I've found kbfs a very convenient way to share files with collaborators. Anyone know of a self-hosted encrypted remote filesystem that might replace it?
Zoom Acquires Keybase
101–110 of 751 posts
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#102Given the security concerns around Zoom, and the apparent lack of QC that might have prevented those concerns, this news is appalling. I love Keybase, it's used by many people, but I suspect it will now die a quick death. More accurately I suspect it will slide into a coma - not quite dead, but not in wide use anymore either.
why not look at the problem the other way around? I don't have much respect for zoom's security practices, while I do have much respect for the keybase team. Perhaps this is Zoom's way of admitting that there is no way they can just solve the problem internally by keeping doing what they're doing and they need to get some fresh blood and build upon good practices designed outside their current culture.
It seems that we live in an era where if you made bad decisions in the past, you can never be trusted to make good decisions ever again. Even if you own your bad decisions and show lots of improvement.
Nope. Once a pariah, always a pariah.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#103I'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.
[deleted]
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#104It's kinda ironic that Keybase disappears into Zoom the day after Matrix/Riot enabled end-to-end encryption by default, with cross-signed device verification similar to Keybase's concept of connected keys - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing....
In other words, a fully open source (and open standardised) alternative continues to exist in the form of Matrix.
[disclaimer: project lead for Matrix]
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#105Keybase' 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…
Isn't getting bought and there being no plans for your business bonkers? Or at least, it's a bonkers/highly-unusual admission that it's an acqui-hire.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#106Earlier 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…
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…
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.)
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t necessarily read it that way. Keybase is 100% functional and has worked well for a long time. Zoom needs people who know how to make modern client software and chat if they want to compete with the Slacks and Teams, etc. You can’t even screen share on wayland... it’s that bad. If keybase ultimately gets secure video, and zoom a security architecture overhaul, how is that a bad thing?
If Keybase acquired Zoom (haha), then, sure. This is a PR move for a public company. They'll probably gut Keybase, move their Chinese server generated AES128 keys to AES256 keys generated by you and uploaded to their Chinese server, then call it a day. I can't think of a single instance where acquisition of a smaller company like this resulted in an improved version of the original product. How many of us are running…
> Facebook purchasing Whatsapp, another service that formerly stressed encryption, resulted in things like plaintext backups of your texts on Facebook servers being aggressively promoted as soon as you loaded the app.
Ia that the case? AFAIK WhatsApp gained proper end to end encryption after being bought by Facebook and pushes for backups to Google (and maybe iCloud?) servers.
Wikipedia writes:
> WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext. Encryption was first added in May 2012. In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#108Honest question, why does Zoom’s security reputation matter more than Keybase’s? There’s so much pessimism in here but I really don't get it. I disliked zoom long before any of the security issues because frankly it’s rough, unpolished, software that’s never really worked well for me. I, for one, would be excited to get a functional Zoom with better security integrated into Keybase as an option for UI so that you hav…
What I want is PKI that works for real people. Keybase was trying to be that, and I was really excited about it. But, that's not what Zoom is selling. So Keybase being acquired by Zoom means what I wanted is dead.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah holy crap. I've been a big fan of Keybase since they launched, but this is a deathknell. I guess I'm not too surprised, Keybase didn't seem to have a business model, but still, disappointing that they're going to go into death this way. Attention people starting businesses: VC funding is fun and all, but please, have a business model. Your users and employees depend on it.
While honourable advice, the bottom line is Keybase sold without having a business model. So perhaps better advice is, start a business even if you don’t have a plan and someone may buy it anyway.
The plan was to get acquired. As much as I've liked Keybase the product, their steadfast refusal to ever come up with a way to make money has always made me suspect they were doing the typical Silicon Valley thing: just burn funding until a bigger company notices and buys you.
Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase
#110From the headline, I didn't understand why Zoom, a videoconferencing company, would want to buy a secure messaging/sharing app.
But after reading it, duh. It's an acqui-hire. Zoom definitely needs to improve it's security, because of recently publisized problems. These are the right people to work on that, the security problems are similar in keybase and zoom, and an outside team with an established track record will help Zoom regain credibility. And Zoom probably had lots of cash on hand to buy whatever they wanted.
So that all makes sense. I wouldn't expect the keybase product to stick around though.
Not because, as other commenters had said "Zoom doesn't care about security." Because they did an acqui-hire to get a team to help them with security, not because they wanted the product. I expect this will result in Zoom's own security improving, it's not some kind of smoke and mirrors trick. It's not that they don't care about security, I think they are presently prioritizing it. They just don't care about the keybase product. Obviously, why would they? It can't have revenue or profit anything close to what the zoom product has.