Theo De Raadt Quotes
1968
More Theo De Raadt Quotes
Low code quality keeps haunting our entire industry. That, and sloppy programmers who don't understand the frameworks they work within. They're like plumbers high on glue.
Theo De Raadt— quoted in Akin, David (2004-04-06). "U.S. military helps fund Calgary hacker". Globe and Mail. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
What I do know is Theo is the kind of security genius that various state secret-service organizations would love to have on their side. If he were to waltz into the Department of Defense and promise to be a good boy, I think Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet would probably jizz all over himself.
Theo De Raadt— Annalee Newitz, AlterNet, July 8, 2003
I actually am fairly uncomfortable about it, even if our firm stipulation was that they cannot tell us what to do. We are simply doing what we do anyways — securing software — and they have no say in the matter. I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built.
Theo De Raadt— quoted in Akin, David (2004-04-06). "U.S. military helps fund Calgary hacker". Globe and Mail. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
— on receiving a monetary grant from the US military
So the HP guy comes up to me (at the Melbourne conference) and he says, 'If you say nasty things like that to vendors you're not going to get anything'. I said 'no, in eight years of saying nothing, we've got nothing, and I'm going to start saying nasty things, in the hope that some of these vendors will start giving me money so I'll shut up'.
Theo De Raadt— quoted in Varghese, Sam (2004-10-08). "Staying on the cutting edge". The Age. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
This is a software monopoly but at least it was written by people who care about security, so it's not like Microsoft's monopoly.
Theo De Raadt— "OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt talks software security", Computerworld, by Gedda, Rodney (2004-10-09).
It's terrible, everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.
Theo De Raadt— quoted in Lyons, Daniel (2005-06-16). "Is Linux For Losers?". Forbes. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
— on the quality of the code of the Linux kernel
Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft. We do what we do because we love Unix.
Theo De Raadt— quoted in Lyons, Daniel (2005-06-16). "Is Linux For Losers?". Forbes. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
I think it is astounding that people could argue for "you just must trust someone else to fix it" instead of "you could fix it yourself, or hire someone to fix it." There is a contractor base out there that can solve these problems as well as or better than the major vendors could. But I think the major vendors are still having more luck at getting the ear of the press.
Theo De Raadt— "Interview: Theo de Raadt on Industry and Free Software". The Epoch Times. 2005-07-05. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
What's so exciting is to be able to just take something and polish it so much that hopefully in the future people will start borrowing things from it.
Theo De Raadt— "Interview: Staying on the cutting edge". The Age. 2004-10-08. Retrieved on 2007-09-15.
[...] beer results in ideas, which results in new code.
Theo De Raadt— "slashdot".
On December 20 [1994], Theo de Raadt was asked to resign from the NetBSD Project by the remaining members of 'core'. This was a very difficult decision to make, and resulted from Theo's long history of rudeness towards and abuse of users and developers of NetBSD.
Theo De Raadt— Adam Glass, NetBSD mailing list, December 23, 1994 [1]
The only way to make it clear to him that he should not come here to our lists in the future, is to teach him a hard lesson, and that is done by continually re-adding cc's back to him -- because the mails talk about him -- even when his friends come our mailing lists and delete the his address from the cc list. Like this message, which adds him back in. Richard, you are a lying cheating hypocrite.
Theo De Raadt— "OpenBSD.misc mailing list". 2007-12-14.
Admittedly, I was apprehensive about interviewing Theo de Raadt.
Theo De Raadt— Julie Bresnick, Newsforge, January 30, 2001
