Mixed feelings, Keybase could become a "modern" Skype, but it may be the zoom is not that interested in the chat/teams/fs parts of Keybase...
Zoom Acquires Keybase
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Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#92Keybase helped me to identify a trend in the software industry: using a pretty UI to cover up the disruption of an open ecosystem with a closed, centralized replacement. Keybase seemed cool on the face of it - making encryption easier is a laudible goal, and PGP certainly could use the improvement. But, thanks to Keybase, now I ask different questions upfront. Beware the Keybase formula: 1. Integrates with an existin…
Sounds like protonmail.
Fascinating.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's pretty clearly an aquihire. Zoom gets a team of highly skilled cryptographers and Internet protocol experts. Good for them. But that means the team that created Keybase as an innovate PKI store won't be working on that anymore. That's not Zoom's business, and probably won't be, as Keybase themselves never figured out how to turn it into a business.
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…
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.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#94I'm seeing a certain pattern here, aren't we all just fooling ourselves? Isn't this just all inevitable? Aren't all these startups just lining up all in the hopes just to get acquired? I guess when we see VC Funded™ on any startup what it _really means_ is that: "We are prioritising a return for our investors even if it means violating our mission statement".
We need a new type of company that can never be acquired.
Ghost (blogging software) chose to incorporate as a Company Limited by Guarantee [1], which doesn't have shares and can't be acquired that way: https://ghost.org/changelog/moving-to-singapore/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_company_limited_by_gua...
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#95Oh wow, I had a guest lecture from Max Krohn yesterday in which I asked about how Keybase was being funded; no mention of this at all!
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
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.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#97Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#98Keybase' post about the acquisition: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom > What the Keybase team will be doing > Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty…
How can they be so obvlivious though? Their own blog post doesn't even mention the tarnished reputation Zoom has acquired lately. A lot of people will stop developing integrations for Keybase because of this. It's sad.
They aren’t. They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for.
The post is actually refreshingly honest that keybase is now abandoned and will probably die at some point.
The idea that companies were stupid enough to place their internal identity on some random 3rd party is so incredibly stupid that it’s hard to feel too bad for anyone.
Congrats Keybase!
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was well-intentioned. For a time, Keybase provided users the option to upload their private keys so they didn't have to maintain them themselves. You could just log into Keybase and send signed messages, decrypt messages, etc without the hassle of managing your keys locally. It was definitely a bad idea and I think they dropped it a few months/years later, but it at least wasn't totally out of left field.
They don't have access to your unencrypted private key, it's just a backup of your private key which is encrypted by (hopefully) a very strong password. This feature saved my skin on one occasion.
I believe the argument is that a private key encrypted with a password is not cryptographically different from a plaintext private key. The password is more of a "keeping honest people honest" kind of thing, than true security. If it was truly secure, then you'd be using a new private key to encrypt your real private key, and then you're back to where you started. Cryptography is hard, which is why I was such a big fan of Keybase trying to fix it for real people :)
Edit: This has a received a few downvotes. If I'm wrong here, I'd really like to know why! I thought this explanation was correct and clear.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#100Zoom trading at ~1,700 P/E which to me seems absurd. Wonder if the acquisition involved much stock! Seems like a good time for Zoom to make transactions like this.
Can you explain this in a little more detail please? Would love to understand more.
Sounds like: stock price is high so use its value to its full extent while the price is high and more valuable. Allows selling/granting of fewer shares of stock too.