OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt said he's been trying for a year to obtain low-level details from Sun about its UltraSparc III chip. Without it, OpenBSD programmers have been unable to boot their operating system on newer Sun systems.
Sun has now promised to give OpenBSD the same information it provided to higher-profile, open-source projects such as Linux. "Sun has committed to working with OpenBSD to...ensure they are extended the same information as other open-source communities," the company said in a statement.
The tussle illustrates the sometimes awkward interaction between the free-wheeling, open-source world and the more staid corporate realm. While companies such as Sun, IBM and Hewlett-Packard have been trying to tap into the vitality and products of the open-source world--which allows anybody to modify and redistribute its shared software--cultural and legal barriers persist.
"There's no one you can talk to. Everybody stonewalls you," de Raadt said of Sun in an interview.
De Raadt escalated his efforts last week in a posting to an OpenBSD e-mail list, requesting that programmers send the Sun executive responsible requests to release the necessary information. The strong-arm tactic has worked in the past to get companies such as Adaptec and QLogic to share information, he said.
But Sun didn't put its open-source community liaison officer, Danese Cooper, in touch with de Raadt until after CNET News.com informed the company of his dissatisfaction. Cooper is "already well-known in the open-source software community," Sun representatives said. But the company acknowledged it needs to improve its work with open-source groups, saying the task would be addressed "within the next few weeks."
Cooper has been responsive and is pressing the OpenBSD case within Sun, said de Raadt, but he's reserving judgment until he gets what he needs. "I'm not jaded, but I don't accept that reality has changed until the documentation has arrived," he said.
De Raadt has a history of not mincing words or shunning controversy. He's refused to back down in a trademark fight with SSH Communications Security over the OpenSSH name and, he rejected a software utility when its author explicitly forbade others from changing the program.
OpenBSD, like FreeBSD and NetBSD, is an open-source version of Unix that stemmed from work at the University of California at Berkeley. OpenBSD programmers also develop OpenSSH, widely used software that controls Unix computers over a network and uses encryption technology to protect information such as passwords.
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