[tptacek]

I'm not sure I think that it's reasonable for Theo to suggest that one of his key contributing developers was "not fully transparent" about whether he wrote backdoors in the OpenBSD IPSEC code. Theo has no evidence to implicate Jason. Jason served the OpenBSD project with distinction. The matter at hand relates to Jason's personal honor. The instigator of the controversy is a known high-drama person.

I might have hoped to see him stick by his guy.

But then, that's Theo. You take the good with the not-so-good.

[zedshaw]

But, I thought you weren't supposed to take people's "high-drama" into account when evaluating statements and arguments, and judge them entirely on the facts. Isn't that ad hominem as you love to point out?

[tptacek]

Personally, Zed, I don't give a shit about "ad hominem"; my "hominem" has been the "ad" of many an "arguendo", just like you, and (unlike you, I know) my take is pretty much "that's life in the big city". So, I don't hold myself to this standard of not considering the source in arguments and controversies, even though I recognize the virtue of doing so. I'm a manifestly imperfect person.

But I'm not talking about rhetorical purity here. I'm talking about a comment that implies Theo gave a reasonable (maybe even classy) response to the situation. Put yourself back in the position of being a lead dev at Bear. Imagine someone accused one of your better developers of, say, fraud. What's the standard you set for yourself for sticking by your people? From your demeanor, my guess is your standard for loyalty to your own people is even higher than mine.

And that's my point here. How well is Theo acquitting himself here? He's not doing terribly. He's not necessarily doing great.

But hey, either way, I'm out here with my name signed to my posts. If it turns out Theo was justified in questioning how Jason handled this, everyone can look this post up and hoist me with it down the road. I would concede up front that this is kind of not a whole lot my business; I have a minor, historical, emotional attachment to it and nothing more.

You brought it up, I responded. There you go.

[daeken]

The facts are simple: Jason worked on related code, worked for the named contractor, and has been accused of placing backdoors in the code. That's where things end. There's nothing to go off of but the accusation, really, so I think the background of the accuser comes into play.

[JoachimSchipper]

Theo thinks that NETSEC was developing backdoors (I have no idea if this is true/reasonable). If so, it's not unreasonable that Jason would have some idea that this was occuring, and if he was aware, one could argue that he should have done something.

Mind you, this whole thing is built on the idea that NETSEC was, in fact, developing backdoors.