From djm at mindrot.org Fri Mar 24 10:32:04 2006 From: djm at mindrot.org (Damien Miller) Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:32:04 +1100 (EST) Subject: [openssh-unix-announce] Funding OpenSSH Message-ID: Hi, This mail is a request for vendors who have integrated OpenSSH into their products or devices to step up and provide some financial assistance back to the project. Please note that this request is intended for *vendors* - our individual userbase already helps us in every appropriate way. You may have noticed a similar request for OpenSSH/OpenBSD funding made by Marco Peereboom in this last couple of days, but I would like to reiterate: money donated to the project goes directly to development, either by funding individual developers for medium-long term projects or by putting developers in a room together, without distractions so they can improve OpenSSH. Having long term developers around ensures that small and "boring, but important changes" receive the attention that they deserve. OpenSSH hasn't had 9am-5pm developer attention for a while, but we believe it would greatly benefit from it. The second consumer of funds above refers to the annual hackathons that the OpenBSD project runs. These provide a forum where major functionality improvements can be initiated, fleshed out, reviewed and committed. The last two hackathons alone have been directly responsible for: - Fixing of dozens of bugs - The addition of connection multiplexing - The idea for the layer-2/layer-3 VPN over SSH released in 4.3 - The implementation of auto-reexecution - Many proactive signed vs. unsigned integer cleanups ... and a bunch of other improvements and ideas at various stages of conception and development. There really isn't a substitute for pulling a bunch of developers from around the world to focus on one thing for a solid week. Many vendors have integrated OpenSSH into their operating systems or devices and quite a few of these proudly list the secure management ability that OpenSSH provides as a major feature in their marketing material - something which translates directly to product sales. This is an opportunity for these vendors to give somthing back. For a relatively tiny amount of money, you can help ensure that OpenSSH continues to extend its functionality and proactively improve security. If you are interested, please email myself, Markus Friedl and/or Theo de Raadt: - Damien Miller - Markus Friedl - Theo de Raadt If you work for a vendor who uses or has integrated OpenSSH, please consider this request and forward it to anyone else in your organisation who is able to assist. Thanks, Damien Miller