Newsforge interviews Theo deRaadt

[n0cmonkey]

Link.

Reading it now.

 

[phisrow]

It's a little bit sad how the guys with the permissive licence take a much more principled stand than do the majority of the GPL people.

We really need more people like Theo deRaadt, he gets it done without giving an inch on openness. There are so few, relatively speaking, who do that.

 

[n0cmonkey]

This is pretty cool:

NF: Why should someone use OpenBSD instead of another operating system, besides security?

TdR: I don't really take any position of advocacy. People should use what they want to, and I am not the right person to say anyone "should" do anything. But hey, if someone is adventurous, check it out.

Mind boggling:

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

Yay Taiwan!

When it comes to documentation requests, an Asian company that says no is rare. An American company that says yes is rare.

If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame.

I will say it here -- if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.

HAHAHA!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: phisrow
It's a little bit sad how the guys with the permissive licence take a much more principled stand than do the majority of the GPL people.

We really need more people like Theo deRaadt, he gets it done without giving an inch on openness. There are so few, relatively speaking, who do that.

So few being pretty much no others.

 

[unmerited]

Nice read, thanks. I like what Theo deRaadt had to say. With the release of 3.9, might be time for me to try out OpenBSD. Used FreeBSD years ago but that's the last BSD I've used.


unmerited

 

[drag]

I wouldn't pick OpenBSD as the 'most secure operating system evar'... There are other operating systems that are much more secure then OpenBSD..

However I expect that OpenBSD is the most secure operating system that is actually usefull for something.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: phisrow
It's a little bit sad how the guys with the permissive licence take a much more principled stand than do the majority of the GPL people.

How do you defined 'majority'.

I would expect that you have many more people with all sorts of viewpoints that are GPL users/developers/whatever because there are just so much many more of them then OpenBSD users/developers/whatever.

There are plenty of Linux people that are insanely zeolots on the subject. Probably most of the GNU folks, for instance. Look at RMS.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Mind boggling:

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

That's not entirely fair. The linux folks are not obligated to reverse engineer hardware and it is up to them to decide when they feel safe, from a legal perspective, to do so. I hear that Germany has some fundamentally different ideas on copyright and intellectual property than most of the english speaking world so it's not really for us to judge them. Of course they shouldn't be resorting to blobs, but they are allowed to simply not use the hardware. I didn't hear anybody say that they accepted blobs.

 

[bersl2]

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

This does not sound like "the whole story", in that some clarification should be sought directly from the authors of forcedeth (to whom I assume Theo is referring).

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: drag
I wouldn't pick OpenBSD as the 'most secure operating system evar'... There are other operating systems that are much more secure then OpenBSD..

However I expect that OpenBSD is the most secure operating system that is actually usefull for something.

I just put that in there to entice people. I don't care if it's the most secure or not.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Mind boggling:

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

That's not entirely fair. The linux folks are not obligated to reverse engineer hardware and it is up to them to decide when they feel safe, from a legal perspective, to do so. I hear that Germany has some fundamentally different ideas on copyright and intellectual property than most of the english speaking world so it's not really for us to judge them. Of course they shouldn't be resorting to blobs, but they are allowed to simply not use the hardware. I didn't hear anybody say that they accepted blobs.

Reverse engineering is legal just about everywhere. Hell, it's a State sponsored activity in China.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: bersl2

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

This does not sound like "the whole story", in that some clarification should be sought directly from the authors of forcedeth (to whom I assume Theo is referring).

Let us know what they say.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: bersl2

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

This does not sound like "the whole story", in that some clarification should be sought directly from the authors of forcedeth (to whom I assume Theo is referring).

Let us know what they say.

I said "should", not "will".

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: bersl2
I said "should", not "will".

Of course.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Reverse engineering is legal just about everywhere. Hell, it's a State sponsored activity in China.

Fine, but that doesn't mean there's a moral obligation to do it. And just because it's legal doesn't mean nVidia can't give them more trouble than it's worth.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Reverse engineering is legal just about everywhere. Hell, it's a State sponsored activity in China.

Fine, but that doesn't mean there's a moral obligation to do it. And just because it's legal doesn't mean nVidia can't give them more trouble than it's worth.

Of course there isn't a moral obligation to do it. You could go without an nVidia ethernet driver or use ****** binary blobs. You'd think that if the Linux developers cared about Free software they'd answer a couple of questions, off the record if they wished. What's nVidia going to do? Sue them for figuring out how to use their hardware?

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Mind boggling:

NF: NFE, the Nvidia nForce MCP Ethernet adapter. How did you manage to write this driver? Is it reverse-engineered?

TdR: Nvidia did not give anyone documentation. Instead, they expect people to load a gigantic blob of binary code into their kernel, and just be happy with that. Some Linux people in Germany reverse-engineered the driver years ago, but the rough story I heard is that Nvidia asked them to stop, and they did. This just astounds me! In any case, Jonathan Gray (who started this effort) asked for their help with a few problematic technical details, and they refused. I could not believe that, so I asked as well -- and they refused again. These are Linux developers, basically placing the community in a situation where they have to run a binary blob of unknown code from a vendor, instead of sticking to their guns about open source? I must admit, I just don't understand some people. They must have much more flexibility to their belief systems than I have.

Damien Bergamini joined Jonathan toward the end and got all the bugs out of the driver. We are happy to say that it appears to be working better than the Nvidia binary blob. It is also significantly smaller, and it is very clean source code.

That's not entirely fair. The linux folks are not obligated to reverse engineer hardware and it is up to them to decide when they feel safe, from a legal perspective, to do so. I hear that Germany has some fundamentally different ideas on copyright and intellectual property than most of the english speaking world so it's not really for us to judge them. Of course they shouldn't be resorting to blobs, but they are allowed to simply not use the hardware. I didn't hear anybody say that they accepted blobs.

Reverse engineering is legal just about everywhere. Hell, it's a State sponsored activity in China.

There was a talk at FOSDEM this year about nvidia drivers for X, an multiple people there said they'd gotten cease&decists from nvidia as a result of their work to produce an open source driver that did 3d.

edit: Oh, and there was some concern that as the cards get more advanced and start including simple cores (e.g. MIPS processors), the binary drivers might be loading large programs onto the video card, and those programs would have to be clean-room reverse engineered and rewritten by someone else (someone not tainted by seeing the nvidia code) to not break copyright law.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

There was a talk at FOSDEM this year about nvidia drivers for X, an multiple people there said they'd gotten cease&decists from nvidia as a result of their work to produce an open source driver that did 3d.

edit: Oh, and there was some concern that as the cards get more advanced and start including simple cores (e.g. MIPS processors), the binary drivers might be loading large programs onto the video card, and those programs would have to be clean-room reverse engineered and rewritten by someone else (someone not tainted by seeing the nvidia code) to not break copyright law.

A cease and desist just means someone didn't like what you were doing. It isn't legally binding or anything.

 

[drag]

What actual drivers are you guys talking about, can you find a link to that article or something?

Because this is what I find in 2.6.16 source code tree in drivers/net/forcedeth.c

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: drag
What actual drivers are you guys talking about, can you find a link to that article or something?

Because this is what I find in 2.6.16 source code tree in drivers/net/forcedeth.c

I'm guessing he means forcedeth, but I haven't seen anything specific.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: CTho9305

There was a talk at FOSDEM this year about nvidia drivers for X, an multiple people there said they'd gotten cease&decists from nvidia as a result of their work to produce an open source driver that did 3d.

edit: Oh, and there was some concern that as the cards get more advanced and start including simple cores (e.g. MIPS processors), the binary drivers might be loading large programs onto the video card, and those programs would have to be clean-room reverse engineered and rewritten by someone else (someone not tainted by seeing the nvidia code) to not break copyright law.

A cease and desist just means someone didn't like what you were doing. It isn't legally binding or anything.

It's a good way to get someone who isn't extremely motivated to stop, since generally computer geek college kids don't want to deal with going to court, even if they're going to win.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: CTho9305

There was a talk at FOSDEM this year about nvidia drivers for X, an multiple people there said they'd gotten cease&decists from nvidia as a result of their work to produce an open source driver that did 3d.

edit: Oh, and there was some concern that as the cards get more advanced and start including simple cores (e.g. MIPS processors), the binary drivers might be loading large programs onto the video card, and those programs would have to be clean-room reverse engineered and rewritten by someone else (someone not tainted by seeing the nvidia code) to not break copyright law.

A cease and desist just means someone didn't like what you were doing. It isn't legally binding or anything.

It's a good way to get someone who isn't extremely motivated to stop, since generally computer geek college kids don't want to deal with going to court, even if they're going to win.

I know. It's depressing. One nation, under lawyers, bending over for all its worth.