Project Goals
Each developer working on OpenBSD has their own aims and priorities,
but it is possible to classify the goals we all share:
- Provide the best development platform possible - with full source access
for developers and users. Code should be as FREE as possible, for
whatever purpose and agenda.
- Integrate good code from any source with acceptable copyright
(Berkeley style preferred, GPL acceptable, NDA not). We want to
make available source code that anyone can use for ANY PURPOSE,
with no restrictions. We have a page that describes
the copyright issues in more detail.
- Pay attention to security problems and fix
them before anyone else does. (Try to be the #1 most
secure operating system).
- Work towards a machine independent source tree.
- Greater integration of cryptographic software. This means IPsec, IPv6,
key engines, and other forms of strong crypto. OpenBSD is developed
and released from Canada and due to Canadian law it is legal to
export crypto to the world. (As
researched by a Canadian individual and as
documented in the Export Control list of Canada.
OpenBSD developers are doing active research and development on
IPSEC and the
Photuris key engine.
- Track and implement standards (ANSI, POSIX, parts of X/Open, etc.)
- Support as many different systems and hardware as feasible.
- Be as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the
basis of technical merit.
- Provide a good cross compile/development platform.
- Import external packages with minimal modifications - making upgrading
much easier. Also to submit back to the developers any changes made.
Project Funding
Naturally, the OpenBSD project requires funds to operate, due to
internet line costs and the same hardware upgrade issues everyone
experiences. For this reason, the project sells CDROMs of our most
recent release. Thus, when you buy an OpenBSD CD, whether at a
conference, from one of our other locations, or from our
CDROM ordering page, you are helping to
increase the chance that OpenBSD will make future releases.
It is also possible to donate funds or hardware, in which case your
name ends up on our Donations page.
For more information on this contact
Theo de Raadt or simply send a
donation cheque in Canadian or US funds to:
OpenBSD
1933 6th St SE
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
T2G 2Y3
Theo de Raadt has spent more than $30,000 (CDN) to make OpenBSD run so
far, mostly due to expensive networking costs in Canada and such (due
to USA crypto policies, it is not possible to move the project to the
USA). No funding or cost-sharing of the project comes from any
company or educational institution. As well, Theo works full-time on
improving OpenBSD.
Please do not take this above statement too lightly, since the
project is typically not in strong financial health.
www@openbsd.org
$OpenBSD: goals.html,v 1.28 1998/02/21 15:06:56 deraadt Exp $