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Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

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Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#391
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm not an expert, but isn't it still simply pirating software? I mean what's the difference between this and pirating Photoshop for example?

The difference is that the cited shell script downloads software that the copyright holder himself makes freely available. It is like downloading binary freeware. The ToS are a separate issue, but I doubt they'd hold in Europe for example.

Just because software is made available using a public web server does not mean that you are free to use it as you please. It's distributed along with a ToS agreement that governs its use.

Bringing in words like "illegal" can be fraught because I don't think we've seen a court case (in the US at least) about exactly how binding a "click-wrap" agreement actually is, but there's no question that projects like the one linked upthread violate the terms of the software license.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#392
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why build it in the first place if you don't want people to use it? Also, a lot of VPN services are moving to WireGuard, they will hopefully contribute to WireGuard development in the future. You can't really do cost/benefit assessment based on current contribution values. If you did that, no startup will ever start, and no open source project will ever be created, as upon creation the usage is almost always zero.

Windows & Linux users will still be able to use it. Most popular VPN services seem to develop their own custom desktop clients (they do this for OpenVPN); they will definitely contribute to Wireguard, but I'm not sure that they will contribute much to the desktop-specific parts of the "official" apps. Edit: I should add that there is another cost/benefit assessment here: if Wireguard developers continue to appease Ap…

You can't just look at the clients, you have to consider a VPN protocol holistically. Do you think that most VPN installations are going to run two different gateways side-by-side so that they can provide Protocol X for Platforms A and B, and Protocol Y for Platforms C and D? (Even worse: X for just Platform A, and Y for literally every other user.)
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