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It bothers me that they even tried, honestly. Keybase seems like something that should be small, isolated, FOSS, supported by a foundation, etc. They could hav

It bothers me that they even tried, honestly. Keybase seems like something that should be small, isolated, FOSS, supported by a foundation, etc. They could have built a business _around_ Keybase I'd imagine, but all they managed to do with this is invalidate Keybase and make people like myself, who feared their business motivations, feel vindicated for being paranoid. I'll never blame anyone for wanting to make money, to make a business, etc. But if you make a product that walks talks and acts like a FOSS project, but keep it to center your business around... I'll always be longing for a real, true FOSS replacement. In this case a good looking FOSS alternative came out a few months ago iirc. Though for the life of me I can't remember the name. edit: https://keys.pub/ https://keys.pub/ - though I will still miss KBFS

dcow 6y ago
How was their product ever marketed that way? They have open source clients because that security table stakes. They’re a solution to crypto anarchy because they help link your crypto identities to your social ones. None of that has changed. You talk like all valid software is free of corporate ownership/sponsorship. Why is zoom’s money somehow worse than e.g. softbank’s.
- asdkhadsj 6y ago
  Oh I didn't mean to imply it was, maybe my "walks talks" bit was unfair. Rather I merely meant that Keybase, like Keys.pub, seems like a great isolated tool for the internet. Something exceptionally well suited for a foundation.
coldpie 6y ago
As someone who works at an open-source-focused business, I respectfully disagree. Unlike proprietary software, open source software doesn't depend on the broken window fallacy. As a result, it's really hard to make open source profitable. There's lots of different avenues to get there, and I don't like to fault someone for their efforts if the bulk of their work goes towards improving open source software, as I think Keybase did.
- asdkhadsj 6y ago
  Possibly, but in this case I didn't expect them to make Keybase profitable, if anything I expect the opposite. I expect Keybase to be a FOSS, foundation for profitable extensions that the company builds and sells. Arguably I think they agree with me, about the extensions at least. As seen by their seemingly random directions of feature extensions that Keybase was prone to. My issue is not that they chose random features to try to make profitable, but rather that the core premise, a public keystore, was tied so closely to a for profit company. It would be like losing Git because Github went under. (Though, terrible example because Git works without a centralized repo, but it's just the first company <-> FOSS relationship that came to mind lol.)
  - semi-extrinsic 6y ago
    Maybe "losing Ubuntu if Canonical went under" is a better analogy then?
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    It's actually a pretty good example to be honest. Keybase was a centralized key storage with value-add services such as file storage and chat. That was absolutely comparable to github, as you could've just gone back to manually syncing pubkeys and encrypting msgs. If github went away, you'd be without a lot of value-add services as well such as wiki, issues user management etc Realistically speaking, nobody is going to do that... And tbh, it was already dead in the water when they added crypto currencies... Just took a while for their money to run out. The actual difference is that there are enough competing products for github, not for keybase however, as that is just too niche
- zomglings 6y ago
  I didn't follow your reasoning about proprietary software depending on the broken window fallacy. I don't see how Google's proprietary search engine or Facebook's proprietary interface to our social network rely on the broken window fallacy. Would you mind elaborating?
  - 6y ago
StavrosK 6y ago
keys.pub doesn't have the single most useful feature Keybase has: The ability to verifiably establish a secure channel with anyone given their Twitter/Github/whatever username.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  Their homepage advertises 'keys pull username@github' as an example. Is the missing piece you describe here simply the command 'keys chat username@github'?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    No, it's the cryptographic attestation so you know you are getting the right key.
    - Squithrilve 6y ago
      They don't support it? That's weird (maybe a missing feature) given that it's quite easy to add to anything that has signed metadata, see e.g. this for OpenPGP: https://github.com/wiktor-k/openpgp-proofs#openpgp-proofs https://github.com/wiktor-k/openpgp-proofs#openpgp-proofs
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        I'm not very familiar with the service, but AFAIK they don't. It would be great if they added it. EDIT: It looks like it might, from the front page, I will try it out to make sure. If it does, that'll be great! EDIT 2: It sort of does, but it's on a per-key basis, not an entire identity. You can publish proof on Twitter/Github/whatever, but it's only for one specific key, and it's one key per service, which means you can't only have one identity and multiple services.

dcow 6y ago

How was their product ever marketed that way? They have open source clients because that security table stakes. They’re a solution to crypto anarchy because they help link your crypto identities to your social ones. None of that has changed. You talk like all valid software is free of corporate ownership/sponsorship. Why is zoom’s money somehow worse than e.g. softbank’s.

asdkhadsj 6y ago
Oh I didn't mean to imply it was, maybe my "walks talks" bit was unfair. Rather I merely meant that Keybase, like Keys.pub, seems like a great isolated tool for the internet. Something exceptionally well suited for a foundation.

coldpie 6y ago

As someone who works at an open-source-focused business, I respectfully disagree. Unlike proprietary software, open source software doesn't depend on the broken window fallacy. As a result, it's really hard to make open source profitable. There's lots of different avenues to get there, and I don't like to fault someone for their efforts if the bulk of their work goes towards improving open source software, as I think Keybase did.

asdkhadsj 6y ago
Possibly, but in this case I didn't expect them to make Keybase profitable, if anything I expect the opposite. I expect Keybase to be a FOSS, foundation for profitable extensions that the company builds and sells. Arguably I think they agree with me, about the extensions at least. As seen by their seemingly random directions of feature extensions that Keybase was prone to. My issue is not that they chose random features to try to make profitable, but rather that the core premise, a public keystore, was tied so closely to a for profit company. It would be like losing Git because Github went under. (Though, terrible example because Git works without a centralized repo, but it's just the first company <-> FOSS relationship that came to mind lol.)
- semi-extrinsic 6y ago
  Maybe "losing Ubuntu if Canonical went under" is a better analogy then?
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  It's actually a pretty good example to be honest. Keybase was a centralized key storage with value-add services such as file storage and chat. That was absolutely comparable to github, as you could've just gone back to manually syncing pubkeys and encrypting msgs. If github went away, you'd be without a lot of value-add services as well such as wiki, issues user management etc Realistically speaking, nobody is going to do that... And tbh, it was already dead in the water when they added crypto currencies... Just took a while for their money to run out. The actual difference is that there are enough competing products for github, not for keybase however, as that is just too niche
zomglings 6y ago
I didn't follow your reasoning about proprietary software depending on the broken window fallacy. I don't see how Google's proprietary search engine or Facebook's proprietary interface to our social network rely on the broken window fallacy. Would you mind elaborating?
- 6y ago

StavrosK 6y ago

keys.pub doesn't have the single most useful feature Keybase has: The ability to verifiably establish a secure channel with anyone given their Twitter/Github/whatever username.

floatingatoll 6y ago
Their homepage advertises 'keys pull username@github' as an example. Is the missing piece you describe here simply the command 'keys chat username@github'?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  No, it's the cryptographic attestation so you know you are getting the right key.
  - Squithrilve 6y ago
    They don't support it? That's weird (maybe a missing feature) given that it's quite easy to add to anything that has signed metadata, see e.g. this for OpenPGP: https://github.com/wiktor-k/openpgp-proofs#openpgp-proofs https://github.com/wiktor-k/openpgp-proofs#openpgp-proofs
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      I'm not very familiar with the service, but AFAIK they don't. It would be great if they added it. EDIT: It looks like it might, from the front page, I will try it out to make sure. If it does, that'll be great! EDIT 2: It sort of does, but it's on a per-key basis, not an entire identity. You can publish proof on Twitter/Github/whatever, but it's only for one specific key, and it's one key per service, which means you can't only have one identity and multiple services.