4 ms·
> Meanwhile some people have been writing and testing small, auditable and usable open source crypto, more or less for "free". With all due respect that is com
by dfc 13y ago
> Meanwhile some people have been writing and testing small, auditable and usable open source crypto, more or less for "free".
With all due respect that is complete bullshit. I do not care that you put quotes around free. Writing "free" will never be considered to include sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly blatant lies like this muddy the debate and set outrageous expectations. The Nacl project gives the following description of funding:
NaCl was initiated by the CACE (Computer Aided Cryptography Engineering)
project funded by the European Commission\'s Seventh Framework Programme
(FP7), contract number ICT- 2008-216499. CACE activities were organized
into several Work Packages (WPs). NaCl was the main task of CACE WP2,
\"Accelerating Secure Networking,\" led by Tanja Lange (at Technische
Universiteit Eindhoven) and Daniel J. Bernstein (at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, currently visiting Eindhoven). CACE nished at the
end of 2010 but NaCl is a continuing project.
...Many of the algorithms used in NaCl were developed as part of
Daniel J. Bernstein\'s High-Speed Cryptography project funded by
the U.S. National Science Foundation, grant number ITR-0716498.
I found the funding information for ITR-0716498. djb is listed as the PI for the project.[^1] I could only find the high level funding of ICT-2008-216499.[^2] (wtf EU?) CACE WP2 is only one component of the project. I would love it if someone with better knowledge of EU funding can find the funding for the WP2 line item. The figures are:
NSF ITR-0716498 funding: (USD) 400,000.00
EU 2008-216499 funding: (EUR) 4,733,078.00 ***NEED WP2 line item***
The tweetnacl implementation lists two more funding sources. As above it was easy to locate the NSF funding but I totally struck out for the nwo funding:
NSF 1018836 funding: (USD) $436,203.00[^3]
NWO grant 639.073.005 funding: ???????????
Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for djb and I think he and his coworkers deserve every fractional euro/dollar of funding that they received but they did not work for free. Most importantly they should not be expected to work for free.
[^1]: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0716498 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0716498
[^2]: http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/85344_en.html http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/85344_en.html
[^3]: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1018836 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1018836
NB: This is the nwo funding site: http://www.nwo.nl/en/funding http://www.nwo.nl/en/funding I think the english version may have a reduced set of features. I can not find the this grant information on the site.
- uuid_to_string 13y agoWow. I guess "more or less" was not strong enough wording for you? The point is that using something like NaCl costs you, the developer/user, nothing more than if you are using OpenSSL. Do you agree?
- dfc 13y agoNo, "more or less for free" is not close to hundreds of thousands of dollars plus whatever funds came from the EU and NWO. I have to say I am confused about your reply in the first sentence you seem to acknowledge that the wordingwas related to the cost of "writing and testing" crypto software. However in the second sentence you seem to indicate that your thesis was about the switching costs users face. Which is it? You did not say I get to use nacl "more or less for free" you said that "people have been writing and testing small, auditable and usable open source crypto, more or less for 'free'." That quote seems to be about the cost of creation not the switching costs. Do you think djb et al produced nacl "more or less for free?"
- uuid_to_string 13y agoI think you misunderstood what I meant. I mentioned "free" only to point out that there is no financial cost to switching to it. I guess I did not type the sentence with enough care; words are missing. My apologies. I imagine people would be willing (and are accustomed) to paying for software of similar quality. But I'm also wondering why this bothered you so much. Does it make a difference that grants were received? Is the funding not transparent enough? The blog article on OpenSSL mentions payments for consulting and "features" to be added to OpenSSL. Should I be concerned about what those features are, and who is paying for them? Are you concerned? I'm just nterested in cleaner code than OpenSSL's. NaCl looks cleaner to me. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'd rather be compiling programs that use libnacl or some other simpler alternative than ones that use libssl. We all have to make decisions about what software we choose to use, even if we are not cryptographers. I see nothing wrong with discussing alternatives to OpenSSL. This bug has been a real PITA.
- 13y ago