Gregor Best wrote:
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 09:55:04PM +0000, Franchini Fabien wrote:
[...]
I suggest to write a letter to theses companies who are known to using OpenBSD
or other product-related like OpenSSH. In this letter we can explain (as the
first
post from Theo) our issue. I'm sure they can give us an hand if they know our
problem. And in my opinion, ONLY a company can give us a long-term solution.
[...]
Maybe to inject a further point into this discussion... One of these
companies is Apple. They replaced ipfw with pf in recent releases of
Darwin (see [0]).
Since, with Darwin being Open Source, they seem not entirely against
spending resources on Open Source Software, and they profit in no small
margin from the OpenBSD project and its "satellites" like OpenSSH, they
might be a good recipient for a polite letter in request of help. Not
the least because they could use their assistance in their marketing
("Look how cool we are, we are paying them their electricity!").
Any large company will want something in return, mostly more money than
they gave you, whether direct or indirectly. OpenBSD staying alive
doesn't affect their bottom line, if we disappear they could always just
use one of the (albeit far less secure) alternatives. If we start asking
money for our code, that is what they'll do. I, for one, would rather
allow corporations to use my code for free without credit than to spend
long nights protecting my systems from the malware spewing from their
compromised machines.
If something like this is to survive, we'll need to provide a carrot,
rather than a stick. What I mean by this is that we need to give them a
reason why giving us money will be in their best interests, like
pointing out that by using our code, they are saving money by having to
produce and distribute less patches. Or perhaps offer to improve our
code in their favor, eg make it more efficient on their hardware in
exchange for hardware, money or both. To take the Apple example, we
could offer to make pf more OS-X friendly in exchange for a small
consideration, saving them money because it would require less time on
their part to adapt it.
