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Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

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Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#231
post #204

I wonder if someone might indulge me by answering a question or two about Tailscale. I have a self-managed wireguard network which works, but probably isn't very smart or elegant. From what I can gather, Tailscale does a lot of "magic" things to accomplish its goals, and some of them actually have "magic" right in the name. As a system administrator by trade, I have been bitten SO MANY TIMES by things that try to aut…

It's difficult for us to maintain documentation of exactly the kind you'd want there, though we do try to keep up with docs as best we can. In particular there is a fairly wide array of heuristics in the client to adapt to the environment that it's running in - and this is most true on Linux where there are far far too many different configuration patterns and duplicate subsystems (example: https://tailscale.com/blog…

> It's difficult for us to maintain documentation of exactly the kind you'd want there

Suggestion: let an LLM maintain it for you.

Alternate suggestion for OP: let an LLM generate the explanations you want from the code (when available).

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#232

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

Went with ZeroTier and Netbird, they're not too bad.

Don't they both have even more restrictions on the server side vs the paid service?

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They specifically avoid sending traffic through tailscale servers whenever possible. That’s how the free tier stays free. Most connections are direct, P2P. The traffic that does go through their servers is encrypted, and bandwidth limited on the free plan. Any snooping on client behavior would have to be done client side, and the clients are all open source. To some extent the coordination server might be able to ded…

This is pure misinformation. 'Most connections are direct, P2P' makes no sense to anyone versed in basic networking.

What do you mean? P2P is commonplace, for example, in IP telephony, and obviously in many other cases.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. The restaurant experience would be better without a line. I tolerate lines if the restaurant experience is good enough. If it is not, I go somewhere else. “Going somewhere else” is not always an option when it comes to computers/software.

Which is exactly what the OP was saying. You see a value in a imperfect restaurant experience.

I don’t value the imperfections. I value the experience despite the imperfections.

I value a great video game or piece of software often despite its bugs and issues. If they had fewer bugs and issues I’d value it more. It would be better.

We should not conflate tolerance and appreciation. Just because people tolerate it doesn’t mean they value it.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#235
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tailscalar here) To be clear: it's only the GUIs that are closed source on selected platforms.

can you say more about this. I've been considering adding tailscale to some products but if my (nerd) perspective is to survive corporate realism I need more than a 1-liner to justify. seriously curious. Also how would I pitch it to a EU based crowd that wants increasingly less to do with US based tech?

Essentially this: OSS operating systems get OSS GUIs.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#236
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I understand people need to make money but this tends to be a death spiral (enshittification). So I tend to go for solutions without those incentives at all. Or at least use the free self hosted option. I wonder why you jumped into the mesh vpn market, it's so saturated. Theres literally hundreds of solutions out there (niche ones included for the mainstream ones it's probably 10 or so), many non profit o…

Another way to counteract enshittification is to pay for things, then stop paying when they enshittify.

That doesn't really help. It still happens. And you still need to move to something else. And they'll try to tie you in by making migration as tough as possible.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#237

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

I don't understand this attitude. Some humans have to eat and put a roof over their heads sometimes, and extracting consulting fees from open-source work (i.e. the Redhat model) is not always a paying business model. A hybrid model is often the best way to compromise. Disclaimer: I'm pursuing a similar solution on an app I'm working on. The CLI will be free and open-source (and will have feature parity with the GUI),…

They don't have access to the same information as us. There's another comment that replied to you who brought up enshittification. I guarantee you he has not read the blog post by apenwarr. Or even knows who apenwarr is.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#238
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to counteract enshittification is to pay for things, then stop paying when they enshittify.

just stop paying them, as though migrating to an alternative is free and easy

No it's not. Like moving from Instagram to something else, that's going to be very tough because nobody else is on there. Same with WhatsApp.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have to eat and put a roof over my head. Tying that to a system that can change permanently at any time to something less helpful is dangerous. Preferring open source is a risk mitigation strategy. The closed alternative may have better features to make them worth that risk though.

One feature is: it's a business and won't be abandoned due to OSS but out if it has a sustainable way to continue.

The (almost) opposite is also a feature: it's OSS and will still be available if the business goes out of business

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#240
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tailscalar here) To be clear: it's only the GUIs that are closed source on selected platforms.

I stand corrected. Although, the problem is not so single-layered. Do I understand the situation correctly, in case of iOS, to not be subject to additional limitations of the platform that restricts the distribution of your products to the extents that the laws of the countries where your business is registered require, all the user has to do is to fork the main repo (which is, thankfully, BSD), build a minimally acc…

Essentially, yeah, but of course you wouldn't want to use any Tailscale trademarks.

Tailscale is engineered under the assumption that any client connected to our control plane could potentially differ from our canonical OSS codebase.

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