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Okay, I'll be the contrarian one: I HATE the name. There have already been trends in the mainstream and right wing media that "If you have nothing to hide, you
by deanCommie 10y ago
Okay, I'll be the contrarian one: I HATE the name.
There have already been trends in the mainstream and right wing media that "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", that the NSA only monitors the communication of criminals, and that things like iPhone encryption help terrorists first.
With that in mind, can you imagine the reaction that the average lay-person will have when they see a clickbait headline or morning news report that says "A new app called Felony allows ISIS and online pedophiles to communicate in secret with ease."
It looks like a great app, and I will honestly use it.
But I don't think the name helps the cause of promoting easy and default end-to-end encryption for all to remove the implication that the only people that use it have something to hide.
- jackweirdy 10y agoNor does it help the cause of explaining to the general public that encryption is something they do use and should use in their own lives.
- masukomi 10y agoAbsolutely horrible choice of a name. There's so much BS regarding the use of encryption and it keeps coming up in criminal cases, that normal folks are going to avoid using a think that might somehow be linked with a felony.
- Gargoyle 10y agoFork it, name it whatever you want. Problem solved, welcome to open source.
- madgar 10y agoAn idea which creates a new social problem. Welcome to open source!
- theli0nheart 10y agoI really dislike this attitude. Sure, you can change the name (or do whatever you want) by forking, but what would that really achieve? Forking for a reason like this without a conversation isn't polite, nor will it likely achieve the best outcome.
- tzakrajs 10y agoWhat it could achieve is a clone that simply replaces the names and requires very little maintenance. If the community agrees and adopts, then politeness be damned. Edit: To put the converse: If it's a shitty idea, then no one will use it and it didn't matter that you were polite anyways.
- 1209102312 10y agoParasitic attitudes like this one drive away original authors. There should be a license to exclude assholes from using open source.
- tzakrajs 10y agoYou should create it, you probably know best how to write it.
- cyphar 10y agoTo be fair, this did happen with GCC. But everyone hated everyone else for years as a result. Forking fractures a community -- for something as trivial as this it isn't worth it. But it is worth DoSing the maintainer until they realise that making an encryption program called "Felony" is a brain-dead idea.
- Teever 10y agoI don't think you get the point. It may be a braindead idea but it's their idea. If you don't like it, fork it. If you don't like it, write your own. But don't complain because someone wrote some software and kindly published it for all to use for free.
- freshhawk 10y agoYeah, hostile forks for minor reasons go over real well in the open source community. Don't welcome people to a community you obviously don't have much experience in please!
- Retra 10y agoThat doesn't solve the problem. Now your problem is you use "X" and nobody knows what that is unless you're going to say "it's a fork of Felony," which puts you back at square one. You might as well just be offering to not refer to it at all by any name.
- centizen 10y agoAnd it seems the author is refusing to even have a discussion on the name choice, closing any issues that are opened to address it without comment. What a great missed opportunity...
- mysterypie 10y agoAn "edgy" name can get you in real trouble. The brilliant programmer Dan Farmer [1] who developed the security tool that he named SATAN [2] was fired from his job when he published his program. If you haven't heard of SATAN, it was the most important network security analysis tool in the late 1990s. I feel certain that the name was the critical factor that made his company so nervous. For a while he had two different names for the program, SATAN and SANTA, to try and reduce the stigma, but it didn't work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Administrator_Tool_for_Analyzing_Networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Administrator_Tool_fo...
- api 10y agoArtists and musicians can get away with invoking (haha) such names for effect. But tech despite its abandonment of the suit is still pretty straight laced and Ivy League at heart and interfaces with a high corporate and financial world that is even more so. It's okay if your audience is strictly other tech people, but this is built for general use.
- startling 10y agohttp://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman... > The Web site Serge had used (which has the word “subversion” in its name) as well as the location of its server (Germany) McSwain clearly found highly suspicious.
- api 10y agoThere's been a rule: encryption must have terrible UX. Most encryption stuff even has awful UX by command line Linux hacker standards. Now we have an effort otherwise but... cannot... resist... doing... something... to make it unfriendly...
- unixhero 10y agoLuksus begs to differ. http://thomasfrivold.github.io/luksus http://thomasfrivold.github.io/luksus
- winter_blue 10y agoIt's been 2 years since the author last committed to it: https://github.com/thomasfrivold/luksus https://github.com/thomasfrivold/luksus
- unixhero 10y agoAnd then?
- grenoire 10y agoFully agreed. The name sounds 'cool,' but may end up being the thing that leads to the project's early death. Completely counter-productive.
- superswordfish 10y agoIt doesn't even sound cool to me. "Felony" is an ugly word, meaning aside.
- kbart 10y agoAgree. Epithets like "darknet", "dark mail", "underground net" etc. along with names like this certainly doesn't help to improve encryption and privacy promoting software image to general public and media. I understand that it's a joke, but only a handful people will get that, for most others it will be another app that enables pedophiles and terrorist to get away with their crimes.
- henryboldi 10y agocrimes and misdemeanors, i guess, but that's not the goal
- ourmandave 10y agoYou forgot Bitcoin.
- henryboldi 10y agoFair points. The title was kinda a joke originally and then it just stuck.
- cyphar 10y agoThere's a "rename" button on Github. It will handle redirects for you. Fixing a future PR nightmare couldn't be easier.
- pwinnski 10y agoIt's still a joke. Five hours on HN, and the name's not changed yet? I'll check the next time this is posted with a usable name. IOW, when you start taking it seriously, so will I.
- croon 10y agoAgreed. I understand the choice, but for the same effect at least pick "no felony" or "NotAFelony" or "Constitutional" just to hope that it gets debated in court whether "Constitutional" is illegal and used by IS*.
- henryboldi 10y agoI don't think "no felony" has the same ring to it though! ;)
- mathiasrw 10y agoI suggest "Nofello"
- mildavw 10y agoSuggestions and/or concepts you (OP) want to evoke: Patriot Freedom Liberty Good Citizen Free Speech America Fourth Amendment Secure In Papers Right To Privacy
- henryboldi 10y agoHence launching on the 4th of july ;)
- programmarchy 10y agoI'll add a counter point and say that I like the name. Politicians have a history of inverting meanings, e.g. Patriot Act, Affordable Health Care Act, etc. -- the public is almost conditioned to invert logic to understand things at this point. Personally, I find the terms above to be patronizing and even suspicious in the political context. The mental operation of inverting the word felony is kind of interesting and thought provoking, IMO.
- ryanSrich 10y agoIt's almost satirical, which I'm fine with.
- mysterypie 10y ago> the public is almost conditioned to invert logic Only a Hacker News type of person will invert the logic. The general public won't. Ask your neighbor to guess the purpose of the Banking Secrecy Act [1]. Does it protect your money and your financial privacy, or does it make banks snitch on you and strip away financial privacy? Even I was surprised that the name of the law and the actual text are exact opposites. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act
- networked 10y agoBesides, the name suggests a new Scheme implementation rather than cryptographic software.
- asimjalis 10y agoI will be the contra-contrarian. I agree that the name makes the app sound illegal. At the same time notoriety could work as a marketing strategy for the app. The clickbait headlines could get the word out there that this app exists. The more people know about the more are likely to use it.
- wmluke 10y agoCurrently, the trending HN commentry is focused on this name, and as much I like a good naming debate, I feel it is distracting from more "significant" concerns, such as... How does the app handle encryption? Has there been a security review?How are keys handled? How are conversations persisted in the app? Does it use iCloud? Etc...
- biokoda 10y ago> How does the app handle encryption? Has there been a security review? It's built on Electron, React and Redux. There is no security as it is a fundamentally insecure environment.
- krisdol 10y agolol js amirite Good circlejerking
- mwcampbell 10y agoIt's fashionable around here to criticize that tech stack, but do you have anything to back up that claim?
- danjoc 10y agoBesides NPMgate? http://incolumitas.com/2016/06/08/typosquatting-package-managers/ http://incolumitas.com/2016/06/08/typosquatting-package-mana... https://github.com/npm/npm/pull/4016 https://github.com/npm/npm/pull/4016 http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141702881055/package-install-scripts-vulnerability http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141702881055/package-install-scri...
- biokoda 10y agoRunning a large list of dependencies controlled by someone else. Stores data on disk unencrypted. Stores code that gets executed, on disk in text form unencrypted and unsigned. Executes code while running directly from a website (github). All in all an order of magnitude less security then a native app to put it mildly. http://blog.scottlogic.com/2016/03/09/As-It-Stands-Electron-Security.html http://blog.scottlogic.com/2016/03/09/As-It-Stands-Electron-...
- zouhair 10y agoThis is one of my pet peeves, calling it felony is utterly stupid and childish. Encryption and the use of encryption are serious matters and their PR should be handled with the utmost seriousness. The first picture that came to mind is this http://i.imgur.com/EyFFRsa.gifv http://i.imgur.com/EyFFRsa.gifv
- turar 10y agoAt Aleynikov's trial, prosecutors used the name of Subversion to imply nefarious intent.
- ascendantlogic 10y agoI just put in an issue to change the name. Looks like one was put in prior and closed without comment by the repo owner. I hope he doesn't think this is some edgy way to be "cool" EDIT: He closed my issue without comment.
- krisdol 10y agofork it and maintain your own name if you feel strongly about it.
- ascendantlogic 10y agoOr maybe he shouldn't be giving opponents of strong encryption a PR gift on a platter.
- vtlynch 10y agoAgreed. There is real irresponsibility in choosing this name. Thinking that this wont be used against the encryption community is naive and short-sided.
- Sylos 10y agoYeah, and on the other side we have propaganda-names like "USA PATRIOT Act" or "Privacy Shield".
- takeda 10y agoAs someone here mentioned: Those are taking something negative and wrap it in a positive name (positive gain for the author) We're taking something positive and wrap it in a negative name. This will only cause negative gain. Not only for the author but also for making encryption seem like something evil. This is especially bad time when politicians are trying to ban encryption.
- grandalf 10y agoFork and rename?
- hasenj 10y agoAlthough I think anyone can fork it and rebrand it and always keep the fork up to date. It would be an exact replica, just with a different name.
- JshWright 10y agoSays the guy with "Commie" in his nick ;p