The anarchist/socialists are a particular kind that came from different groups of anti-soviet socialists (in Europe they where a whole stack of mostly very small parties left of the traditional labour parties). They claim "real" socialism was much closer to anarchism then the Stalinists say. Actually the socialists in late 19 century in some cases cooperated with the liberals. The anarchist/socialists originated in the 60s and kept going in the 70s particularly in Europe I guess, but there was sub culture of hippies etc of this kind in the US as well.
They largely disappeared and many dumped their anarchist/socialists dogma and focused on what they where against. I.e. they became the modern anti-capitalists that demonstrate against the G7, G8, World bank etc in Seattle and many other places (UK, Germany, Italy...).

I apologize if posting on old threads is taboo around here, but the people who were curious about Theo de Raadt's politics in the past may be interested in my attempts to contact him via e-mail and ask how he feels about Anarcho-Capitalists like myself who've acquired a special affinity for his work.

You see, the people of my philosophical persuasion consider "intellectual property" to be unjustifiable government-based aggression, and this also applies to the enforcement of alleged "licenses" like GPL. You can read more about my ideas on this thread on another forum. (Note that that forum is an almost-unmoderated hangout for libertarian nuts like myself, so it's not for children or the faint of heart. You'll see me under several aliases there, "Alex Libman" as well as "AL the Inconspicuous".) On bottom of page 3 and page 4 of that forum thread you'll find copies of the e-mails I've sent to Theo over the past few months.

First he said he will get back to me, and then he didn't.

He didn't say much, but from his tone you can clearly deduct that he's not a free market libertarian / Objectivist / Anarcho-Capitalist...

And I think my (unrequited) e-mails to de Raadt calling him a Randian hero and stuff might have went to his head a little bit...

http://www.openbsd.org/images/Superfish.jpg

From OpenBSD 4.7's release song [MP3] [OGG]:


Heh...

The only solution:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL

WTFPL is better than the ISC license, which in turn is better than the BSD license, which is better than PHP / Apache / Python licenses (which are still considered permissive), etc. But what's best is public domain.

I always recommend for people to think long and hard about releasing their code, since a developer's personal code-base can evolve into a very valuable asset over the course of his career, leading to profits through higher billing rates if not actual products. (Many programmers make millions giving away popular freeware bundled with an ad during setup, like for Yahoo toolbars 'n stuff.)

But once you do give away your source, using government force to control how other people use it is highly unethical in my book. You might as well put a post-it note on your forehead that says: "by seeing my face you agree to my license that limits what you can say about me"!

To jens: if you want to see if there is someone trying to work on an OpenBSD driver- someone released an unofficial intel wireless driver for OpenBSD- I suggest that you contact the mailing lists and ask.

I agree with the BSD method of exclusion when it comes to security and this has been my philosophy on it for a while. GNU/Linux automatically adds the user to root and some distros have sudo enabled- both are mistakes.
"Move over completely to BSD," you may say.
"I am," is my reply.
Of course he is brash; but, he- and others like him- are trying to keep drivers open and available.

I recently came across a couple of interesting posts on "Trollaxor"'s blog: "Why I Left OpenBSD" and "Why I Almost Gave OpenBSD $100,000 - But Didn't". The latter mentions this very interesting anecdote, which for now I'll assume is just a rumor:

If this is true - wow! But I can't find any coverage of this anywhere else... Still as good an excuse to bump this thread as any, teehee...

Full disclosure: I'm currently running OpenBSD on several computers, including this desktop, well as one of my Web hosts. OpenBSD rocks! However, like several other people, I'm a little daunted by becoming this attached to an OS that is so dominated by a single personality, thus figuring out the personal and political leanings of various copyFREE software VIP's became somewhat of a hobby of mine...

Be careful when making generalizations, I use Slackware and the user is not automatically added to any group at all including root of course. And sudo is not enabled by default for any user. However, many aspects of Slackware do resemble BSD.

This really caught my eye, 8th paragraph:

If that really is true about his personality, it will just be a matter of time until all the veteran developers of OpenBSD decide to leave, and dissuade any potential new developers. This is also an example of when ideology pretty much overrides practical reasoning and logic. Pure zealotry that is only harmful in the long run, not helpful.

In my opinion I don't see OpenBSD itself being around in a few years time, unless someone forks from it and continues under a different name, and completely free from Theo de Raadt and his rather abusive attitude.

I myself am not the slightest bit critical of Theo, only very grateful for the work he is doing. He did refuse to talk to me about politics (WARNING: link to rowdy libertarian forum, go to next page to see further e-mails), but that is his right, and the fact that he didn't flame me or hack any of my sites might be as amicable as it gets...

OpenBSD is Theo's OS - anyone is free to fork OpenBSD or any other FLOSS UNIX(like) OS and do things their way, but if they play with the CVS server in Theo's basement then they must play by Theo's rules.

According to DistroWatch (which merely offers a rough estimate, but is still indicative enough), OpenBSD is the third most popular FLOSS UNIX(like) OS after Linux and FreeBSD - well ahead of NetBSD it was forked from, as well as DragonFly. Even if one doesn't understand the first thing about software engineering, OpenBSD's relative popularity speaks for itself - Theo must be doing a lot of things right!

You guys might do a search "Why I Left OpenBSD" at http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&r=1&w=2.
That was hashed over pretty good. Also clarifies some info.

I don't know...that Trollaxor blog seems a bit suspicious, not to mention that it makes some claims without any supporting evidence (Theo hacked a developer's router...? sounds a bit unlikely).
The second blog post talks about giving the 100 grand to NetBSD instead of OpenBSD however as one of the commenters pointed out, only 6 months earlier the blog author said something to the effect that NetBSD was a dying project and not worth donating to.

Lastly that thread on kerneltrap (yeah, I read the entire thread) seems to have been started by someone who had a run-in with theo and is airing out an internal OpenBSD discussion on a public forum...

I'm not so sure about that. As an outsider it looks like one of those projects that as long as it has a handful of people working on it it will never die...

People who're interested in OpenBSD community's political leanings will find my current @advocacy mailing list discussion -- "What *should* the B in BSD stand for?" -- informative, and possibly hilarious.

+1

i dont care about his politics, i just want his product.