The developer of Headscale, Juan Font, mentioned that Tailscale also reached out to them when they tried to implement a new version of their control protocol. They also gave Juan some docs on the design to help with implementation on the Headscale side. It was posted to HN[1], but didn't seem to gain much traction.
Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
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Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#62TIL about headscale: https://github.com/juanfont/headscale Good on tailscale for fostering the community and not playing this like most startups would!
This sort of thing would make me buy-in to tailscale, honestly.
I have this pattern where i avoid software i can't self host, because while i love paying for my products - i don't want to be cloud trapped. So some software/hardware, say Ubiquiti's suite - i buy and run locally. But sometimes cloud features are nice, so i enable them.
I don't _want_ Cloud, but knowing i'm not trapped makes me far more likely to be a customer. Knowing i can opt-in to cloud, opt back out, etc is great.
In practice i often end up buying Cloud. But i only first bought and continue to pay for services when i know i'm not trapped. The moment they start to make self-hosting a pain, or inhibited - i'm out.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#63This is a a beautiful thread. All the concerns that come into play with a commercial business, a very human representative of that business, and someone outside expressing a need. A need that some would see is contradictory to the pure business goals. Doing business out in the open like Tailscale is doing is so refreshing. Having seen Brad Fitz communicate in other places, it is obvious he isn't doing the right thing…
The people on that thread are very dope. I've filed tickets with Denton before and he's ridiculously thorough. My mesh is a little complicated on my side, and he was super patient as I walked through the relevant stages of determining where and why I was getting packet loss.
Denton was my manager at Google for a couple years. He won some award for being one of the best 10 (? some very low number) managers in the company. Thorough and patient are definitely two of his good qualities. :) Tailscale did well to hire him.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when we used to say things like that about Google, circa 2000.
Google used to have that, probably lost it, and then they lost people like Brad Fitz.
And Avery (CEO), who was by far the best presenter (and thing-namer) I ever worked with at Google.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, the SSO is too cumbersome with me (I don't want to set up my own OpenID service just for this). The preauth key might work though. I'll try it out!
But don't you want your own OpenID service? I highly recomment Authelia - easy to set up and works for so many services that allow a custom OIDC service.
with the red flag that they don't support registering multiple security keys via gui
why im still using keycloak
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#66I am utterly disappointed by the lack of Scheme jokes in this thread.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder why they don't open source the iOS client like they do Android. There is precedent for open source iOS apps still available on the App Store, so that's not a limitation. I would gladly dedicate some time to adding this as a PR (as I'm sure a million others would, too).
> I wonder why they don't open source the iOS client like they do Android. Mostly because developing for iOS and macOS is terrible, especially when your app needs to have "entitlements". Tailscale uses a "Network Extension entitlement" which is linked to our corporate Apple account. Even onboarding new employees and getting them up to speed on xcode/macOS/iOS development is painful. It often requires a bunch of messi…
That is totally fair. I will say that I got quite a lot of value from being able to see how tailscale-android works when building my own gioui app[0]. I suspect that being able to see the same thing for a modern iOS app would be useful to some small set of developers, even if they couldn't produce a fully working tailscale binary on their own dev machines.
It really does feel like Apple just doesn't care that their app policies are hostile to developers because they have such a strong monopoly on mobile app distribution.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, this what what I eventually grew to dislike the most about working for a public company. At the end of the day the stock price was the only thing that mattered. It would have been easier to stomach if the shareholders had a long-term vision of a healthy successful company whose value accumulates over time by making good long-term business decisions. But, quarterly returns were the name of the game. The executive…
The problem with public companies is they effectively have no shareholders; none that can actually do anything to affect the company. Which leaves the company to be run by the managers for the managers. Bogle (the father of the index fund) talks about how the index fund and friends has warped the benefits of ownership to leave companies effectively "unowned".
The alternatives to index funds are either that ordinary middle-class people can't participate in ownership of companies at all, or that they have to pay extortionate fees to fund managers. No thank you.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google used to have that, probably lost it, and then they lost people like Brad Fitz.
Maybe Urs etc shouldn't have criticized Brad when he posted his well-intentioned "Do not buy Nest Protect smoke alarm". https://twitter.com/bradfitz/status/566072337020112896?lang=... The product was a terrible piece of crap that never should have been released.
I don't have an opinion on that product, but no smoke alarm is "hushable" due to state laws, as far as I know.
Re: Add ability to choose a custom coordination server
#70I love Tailscale but I am wary of allowing them access into my personal network. This way, I can use them for my stuff without my paranoia getting in the way, and I can recommend the hosted option for work, as it works perfectly.
This is precisely my worry. I do use tailscale but I have this itch in the back of my mind... I have a lot of sensitive and personal stuff in my machines, and even though it would be hard for someone to get into my VPN, tailscale themselves could easily add a node and join my VPN without me even noticing.