5 ms·

Nor 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 ago
Absolutely 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 ago
  Fork it, name it whatever you want. Problem solved, welcome to open source.
  - madgar 10y ago
    An idea which creates a new social problem. Welcome to open source!
  - theli0nheart 10y ago
    I 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 ago
      What 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 ago
        Parasitic attitudes like this one drive away original authors. There should be a license to exclude assholes from using open source.
        tzakrajs 10y ago
        You should create it, you probably know best how to write it.
      - cyphar 10y ago
        To 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 ago
        I 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.
        cyphar 10y ago
        > It may be a braindead idea but it's their idea. If you don't like it, fork it. Because that's how PR works. The problem is that it's a publicity problem, not a technical problem. Technical problems are solved by forks, but publicity problems have to be solved by the community. > But don't complain because someone wrote some software and kindly published it for all to use for free. And then decided to give it a name that actively bombards the crypto community's efforts to bring encryption to the masses. Sure, it's free software and that's fine. But it's free software that will cause a PR nightmare for no good reason. "Hackers and terrorists are using a new app called 'Felony' to steal your money and freedom." -- That's the headline here.
  - freshhawk 10y ago
    Yeah, 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 ago
    That 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 ago
  And 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 ago
An "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 ago
  Artists 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 ago
  http://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 ago
There'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 ago
  Luksus begs to differ. http://thomasfrivold.github.io/luksus http://thomasfrivold.github.io/luksus
  - winter_blue 10y ago
    It's been 2 years since the author last committed to it: https://github.com/thomasfrivold/luksus https://github.com/thomasfrivold/luksus
    - unixhero 10y ago
      And then?

masukomi 10y ago

Absolutely 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 ago
Fork it, name it whatever you want. Problem solved, welcome to open source.
- madgar 10y ago
  An idea which creates a new social problem. Welcome to open source!
- theli0nheart 10y ago
  I 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 ago
    What 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 ago
      Parasitic attitudes like this one drive away original authors. There should be a license to exclude assholes from using open source.
      - tzakrajs 10y ago
        You should create it, you probably know best how to write it.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      To 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 ago
        I 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.
        cyphar 10y ago
        > It may be a braindead idea but it's their idea. If you don't like it, fork it. Because that's how PR works. The problem is that it's a publicity problem, not a technical problem. Technical problems are solved by forks, but publicity problems have to be solved by the community. > But don't complain because someone wrote some software and kindly published it for all to use for free. And then decided to give it a name that actively bombards the crypto community's efforts to bring encryption to the masses. Sure, it's free software and that's fine. But it's free software that will cause a PR nightmare for no good reason. "Hackers and terrorists are using a new app called 'Felony' to steal your money and freedom." -- That's the headline here.
- freshhawk 10y ago
  Yeah, 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 ago
  That 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 ago
And 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 ago

An "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 ago
Artists 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 ago
http://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 ago

There'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 ago
Luksus begs to differ. http://thomasfrivold.github.io/luksus http://thomasfrivold.github.io/luksus
- winter_blue 10y ago
  It's been 2 years since the author last committed to it: https://github.com/thomasfrivold/luksus https://github.com/thomasfrivold/luksus
  - unixhero 10y ago
    And then?