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Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

narrowlink.com

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Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps narrowlink doesn't want to draw attention to this: https://github.com/narrowlink/narrowlink/blob/main/LICENSE.m...

What’s to draw attention to there? MPL and AGPL are both Open Source licenses.

> For companies or organizations whose policies are not compatible with the AGPL-3.0 license, we offer a separate business license. To inquire about the business license or discuss licensing options, please contact us at opensource@narrowlink.com.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#52

> Narrowlink and Tailscale are two open source solutions with different architectures that enable secure remote access and connectivity across networks. A nitpick, but ironically I think they're being generous to Tailscale there. Tailscale isn't really "open source" - or at least not without heavy qualification. I'm not an open source zealot by any means but that line just seems a little misleading. The clients are p…

> I understand that [Headscale] is (unofficially?) supported by Tailscale these days

I'm not sure if it clears the bar of official, but it seems to be not-unofficial. They were planning on open-sourcing a coordination server once they cleaned the code up, but then decided that there was no point in doing so due to Headscale. On top of that, one of the primary maintainers of Headscale works at Tailscale now.

Source: https://tailscale.com/blog/opensource/

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#53
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reverse nit, there is a UI for headscale: https://github.com/gurucomputing/headscale-ui Granted, that's also not tailscale.

> Granted, that's also not tailscale. I take your point, but they're technically not Headscale either! Yes there are a few third-party UIs for Headscale but now we are 3 times removed from Tailscale :)

Ah, looks like there are several! And they're all third-(third-)party...

> https://headscale.net/web-ui/

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#55

> Narrowlink and Tailscale are two open source solutions with different architectures that enable secure remote access and connectivity across networks. A nitpick, but ironically I think they're being generous to Tailscale there. Tailscale isn't really "open source" - or at least not without heavy qualification. I'm not an open source zealot by any means but that line just seems a little misleading. The clients are p…

> even though I understand that it is (unofficially?) supported by Tailscale these days.

https://tailscale.com/blog/opensource/

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps narrowlink doesn't want to draw attention to this: https://github.com/narrowlink/narrowlink/blob/main/LICENSE.m...

What’s to draw attention to there? MPL and AGPL are both Open Source licenses.

One's not usable in any corporate context, especially one that's so low level in the network stack. The doc post is a content marketing post (in this case, for SEO hacking specifically) disguised as a technical comparison, so they clearly have monetisation in mind.

In other words, disingenuous advertising.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#57

> Narrowlink and Tailscale are two open source solutions with different architectures that enable secure remote access and connectivity across networks. A nitpick, but ironically I think they're being generous to Tailscale there. Tailscale isn't really "open source" - or at least not without heavy qualification. I'm not an open source zealot by any means but that line just seems a little misleading. The clients are p…

> even though I understand that it is (unofficially?) supported by Tailscale these days. https://tailscale.com/blog/opensource/

I was drawing attention to this line in your README:

> This project is not associated with Tailscale Inc.

:)

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried switching to Headscale recently...it was not a pleasant experience. I'm sure with more time in the oven, it will eventually become a comparable replacement, but I wouldn't be relying on it for anything production oriented.

Headscale dev here! What issues did you face? :)

It was last year, so it's not in recent memory, but most of the problem was around instability. We ran into some frequent issues where we would begin troubleshooting, assuming it was something on the application end, only to find out that the issue was happening in the network. We eventually figured out that the Headscale network was randomly dropping in and out. I'm sure with a lot more time we could have identified the root cause, but unfortunately, we had a deadline and just paid Tailscale (and haven't had any issues since).

Like I said, I'm sure it's coming along fine, it's not just something that we were able to set and forget like with the Tailscale experience.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even though I understand that it is (unofficially?) supported by Tailscale these days. https://tailscale.com/blog/opensource/

I was drawing attention to this line in your README: > This project is not associated with Tailscale Inc. :)

Ah, I was not stating anything else than linking their blog post :)

I am pretty sure they would have eventually published a control server.

We just happened to be quicker (and come up with a great name, IMHO).

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