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Revision as of 22:26, 24 December 2004 by Nile (talk | contribs) (→Opposition to Iraq war: clarity ending)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Theo de Raadt (born 1968 in South Africa) is a software engineer presently living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects.
De Raadt is noted for his uncompromising and confrontational manner, which has contributed to several disputes within the Open Source community, most notably his dispute with the NetBSD core team which led to the formation of OpenBSD. Because of this he has become notorious for stating his opinions regardless of what anyone else might think, or of any consequences.
Opposition to Iraq war
After de Raadt stated his disapproval of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in an interview with Toronto's Globe and Mail, a multi-million-dollar US Department of Defense grant to the University of Pennsylvania's POSSE project was cancelled, effectively ending the project. Funding from the grant had been used in the development of OpenSSH and OpenBSD, as well as many other projects and was to be used to pay for the hackathon planned for the May 8th, 2003. Despite money from the grant already having been used to secure accommodations for 60 OpenBSD developers for a week, the money was reclaimed by the government at a loss and the hotel told to not allow the developers to pay the reclaimed money to resecure the rooms. This resulted in many news articles about the Bush administration's paranoid and anti-free speech attitude. This was, however, not as bad a blow to OpenBSD as some portrayed it. OpenBSD supporters rallied to help the project and the hackathon went on almost as planned. The funding was cut mere months before the end of the grant.