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I'm Joining CloudFlare

words.steveklabnik.com

81–90 of 124 posts

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#81
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> did Cloud Flare reallllllly want you to write this? I don't think any of us at Cloudflare had any idea Steve was writing this. Similarly, no one at Cloudflare asked me to write https://sandstorm.io/news/2017-03-13-joining-cloudflare back when I joined, and I can't recall if I even told anyone I was writing it. That post also hit #1 on HN, which, honestly, was a huge surprise to me -- I didn't think it was that inte…

> I don't think any of us at Cloudflare had any idea Steve was writing this. I technically told Billy, but I don't think he bothered to tell anyone else :)

> I technically told Billy, but I don't think he bothered to tell anyone else :)

Billy actually told Joaquin and I, but we were more psyched that Steve was joining than worried about how HN would find out.

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#82
post #46
post #33

This is a genre of post that I've never really understood. Klabnik is great and all, but, ok? Sure? Were people really record-scratching over his totally reasonable decision to take a good-paying job at a big company? It's obviously not just Klabnik. In fact, when we did Starfighter a few years back, I think Patrick did one of these posts as well. But: like every other post about Starfighter on HN while we were worki…

> Like: did you want to write this, or did Cloud Flare reallllllly want you to write this? Isn't most of this networking and self-promotion? It helps to announce if you have any kind of audience what you're doing so when the next opportunity comes long people will recognize who you are, what you've done? That's how I view all these posts. It's the same when a startup posts a blog about a technology they've decided to…

They may not blog as much but tool users of all sorts are as obsessive. I knew someone who had a whole house full of machine tools.

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you concerned at all how the Wireguard thing is playing out vs your desire to see this stuff open sourced?

I think it depends on which "Wireguard thing" you're talking about, there were several semi-controversies. If you mean "Warp doesn't support generic clients", I commented about that over on the Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b9sznr/im_join... If you mean "CloudFlare pursued BoringTon outside of the general WireGuard project", well, I don't have any real insight into the specifics of why…

Well, they took WireGuard, wrote a Rust implementation of it, refused to collaborate with Jason, who's been trying to get a Rust implementation of his protocol off the ground, then rolled it out as a proprietary offering that WireGuard itself is not allowed to connect to. This seems like the sort of analysis that would be pretty cut-and-dried among open source advocates (I'm not one of those, so I'm not saying it's cut-and-dried for me).

Your previous rooting interest in this story would have been for Rust itself. And Rust itself would have been been best served by having it host the dominant sanctioned userland implementation of WireGuard, not merely as an implementation detail for a commercial offering that also treats WireGuard as yet another implementation detail. Rust? Important! WireGuard? Important! Warp? Who gives a fuck?

So this is a bit of a surprising response to see from you.

Apologies for the late edit:

I should lay my own cards on the table here.

First, it's not much of a secret that I'm no fan of big Flare. But just to be clear: good friends of mine have worked there, and several other people I deeply respect have as well, and I don't judge any of them for that.

Much more importantly: Jason Donenfeld is, to my mind, the hardest working person in show business, and he's set himself on one of the most important projects in network security, basically all on his own, and the momentum he's managed to achieve doing that is insane and a little inspiring --- especially given the amount of shade he's been repaid with by network security luminaries --- and basically the last thing in the world he needs is to burn cycles worrying what some giant corporation is doing with his work (which, sure, does not include this Rust implementation, but very obviously does include all the hard protocol design and validation work he's been doing over the last several years, which, if it were easy and straightforward to do, several people would have done before him).

I've done about as much serious technical work on WireGuard as you have --- to wit: none, though I am a loyal, diligent distributor of WireGuard stickers. My partners all feel the same way, so we've just been sending the project cash.

If your employer has done the same, and dumped a giant bucket of cash on Jason in exchange for having gotten so much mileage out of his work, that would be an excellent rejoinder to this particular set of concerns.

Eagerly, therefore, awaiting my comeuppance on this thread! :)

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#85
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on which "Wireguard thing" you're talking about, there were several semi-controversies. If you mean "Warp doesn't support generic clients", I commented about that over on the Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b9sznr/im_join... If you mean "CloudFlare pursued BoringTon outside of the general WireGuard project", well, I don't have any real insight into the specifics of why…

Well, they took WireGuard, wrote a Rust implementation of it, refused to collaborate with Jason, who's been trying to get a Rust implementation of his protocol off the ground, then rolled it out as a proprietary offering that WireGuard itself is not allowed to connect to. This seems like the sort of analysis that would be pretty cut-and-dried among open source advocates (I'm not one of those, so I'm not saying it's c…

So, I'm hedging because I frankly know next to nothing about WireGuard. It's clear you know a lot more. But, without knowing more details, I can't really say if it's good or bad.

> then rolled it out as a proprietary offering that WireGuard itself is not allowed to connect to.

So, I said this in the link, but the implementation of the protocol itself is, as Zack said, fully open source. To me, that's the high order bit here. And as I said on the reddit thread, it appears from the outside that this is more of a support issue than anything else. Maybe that's a lie, but I'm inclined to take jgc at his word.

On working with upstream, what they said publicly is this: https://blog.cloudflare.com/boringtun-userspace-wireguard-ru...

> We communicated with Jason throughout the process and have a ton of respect for him and the entire WireGuard community. In the short term, we need the flexibility to quickly update BoringTun's code base to support the project we built it for. That's harder when you need to coordinate with people outside Cloudflare and when we need to move as fast as we plan to. However, we really believe in Open Source and want the WireGuard community to thrive. We licensed the code very openly (3-paragraph BSD) and WireGuard may choose to fork it. If they do, we'll support it and plan to contribute any improvements in our own fork back. Over the long term, I think we're very open to merging this back into the upstream project.

This seems very reasonable to me. YMMV. I have no idea what requirements would cause this friction at the moment, but peeking at https://www.wireguard.com/#contributing it looks like they do the "non-GitHub server + mailing list" for development. I mean, I'm literally wearing a GitHub hoodie, but I know that I personally prefer the GitHub workflow to the point where if doing work via that system were an upstream requirement, I'd probably do my own thing on GitHub too.

Basically, it may be good, it may be bad. I don't have enough information to really pass judgement.

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#86
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they took WireGuard, wrote a Rust implementation of it, refused to collaborate with Jason, who's been trying to get a Rust implementation of his protocol off the ground, then rolled it out as a proprietary offering that WireGuard itself is not allowed to connect to. This seems like the sort of analysis that would be pretty cut-and-dried among open source advocates (I'm not one of those, so I'm not saying it's c…

So, I'm hedging because I frankly know next to nothing about WireGuard. It's clear you know a lot more. But, without knowing more details, I can't really say if it's good or bad. > then rolled it out as a proprietary offering that WireGuard itself is not allowed to connect to. So, I said this in the link, but the implementation of the protocol itself is, as Zack said, fully open source. To me, that's the high order b…

Hold on, you had no trouble judging whether it was good or bad on that Reddit thread. And, in case the subtext isn't clear: you've been at Cloud Flare for like, a minute. And as you said downthread: this is what you do: you advocate and evangelize. So this seems like pretty legitimate grist for discussion. Are you comfortable with your advocacy here, or having second thoughts about it?

:gif_of_homer_simpson_backing_slowly_into_the_hedge: is a totally legit response to this whole situation, for what it's worth.

(I'll reiterate: it would be amusing if your employer just smote me where I stand by revealing the large donation they've made to Jason's project).

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#87
post #73
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the confusion here? That people share things on their own blog? Or that people vote it up on HN? If the former, people share all sorts of oddities in their own personal space especially life-changing events of which career moves is one. If the latter, a lot of people follow "developer influencers" to keep up on the cutting edge trends. I'm personally keeping an eye on the Rust Book and hoping it maint…

It is probably way more the latter concern (the voting) than the former (the writing), but note upthread that Klabnik was aware this was going to happen when he wrote it, which is why he asked Cloud Flare marketing about it first. As to why I'm commenting on it: because it was submitted for our comment, and this is my comment.

As to why I'm commenting on it: because it was submitted for our comment, and this is my comment.

Was it? Is there any particular expectation that HN users must comment on stories, as opposed to simply reading them and gaining whatever value they gain from that exercise?

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't feel compelled to comment on every HN post. And judging by how many posts hit the /newest page and disappear with 0 comments, I don't think I'm alone in that...

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#88
This is why I go to HN comment section. Sometimes I even go straight to comments before reading the article. The amount of insight/ diplomatic bickering is so unique it doesn't exist anywhere else (by that I mean reddit) in the interwebz.

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#89
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'm hedging because I frankly know next to nothing about WireGuard. It's clear you know a lot more. But, without knowing more details, I can't really say if it's good or bad. > then rolled it out as a proprietary offering that WireGuard itself is not allowed to connect to. So, I said this in the link, but the implementation of the protocol itself is, as Zack said, fully open source. To me, that's the high order b…

Hold on, you had no trouble judging whether it was good or bad on that Reddit thread. And, in case the subtext isn't clear: you've been at Cloud Flare for like, a minute. And as you said downthread: this is what you do: you advocate and evangelize. So this seems like pretty legitimate grist for discussion. Are you comfortable with your advocacy here, or having second thoughts about it? :gif_of_homer_simpson_backing_s…

> So this seems like pretty legitimate grist for discussion. Are you comfortable with your advocacy here, or having second thoughts about it?

My job isn't to be a PR person for everything Cloudflare does. Cloudflare has and does things I disagree with. It's a company with a lot of people working there, after all :)

All of this stuff is completely outside of what is going to be my job. And a job I haven't even started yet! I mean, sure, it's legitimate to talk about like anything is, but if you want to know what's going on, I'm certainly not the person to talk to about it.

Re: I'm Joining CloudFlare

#90
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on, you had no trouble judging whether it was good or bad on that Reddit thread. And, in case the subtext isn't clear: you've been at Cloud Flare for like, a minute. And as you said downthread: this is what you do: you advocate and evangelize. So this seems like pretty legitimate grist for discussion. Are you comfortable with your advocacy here, or having second thoughts about it? :gif_of_homer_simpson_backing_s…

> So this seems like pretty legitimate grist for discussion. Are you comfortable with your advocacy here, or having second thoughts about it? My job isn't to be a PR person for everything Cloudflare does. Cloudflare has and does things I disagree with. It's a company with a lot of people working there, after all :) All of this stuff is completely outside of what is going to be my job. And a job I haven't even started…

... right! I agree! So, again: why were you volunteering opinions about the norms-compliance of this Cloud Flare project on Reddit, rather than just saying, "huh, no idea, wasn't involved"?
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