New history

I had my last day at Linpro last Tuesday (October 1st), and my first day at Systek last Wednesday.

Leaving Linpro was not an easy decision. On the one hand, I had some pretty good times at Linpro over the (almost) four years I worked there. On the other hand, almost all the people I joined Linpro to work with in the first place are long gone.

When you work on-site like I do, you don’t get to meet your coworkers (or should I say co-employees) very often. You show up at a social function and find out that half the people there are complete strangers—and half the people who were there the last time have left—well… it gives you pause. Suddenly, switching employers doesn’t seem like such a big change after all: you’re surrounded by strangers either way.

So you go for the option that gives you more freedom and more responsibility (the inseparable twins). You go for the option where you won’t have to suffer through the growing pains of a company that has doubled or tripled in size (you’ve lost track) since you started. You go for the option that puts you near the bottom, with a lot to learn, rather than near the top, with a lot to teach.

And you get ready to work your shiny metal ass off to climb back up that ladder.

Play nice!

The latest in Sun vs. NetApp is that the last of the three patents at the core of NetApp’s case is close to being tossed out by the USPTO. The other two have already been invalidated and withdrawn from the litigation.

A quick refresher: following the release of ZFS, NetApp sued Sun, claiming that ZFS infringed on six NetApp patents, including the three mentioned above; Sun retaliated by claiming that NetApp had somehow forfeited their right to implement NFS, and requesting a permanent injunction against further sales of NetApp products.

This latest development is good news to anyone who is opposed to software patents, and / or in favor of reforming the utterly broken US patent system. However, I must respectfully disagree with Groklaw’s take on the case. Continue reading “Play nice!”

Old history

I am the current maintainer of OpenSSH for FreeBSD, and have been since 2002. I am also the author and maintainer of the PAM implementation used by FreeBSD, and of several of the accompanying PAM modules. Finally, I was a member of the FreeBSD Security Team for several years, served as Assistant Security Officer and Acting Security Officer, and authored or co-authored around 20 security advisories between 2002 and 2004.

I have been asked to comment on SecurityFocus advisories 7467 and 7482, regarding timing attacks against certain versions of OpenSSH that were distributed with FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x releases.

The short version is that no FreeBSD 4.x or 5.x release was ever vulnerable. Read on for the long version. Continue reading “Old history”

Ten years

That’s how long, to the day, I have been a FreeBSD committer.
Ten years seems like a long time when you write it down on paper, or say it out loud, or try to imagine who and where you will be in ten years’ time; but when I think back on my time as a FreeBSD committer, it’s hard to believe it’s really been that long.

The strangest part is seeing younger (or rather, more recently anointed) committers defer to me. I’m not the old tenured professor! I’m not the sage on the mountain! Look at phk, he’s the old fart, not me! I’m still a rookie! I practically haven’t done anything for the project! I mean, apart from libfetch, and pseudofs, and the PAM stack, and OpenSSH, and the Tinderbox, and stints as Bugmeister and Security Officer, and…

This is where my train of thoughts derails, when I realize how much I’ve actually done (although I don’t even come close to people like phk, jhb, or rwatson), and oh shit, it’s actually been ten years!

Update: when I told my wife about this, her immediate reaction was “and they say men can’t commit to anything…”