DARPA denies story Re: Grant for OpenBSD...

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Drzyzgula <bob () drzyzgula org>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 20:52:03 -0400
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: DARPA denies story Re: Grant for OpenBSD...

http://boston.com/dailynews/108/economy/Agency_denies_dropping_project%3A.sh
tml

Agency denies dropping project's funding after anti-war comments

By Matthew Fordahl, Associated Press, 4/18/2003 18:48

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) A programmer of a secure, free
operating system claims the U.S. research agency cut
off grant money after he made an anti-war statement to
a major newspaper, but officials denied the grant had
been canceled.

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, de Raadt said.

''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.

Late Friday, DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker said the project
was under review.

''As part of our standard process, we are reviewing and
evaluating the work now being done and proposed to be done
in the future,'' she said in an e-mailed statement. ''We're
sorry if this review process has been misinterpreted as
an effort to cancel the work.''

Smith declined to comment on the matter and referred calls
to DARPA.

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.

On the Net:

OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd.org

DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil


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