3 ms·

Can you expand on why the history of WireGuard is bizarre? Do you believe that a blackhat presentation taints the code quality of WireGuard? Do you believe tha

by jron 6y ago

Can you expand on why the history of WireGuard is bizarre? Do you believe that a blackhat presentation taints the code quality of WireGuard? Do you believe that Donnefeld's desire to maintain tight control over kernel implementations suggests he has ulterior motives?

_zrlg 6y ago
I'm just a systems software guy, I don't know anything more than anyone else on Donnefeld's true motivations. The old saying is where's smoke there's fire. If Salter had intellectual integrity he would have dug into Donnefeld's past, and asked pointed and direct questions about vulnerability disclosure and how he intends to work with or against people that compete with him in the future. All I know is what is obvious to anyone else who spends 15 minutes looking into things. When a reporter spends DAYS digging up details on Matt yet fails to mention anything about the governance and flamboyant history of WG (the NetBSD incident is a carbon copy minus the salacious clickbait of Matt), what the heck is actually going on here? I think Salter is just stupid rather than a fully aware actor in all this. Donnefeld appears to have some kind of fundamental personality flaw that facilitates using people to inflate his ego.. this became such a big deal because he compromised another FreeBSD developer who never fully took responsibility nor publicly rebuked being used by a narcissist. Donnefeld was a nobody in the kernel development community, comes out of nowhere with a relatively simple tunneling protocol that is tightly bound to certain design and implementation decisions, and continually insists implementation is inseparable from the protocol. Noobs celebrate this. Pros look at this and wonder what happens when the governance fails for any reason, when the crypto becomes outdated, how it evolves. Pros celebrate independent implementation because it means a general solution has been achieved and stands a good chance of lasting beyond one person, one company, and one implementation.
- jron 6y ago
  I'm just a systems guy too so I can't really make judgements on why so much input is needed for the implementation of a seemingly simple protocol. I disagree with there being smoke but I appreciate the reply and it seems like you're not alone in thinking something might be a little off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24430424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24430424
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  I have no idea what this controversy is about, much less who is in the right, but your comments in this thread seem unduly personal and break the site guidelines with quite a bit of name-calling. Please don't do that. Substantive critique is fine, of course, but that would require explaining factually what the errors are, and omitting swipes and putdowns. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - _zrlg 6y ago
    It's more about the public understanding being less wrong than about me being right, I just got heated because not enough people are sticking up for the facts and principally that a reporter, whose job that is, fueled this. I've tried to post something more substantive and dispassionate in a followup and will leave it at that.

by jron 6y ago

_zrlg 6y ago

I'm just a systems software guy, I don't know anything more than anyone else on Donnefeld's true motivations. The old saying is where's smoke there's fire. If Salter had intellectual integrity he would have dug into Donnefeld's past, and asked pointed and direct questions about vulnerability disclosure and how he intends to work with or against people that compete with him in the future. All I know is what is obvious to anyone else who spends 15 minutes looking into things. When a reporter spends DAYS digging up details on Matt yet fails to mention anything about the governance and flamboyant history of WG (the NetBSD incident is a carbon copy minus the salacious clickbait of Matt), what the heck is actually going on here? I think Salter is just stupid rather than a fully aware actor in all this. Donnefeld appears to have some kind of fundamental personality flaw that facilitates using people to inflate his ego.. this became such a big deal because he compromised another FreeBSD developer who never fully took responsibility nor publicly rebuked being used by a narcissist. Donnefeld was a nobody in the kernel development community, comes out of nowhere with a relatively simple tunneling protocol that is tightly bound to certain design and implementation decisions, and continually insists implementation is inseparable from the protocol. Noobs celebrate this. Pros look at this and wonder what happens when the governance fails for any reason, when the crypto becomes outdated, how it evolves. Pros celebrate independent implementation because it means a general solution has been achieved and stands a good chance of lasting beyond one person, one company, and one implementation.

jron 6y ago
I'm just a systems guy too so I can't really make judgements on why so much input is needed for the implementation of a seemingly simple protocol. I disagree with there being smoke but I appreciate the reply and it seems like you're not alone in thinking something might be a little off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24430424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24430424
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dang 6y ago
I have no idea what this controversy is about, much less who is in the right, but your comments in this thread seem unduly personal and break the site guidelines with quite a bit of name-calling. Please don't do that. Substantive critique is fine, of course, but that would require explaining factually what the errors are, and omitting swipes and putdowns. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- _zrlg 6y ago
  It's more about the public understanding being less wrong than about me being right, I just got heated because not enough people are sticking up for the facts and principally that a reporter, whose job that is, fueled this. I've tried to post something more substantive and dispassionate in a followup and will leave it at that.