpenSSH you should at the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM buy a damn CD. you really ought to donate a solid hundred in your local currency but if you can&#x27;t, skip a couple pints this month and buy a CD.<p>if you use CARP or OpenBGPd and have never bought a CD, you need to buy two ;p

I get that a lot of people don&#x27;t care. I even get that some people have an unrealistic expectation that they should know how every dime of their donation is going to be accounted for, an expectation that must either not extend to their other charitable donations or serve as an indicator that they don&#x27;t give a lot of money to charities at all.<p>What I don&#x27;t get is where people - presumably people involved in information technology - conclude that $20k&#x2F;year is a lot of money to spend on electricity. What utopia of free electricity for all are these people living in? Can I host a few servers there?

If the price of OpenSSH is keeping all of OpenBSD running, I&#x27;ll send OpenBSD some money.<p>I&#x27;ve never used OpenBSD except to tinker with it, and likely never will. But, I use OpenSSH hundreds of times a day (both in automated jobs and in the terminal). It is utterly necessary to me; likely necessary for all of us, really. So, while a company would have shed the extra weight and focused on its core product that users love years ago, OpenBSD keeps OpenSSH as a side effect. I guess I&#x27;m OK with that.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s even necessary for OpenSSH developers to understand systems level programming at a level only OS developers can grasp, and maybe OpenSSH wouldn&#x27;t be the absolute beast it is today without that kind of influence and widespread knowledge found in the OpenBSD team. I dunno. Whatever it is, I support the people and the things they do for me in OpenSSH even if I don&#x27;t care much about OpenBSD.

They accept bitcoins, here is their donation page, and they&#x27;re the people that maintain openSSH, the software that I&#x27;d bet ALL of us use every day:<p><a href="http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsdfoundation.org&#x2F;donations.html</a>

You may not be using OpenBSD, but the same organization is behind OpenSSH.<p>Imagine being without ssh, then go donate. :)

They could probably kill support and power for some of the &quot;dead silicon&quot; platforms they support. If the CPU hasn&#x27;t been manufactured in the last decade or two, why support it?

As I commented when this appeared here the other day as: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7059581" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7059581</a><p>The fact this was submitted here and disappeared is kind of indicative of their problems.

As a long time FreeBSD user I wish the BSDs would find a way to &quot;unite&quot; in a way, try to put redundant infrastructures in common.<p>Right now I feel like linux is slowly eating all the market share, if it continues that way the BSDs will regress back to the lines of Hurd and Plan9.<p>Competition is always a good thing, even in the OSS world.

OpenBSD overall is interesting. The installer alone signals how simple and elegant is the rest of the OS (take a look at the source [0]). A dozen basic questions give or take, and one can have a fully-functional box.<p>Revenue-wise, the best move would be for a shop like iXsystems, Pair or ByteMark to step up to cover costs. And, any shop that uses OpenSSH on a large scale should be able to pony up some cash to keep Open{SSH,BSD,CVS,{NTP,BGP,OSPF,SMTP,IKE}D} alive. For example, it would be nice to see OpenBSD on Amazon, and AWS might even be willing to fund kernel changes and more to accomplish that.<p>Finally: check out this handy script which makes it OpenBSD a whole lot easier to get started and complete common tasks. [1]<p>References:<p>[0] <a href="http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsd.org&#x2F;cgi-bin&#x2F;cvsweb&#x2F;src&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="https://gist.github.com/steakknife/6120072/raw/shave" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;steakknife&#x2F;6120072&#x2F;raw&#x2F;shave</a>

A little bit off topic, but this reminds me again of how much the web needs an easy payment system (as easy as in-app purchases in mobile). EFF, wikipedia, I often see notices or news of things they&#x27;re doing and think to myself that I should donate. But I&#x27;m usually in the middle of something and stopping everything to take out my wallet, get the CC, fill out a form, etc. is just too disruptive. So I try to remind myself to do it later, but then forget.

i used to have commit but was kicked out (along with a bunch of other people over the years). i even wrote a book on openbsd. what i see from afar is that obsd alienated a lot of people with theo&#x27;s behavior, theo&#x27;s gone and surrounded himself with sycophants, and the rest of the world caught up to them (largely) in features. as a result the userbase has shrunk - why put up with tirades if you have a secure platform elsewhere - and the features have remained stale.<p>theo was a visionary, and together with some other really brilliant folks (not counting myself as one of them) accomplished what people said no one could. since then he&#x27;s been fine tuning that vision but has more or less kept it at around 2003. the world has changed, theo - and as a result the project - hasn&#x27;t. so, the world caught up and users moved on.

<a href="http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openbsdfoundation.org&#x2F;donations.html</a> and <a href="http://openbsd.org/want.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;openbsd.org&#x2F;want.html</a>

I would love to see more FOSS projects on GitTip (<a href="https://www.gittip.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gittip.com&#x2F;</a>). It would seem to me that regular small donations that can be budgeted would be more helpful than just scratching where and when it itches. Giving $1 a week versus $50 at once is so much more convenient. We as the FOSS community need to own up that writing and hosting software isn&#x27;t free, and most of us as highly paid engineers are in a position to be charitable and help out. My resolution for this year is to give away 1% of my income to the FOSS community and related charities (EFF, Wikipedia, Ada Initiative, PSF, etc). I challenge everyone on HackerNews to do the same. Stop bitching and put your money where your mouth and let&#x27;s go help make a better world.

VIDEOS<p>Exploit Mitigation Techniques: an Update After 10 Years (by Theo) <a href="http://tech.yandex.com/events/ruBSD/2013/talks/103/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tech.yandex.com&#x2F;events&#x2F;ruBSD&#x2F;2013&#x2F;talks&#x2F;103&#x2F;</a><p>An OpenBSD talk by Michael Lucas <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXPV3vJF99k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BXPV3vJF99k</a>

If you use OpenSSH... you benefit from OpenBSD&#x27;s work, even if you&#x27;re not an OpenBSD user.<p>SSH alone, and all the utilities that use it... have made my work&#x2F;life SOOOOOO much easier. That may sound silly, but when you don&#x27;t have to search for some 3rd-party utility because what you need is built-in... it makes life easier.<p>I&#x27;m donating.

Seems insane that they can&#x27;t get enough funding given the current security climate. Think of some of the eccentrics whatever you want but they have always been fighting the good fight as far as I&#x27;m concerned.<p>No BLOB is a very sane idea for example. I think we&#x27;d be further along if that was enforced stricter by other projects.

Although the priority at this point is certainly paying the electric bill, you might also consider taking a look at the &quot;Hardware Wanted&quot; page [0] and seeing if you have anything laying around that one of the developers can use. It&#x27;s typically not brand new top-of-the-line gear they&#x27;re looking for so you might be surprised.<p>[0]: <a href="http://openbsd.org/want.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;openbsd.org&#x2F;want.html</a>

I&#x27;m not an OpenBSD user, but I like their focus on security. And this could be a positive influence on other platforms. Donated.

I suggest funding a solar power system, especially since the newer panels are even more efficient for a lower net cost-per-watt&#x2F;kWH ratio.<p>Even on cloudy days the new panels will produce energy.<p>The panels are usually warranted to produce at least a certain (80% on mine) percentage for a set period of time. (25 years on my 5 + year old PV arrays) so the other considerations would be a charge controller&#x2F;charger, a voltage inverter (from DC to AC) cabling and batteries for storage.<p>Of all the items, the batteries will be the main recurring expense as they generally don&#x27;t last as long as the PV panels. Depending on type of battery, and how heavily cycled they are, batteries can last for 10 years, with proper care and use.<p>A system which maintains a constantly higher amperage will last longer than a system that has been allowed to be exceedingly discharged. (no less than 80% of capacity)<p>In my area electricity sells for $0.49USD per KWH ergo solar is the logical solution.<p>The end result is a self reliant system, independent of the issues associated with distributed power sources, while increasing responsibility for the consumer.<p>I find the cost&#x2F;benefit ratio to be in favor of under-funded consumers, especially in the long term.

Just sent 50 USD their way. Its not much but it is as far as I can spend. I recommend everyone helping. OpenBSD is one of those projects that benefit everyone not only those using it.

I read through some of this thread last night and was about to throw them a few bucks. I don&#x27;t really consider myself an OpenBSD user although I do have a router here that runs it for pf. Other than that, I haven&#x27;t touched it in probably a decade.<p>I&#x27;m glad I read through the whole thread because by the time I got to the end of it I had changed my mind. In one e-mail to the list, Theo basically said (in effect) that a donation of $20 wasn&#x27;t even worth it. (Granted, $20 isn&#x27;t much in the grand scheme of things but I feel that it reasonable covers my use of OpenBSD.)<p>There are many people who think that Theo is the worst thing for the Project (because he&#x27;s such an asshole). OTOH, however, there are many who think that the Project wouldn&#x27;t exist if it <i>weren&#x27;t</i> for Theo.

A lot of the discussion so far revolves around whether or not Theo can be abrasive. Who cares?<p>I would rather have a non compromising, highly secure operating system available, with all the source code available for me to see (none of that binary blob business) than a mediocre operating system that was somewhat secure from a guy who was really chill.<p>Funding the OpenBSD project is not a decision about the personality of Theo, its a decision on the usefulness and and the quality of work that the OpenBSD community creates.<p>When I am setting up and configuring and relying on a server with OpenBSD, I could care less if Theo is eccentric or not. I am in awe of the technical brilliance of OpenBSD.<p>And yes I have donated and do donate to the project, and I encourage clients I have that are running on OpenBSD to do the same.

What will happen to OpenSSH if OpenBSD can&#x27;t keep the lights on?

I wonder if this is a case of OS Darwinism. The fact that it seems to be hanging on by a thread shows most companies are using and contributing to Linux. I have never used OpenBSD so not sure what it overs over Linux as a Unix implementation?

what i find interesting (read: suspicious) is how they have seemingly prioritized and budgeted other things ahead of paying for electricity.<p>when i make budgeting decisions (whether personal or in business), i start with the <i>needs</i> before going to the &quot;nice to haves&quot;. for openbsd, i can&#x27;t help but assume powering their various servers&#x2F;systems is kiiind of a priority...<p>so what i want to know is: - the over all budget $ amount for 2014 - what was the cost of power in 2013 * how did you get to $20k for 2014? - which priorities are worth funding over power<p>my suspicion is that there&#x27;s plenty of room for give and take here.

Thanks for linking it here and would be better if it was linked to an article providing additional details other than electricity costs. Other users have posted the relevant links.<p>On another note, the readability of the font was a turn off for me. Fortunately, there is an option to view it in plain text. adding &amp;q=raw at the end of the URL. <a href="http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=138972987203440&amp;w=2&amp;q=raw" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;marc.info&#x2F;?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=138972987203440&amp;w=2&amp;q=raw</a>

I&#x27;m excited about buying a cupcake from one of the OpenBSD developers at the bake sale.

I can see their point about &quot;We need to keep this VAX around because building on actual hardware is different from building on emulation&quot;, however I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s bits of infrastructure, CRTs hooked to KVMs, etc, that could be replaced with newer and more efficient gear that can help with the power bill. You don&#x27;t have to run the ENTIRE place on cast-off donations and stuff out of a dumpster.

I think OpenBSD should reach out directly to manufacturers of the many hardware platforms they support (HP, SPARC (now Oracle), etc) and ask for donations. Of course, only the companies that are still in business.

just donated 0.10 btc. really easy with bitpay integration. would rather not give paypal or my cc the fees.

I used to use OpenBSD on my daily laptop about 8 years ago. Loved it. Worked for a University and we had a few OpenBSD Servers in my department for web serving, email, etc. No other departments did.<p>Why did I stop? Theo was such an ass about questions on &quot;his&quot; mailing lists that, well, there were friendlier communities out there.<p>OpenSSH, however, I use a lot so I could donate a few bucks for that.

Donated. Hope it helps.

Perhaps it would be best to move all non-specialized builds into Amazon or Rackspace or some automated CI service, and to move the specialized builds to a differnet, less expensive place, or keep them where they are. At the very least your electricity costs will go down.

22 seems an appropiate amount. Or whatever your portnumber is for your SSH-server.

I don&#x27;t see the point - they should ask for subscriptions, not for donations. What will they do next month &#x2F; year, ask again? And again?

The bigger question is who pays $2000&#x2F;month for electricity for a server?

This may be a silly question but could they virtualise the process on EC2?

What about emulators?

I would love to donate some Litecoin

The one with the gold makes all the rules.

I donated 50 bucks. These guys have been awesome for a long time. Sorry it took me this long to donate.<p>EDIT: Here&#x27;s the thing. I don&#x27;t directly use OpenBSD, but they have influenced more than just UNIX for a long time.