The folks at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have some explaining to do. The agency was funding work to help improve the OpenBSD operating system, best known for security  features that were of great interest to DARPA.
The operative word here is "was." Less than a week after OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt made a couple of mildly critical remarks, DARPA decided to cut off its financial support, pulling the rug out from under the project's upcoming hackathon.
Naturally, the agency hasn't come out and admitted that it was
retaliating against de Raadt and company for the remarks. But it hasn't
been forthcoming with a plausible reason for the decision, either, and the
timing is a bit too suspicious to draw any other conclusion.
Silencing Dissent
The actual source of the funding is the Air Force Research Laboratory,
which passed the money on to DARPA, which then turned over the money to
the University of Pennsylvania for work on several projects, most notably
OpenBSD. There are a lot of folks involved in this transaction -- but none
of them seems eager to step forward with any explanation for
pulling the funding.
Whether you appreciate de Raadt's opinions or not,
at least he'll step forward to offer them. It's shameful that DARPA
officials are hiding from public scrutiny while appearing to punish de
Raadt and the entire OpenBSD community for a few comments.
If the Air Force and DARPA were hoping to silence criticism, they've
failed miserably. The cancellation of funds for the OpenBSD hackathon
has generated far more attention than de Raadt's comments, not to
mention drawing a great deal of attention to those comments. Previously,
de Raadt's remarks hadn't made much of a ripple outside of the open source community and readers of the Globe and Mail. Now they've made national news.
In fact, the move has added fuel to the fire by making the U.S.
government look like a bully in trying to punish de Raadt for his
comments. Had DARPA, et al., done nothing, then de Raadt's comments would
likely have been forgotten within a week or so. Not only have the DARPA folks
embarrassed themselves by trying to stifle criticism, they've shown
themselves to be inept at public relations in the process.
By trying to punish de Raadt for his comments, if indeed that's what is going on,
they've given him a broader audience. Not only would it have been the
right thing to do to just ignore his comments, it also would have
been much better public relations policy. (continued...)
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