The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, recently cut the remaining funding for a $2.125 million Penn research project designed to investigate and perfect a new and more secure computer operating system.
The project began in August 2001 and was terminated last week. Project manager Theo de Raadt, an independent programmer unaffiliated with the University, claimed that the project was canceled because he was vocal about his political views.
"I made some anti-war comments in the Toronto Globe and Mail about two and a half weeks ago," de Raadt said. Penn Computer Science Professor and operating system openBSD researcher Jonathan "Smith "called me [a few days later] and told me to shut up and not talk about things like that."
Four days after de Raadt says he was told to keep quiet about his political opinions, funding for the project was cut.
Smith did not return calls for comment.
De Raadt was reasonably certain that his comments led to the funding cuts, and he was shocked by Smith's statements.
"A tenured professor was telling me not to exercise my freedom of speech," he told The Associated Press last week.
However, University spokeswoman Phyllis Holtzman said that "de Raadt is seriously mischaracterizing the circumstances of this situation."
Holtzman noted that it was DARPA, not the University, that made the decision to terminate the funding.
DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker also debunked de Raadt's claims and said that the openBSD project was canceled as part of the agency's "normal review process."
DARPA periodically reviews its projects and sometimes decides to decrease or eliminate funding for them for various reasons, Walker added.
However, the review began just days after de Raadt's statements were printed, and it had not been planned or scheduled in advance.
Walker explained that the funding cancelation was actually "due to world events and the evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation states," and was not a response to the thoughts of an individual.
She declined to specify which threats were taken into account in the termination of the project.
While the research was nearly finished, the termination still affects the project significantly, as it has forced the cancelation of a "hackathon" scheduled for next month.
A hackathon, according to de Raadt, is a convention of dozens of programmers, the goal of which is increased brainstorming and problem solving.
Penn has funded three hackathons in previous years using DARPA money, de Raadt said.
The funding cut was aimed directly at stopping the hackathon, Walker said.
"We advised Penn about suspending the 'security fest' [hackathon] portion of the project."
The lack of funding caused Penn to cancel hotel reservations that had been made for the conference, stopping the hackathon and causing a severe headache for more than 60 programmers from around the world who had already bought nonrefundable airplane tickets.
According to de Raadt, a cancelation of this nature requires that the University pay 80 percent of the total cost as a penalty fee, amounting to more than $20,000. If the extra 20 percent is paid, the hackathon could still take place.
While de Raadt said he was willing to pay the 20 percent "out of my own pocket," he claimed that Mark West, manager of administration and finance for the Computer and Information Science Department, blocked this from taking place.
"Mark West told the hotel to cancel it completely. If they permitted me to pay [the additional fee] we could have gone through with this, but the University won't let us."
West declined to comment on the issue.
But Holtzman thought the circumstances were not so clear cut.
She said it was possible that once DARPA told the University that the project should be canceled, it was unable to spend any more money.
"We were notified by the funding agency" to stop the project," she said. "We did what we were obligated to do."
However, she was not aware of and could not explain de Raadt's attempt to pay the difference himself, at no cost to Penn, in order to facilitate the hackathon.
