I'm not going to comment on the mail itself, but I've seen a lot of incredibly dubious articles on the net over the last few days.
- use your brains, people. Just because a guy does say so doesn't mean there's a backdoor. Ever heard about FUD ? - of course OpenBSD is going to check. Geeez!! what do you think ? - why would OpenBSD be in trouble ? where do you think *all the other IPsec implementations* come from ? (hint: 10 years ago, what was the USofA view on cryptography exports ? where is OpenBSD based. Second hint: Canada != UsOfA). - why would the FBI only target OpenBSD ? if there's a backhole in OpenBSD, which hosts some of the most paranoid Opensource developers alive, what do you think is the likelyhood similar backholes exist in, say, Windows, or MacOs, or Linux (check where their darn IPsec code comes from, damn it!) I know that a lot of the guys reading tech@ are intelligent enough to *know* all the rather obvious things I'm stating here, but it's looking like a lot of stupid, stupid web sites are using this as their *only* source of information, and do not engage their brain): if you read french, go check http://www.macgeneration.com/news/voir/180982/un-systeme-espion-du-fbi-dans-openbsd and be amazed at how clueless those writers are. Just on the off chance that those idiots will read this, and realize how stupid their generalizations are. Theo was careful enough to state facts, and I'm a huge fan of what he's done (he's decided to go fully open with this, which was a tough decision). I don't see why this would impact OpenBSD negatively without affecting any other OS... especially until we actually get proof...
