Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

wireedit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 82 posts

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#41

Post by wirefloss »

pyre wrote: post #33
cbd1984 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without source why should we trust the privacy policy?

Presumably the crowd that a packet editor is targeted at knows their way around something like WireShark, and could easily monitor the software for phoning home. That's a pretty strong incentive to not do it.

One would think so. I'm certainly curious how much people use the tool. Wouldn't you? However in anticipation of security concerns the software doesn't gather any info, and makes no external connections. Auto-updates were implemented, but later disabled for the same reason.

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#42

Post by wirefloss »

pyre wrote: post #29
rudolf0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will admit that I initially thought this was a Wireshark plugin or related to Wireshark in some fashion, based on the name and the appearance of the GUI on the page. You may want to put a little disclaimer at the top saying it's not associated or competing with Wireshark. Pretty cool tool either way.

Don't know if it was just added, but the front page currently has this on it: Are you competing with Wireshark? No. WireEdit is a packet editor, not an analyzer. No real-time packet capture either.

Yeh. I added it after the above question was asked. It was asked once, so it obviusly belongs to a FAQ.

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#43

Post by simlevesque »

swartkrans wrote: post #13
simlevesque wrote: post #4

You should add the licence on the website. It's a nice concept but I'll start using it as soon as someone creates a FOSS clone.

>It's a nice concept but I'll start using it as soon as someone creates a FOSS clone. I like FOSS, and am grateful for the work open source engineers put into software, and I have also contributed, but this attitude right here where you wont even consider something because it's closed source? What's the point of that? Why shouldn't an engineer be paid? It's very difficult to capture value with open source software. P…

They can release the free version as FOSS and release the paid version as closed source. I don't see how he would make any less money with an open source free software compared to a closed source free software. He's already said how he would monetize it, by offering a premium version with support like REHL. Also, I would not mind at all to pay a fee to use the normal edition and access the source. Free means libre, not gratis.

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#46

Post by coryking »

pyre wrote: post #31
swartkrans wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a nice concept but I'll start using it as soon as someone creates a FOSS clone. I like FOSS, and am grateful for the work open source engineers put into software, and I have also contributed, but this attitude right here where you wont even consider something because it's closed source? What's the point of that? Why shouldn't an engineer be paid? It's very difficult to capture value with open source software. P…

For starters, it looks like this could be an issue: Can I add support for stack Y myself? No but we’d be happy to talk about it. If this was FOSS, you could easily add support for your own stack rather than being at the mercy of their limited amount of time to work on it.

And who is really going to do that? Do I have time at my day job to port some network packet editor to the platform of my choice? Is management going to fund such an effort, or are they just gonna pay for the app?

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#47

Post by swartkrans »

Arkanosis wrote: post #20
swartkrans wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a nice concept but I'll start using it as soon as someone creates a FOSS clone. I like FOSS, and am grateful for the work open source engineers put into software, and I have also contributed, but this attitude right here where you wont even consider something because it's closed source? What's the point of that? Why shouldn't an engineer be paid? It's very difficult to capture value with open source software. P…

Can't tell for others, but I'm very reluctant to spend time learning a tool that I know from the beginning I won't be able to debug / improve later and that the owner may change in a way that doesn't fit me or even stop to support. The only non-FOSS tools I've been using on a daily basis for years are Gmail and Google Calendar. I can't tell I'm really happy with how they have evolved out of my control. Oh, and Google…

How do you charge for something that can be freely redistributed? How can I charge you $50 for software that you can then take and give to everyone for free because of the open source license? Where are people going to get that software from? From me where it costs $50 or from you where they can get it for free? The GNU website says you can charge for distribution, but that was written back when people distributed CDROMS. Now that it's all over the internet, that model doesn't work anymore.

You put binaries up for download, charge $50, and anyone can pay you the $50, take that binary and legally redistribute it for free. Or they could just take the source and build it for nothing and do the same thing. Talk to me about the economics of making that viable. Please, because if you can I would love to do it that way. I would prefer the source code I write to be open source, but I have to eat and my children have to eat and we need to pay rent, and so I have to capture the value too. Software firms with modest sales can't afford to lose a dime they make, so how could they go FOSS?

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#48

Post by [deleted] »

coryking wrote: post #46
pyre wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For starters, it looks like this could be an issue: Can I add support for stack Y myself? No but we’d be happy to talk about it. If this was FOSS, you could easily add support for your own stack rather than being at the mercy of their limited amount of time to work on it.

And who is really going to do that? Do I have time at my day job to port some network packet editor to the platform of my choice? Is management going to fund such an effort, or are they just gonna pay for the app?

[deleted]

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#49

Post by lucb1e »

I was very excited, it's a project I've been wanting to do for years but never had the time (or better yet, something I've wanted to use, but it never existed). Then I got to the downloads. Great, an Ubuntu version... which is just the Windows version bundled with WINE except they modified WINE... and in the README they warn that it really only works with Ubuntu x32 and that you shouldn't have WINE already installed. Right. Why they expect people to still run x32 in 2014 is a mystery to me, but these guys do. And I already have WINE installed.

At this point I started to feel really bad about giving this my root password (the readme said it would prompt for it), it all just sounds super hacky. Also the instructions to place it in my home directory... why, doesn't it work elsewhere? What kind of epic hack is this? No, I don't think I trust this with root permissions.

Re: WireEdit – A Full Stack WYSIWYG Editor for Network Packets

#50

Post by lucb1e »

jnazario wrote: post #35
xorrbit wrote: post #5

Not open source = not at all like WireShark, sorry. And that's a damn shame. I could see a community growing around this kind of thing and adding all kinds of protocol support to it, if only it was open source.

if you're looking for an OSS variant of this (packet editor with a GUI), have a look at Netdude: http://netdude.sourceforge.net/ older package, but does basically this.

> Copyright 2006, last update June 2007

That sure is what it looks like. But thanks for sharing anyway, interesting project

Post reply on HN