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It has been two weeks since Fastly's VP of Eng called out your ToS and errors in your benchmark in her original tweet thread [1]. I would hope that Cloudflare w

It has been two weeks since Fastly's VP of Eng called out your ToS and errors in your benchmark in her original tweet thread [1]. I would hope that Cloudflare would have a better response than this that directly addresses Fastly's claims. Are you going to remove the ToS clause or issue a correction on the blog post? [1] https://twitter.com/lxt/status/1462896850055352320 https://twitter.com/lxt/status/1462896850055352320

kentonv 5y ago
To be clear my comment here is not in any way, shape, or form, Cloudflare's response. I am here representing only myself.
- dcow 5y ago
  Sure, but you self-identified as someone responsible for the project and then suggested people go violate the ToS by running their own benchmarks. I think the community here calling out the double standards and asking for an update/response is entirely fair. If you didn't want the flak then leave off the "I'm the tech lead on CF workers" intro. Seems to me like the ball is in your court to at least try and make your advice actionable.
  - nickysielicki 5y ago
    > you self-identified as someone responsible for the project and then suggested people go violate the ToS by running their own benchmarks. He did not. Profiling how your particular app and use case runs on a given serverless provider is not benchmarking.
  - kentonv 5y ago
    I do not believe I suggested doing anything against the ToS. I think you're misinterpreting the clause. But not being a lawyer, I don't really want to get into that discussion. If I didn't state upfront that I was the tech lead of Workers, someone would (rightly) call me out for astroturfing.
    - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
      First off, just want to say thanks for your posts, I found they give useful context and I really appreciate them. I don't want the following to come off as unnecessarily argumentative, but regarding the ToS, I'm not a lawyer either, but my "ability to read English" interpretation of the section on "perform or publish benchmarks..." certainly sounds like it is prohibiting folks from doing their own side-by-side comparisons. Which is, of course, nonsense, because any engineer worth their salt would do their own analysis, even if they didn't publish it. Just sounds to me like the CloudFlare lawyers got a little too aggressive to the point of absurdity, but I still think it's fair to call out CloudFlare for this.
      - ldoughty 5y ago
        Note that the CEO had replied too this parent thread and said he is removing that language
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        Plus it was there to prevent DoS attacks which is understandable. Even without the ToS language, if you're really going to stress test a service, it's probably a good idea to give them a heads up, lest you get marked a bad actor.
        dmurray 5y ago
        He still should take some responsibility for it being there in the first place. "Our legal department insists on adding user-hostile clauses everywhere they get the chance" is an OK excuse for a Cloudflare sales rep or engineer, but it's disingenuous coming from the guy who is in a position to tell them to take a friendlier approach by default. I'm assuming this isn't the only overly restrictive clause in the contract. Maybe it's an anomaly in an otherwise respectful ToS.
        floatingatoll 5y ago
        He’s the CEO. He acknowledged it and is fixing it. There is no more responsibility left unclaimed. We aren’t owed a historical explanation, and yet we’ll likely receive one with what I presume will be a TOS update blog post in a few weeks. I feel like this is that moment where someone lays on the car horn because they want to be sure the other driver understands that they’re a bad person, and should feel bad about themselves. It’s not about making you right by their actions, it’s about making sure they know the depth of your anger at them. That has little value here. It’s socially valuable in interpersonal interactions, but it’s a tire fire when left uncurbed at Internet scale, and becomes vitriolic and harmful to discourse. I may have misunderstood your specific intentions and desires from the CEO, and if so, I apologize; but I stand by my point in the general sense for all of us.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  FWIW that semantic difference is meaningless to me. A senior member of CF just commented in detail about CF and a competitor.
  - kentonv 5y ago
    Sounds like you have it right.
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  It seems weird to want to claim authority (eg. that you are the tech lead) but not be willing to also be accountable for your statements.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    What statements do you feel he should be held accountable for that he is not? Please quote.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    In general, the situation is the exact opposite: companies want to claim authority, but when an employee makes a statement they don’t like they want to have the deniability of “oh they weren’t representing us, if you want our real opinion please talk to our spokesperson”. Corporate PR is a strange mix of wanting engagement but also being incredibly risk-averse, and it’s very different from how people typically communicate.
    - bubblethink 5y ago
      I propose changing these disclaimers about "not representing the company" yada yada, to ICOG, which stands for I am a cog in the machine.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    I’m not sure how much authority being tech lead confers? It’s the lowest possible line management position. I wouldn’t expect a tech lead to have any influence whatsoever on legal, contractual or communication issues
staticassertion 5y ago
I wouldn't expect everyone at Cloudflare to be intimately following every competitor's blog posts tbh
- dwwoelfel 5y ago
  But I'd bet kentonv was following this one, since he said "until Fatly complained about it" and not "until I read the blog post".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
NicoJuicy 5y ago
If you know a little about how corporations work, than a tech lead is not responsible for a ToS, probably doesn't know anything about it and that's fine. Since it's not expected either. It's the legal department... And the CEO already mentioned that they are removing it and he gave a valid response/reason. It seems that they will actually benchmark Fastly in detail now ( could be after another improvement week), which probably isn't what Fastly wanted. Something definitely seems to be happening if you read their response and i'm awaiting it with actual stats! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468771 @dwwoelfel that's what you wanted? :)
- dwwoelfel 5y ago
  My experience working at tech companies is that the tech lead, or anybody at the company, can post in an internal message board or slack to ask "what's up with this weird clause in our ToS" and expect an explanation. It's nice that eastdakota responded here, but he had two weeks since the original tweet thread from Fastly's VP of Eng calling out the problems with their benchmarking. They didn't respond or retract the blog post in those two weeks. As a cloudflare shareholder (and a fastly shareholder), I want Cloudflare to act ethically and either retract the blog post or issue a correction.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    And what i read from his comments is that a follow-up post will come. You are insinuating bad will/faith and that's not the impression i observed.
    - dwwoelfel 5y ago
      Cloudflare's blog post still says, in bold, "Cloudflare Workers is 196% faster than Fastly’s Compute@Edge based on the time to first byte from the tests we ran on 50 nodes using Catchpoint’s data from across the world". It is unethical to leave that up after Fastly pointed out core issues with the benchmarking, like using a free tier that was rate-limited.

kentonv 5y ago

To be clear my comment here is not in any way, shape, or form, Cloudflare's response. I am here representing only myself.

dcow 5y ago
Sure, but you self-identified as someone responsible for the project and then suggested people go violate the ToS by running their own benchmarks. I think the community here calling out the double standards and asking for an update/response is entirely fair. If you didn't want the flak then leave off the "I'm the tech lead on CF workers" intro. Seems to me like the ball is in your court to at least try and make your advice actionable.
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  > you self-identified as someone responsible for the project and then suggested people go violate the ToS by running their own benchmarks. He did not. Profiling how your particular app and use case runs on a given serverless provider is not benchmarking.
- kentonv 5y ago
  I do not believe I suggested doing anything against the ToS. I think you're misinterpreting the clause. But not being a lawyer, I don't really want to get into that discussion. If I didn't state upfront that I was the tech lead of Workers, someone would (rightly) call me out for astroturfing.
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    First off, just want to say thanks for your posts, I found they give useful context and I really appreciate them. I don't want the following to come off as unnecessarily argumentative, but regarding the ToS, I'm not a lawyer either, but my "ability to read English" interpretation of the section on "perform or publish benchmarks..." certainly sounds like it is prohibiting folks from doing their own side-by-side comparisons. Which is, of course, nonsense, because any engineer worth their salt would do their own analysis, even if they didn't publish it. Just sounds to me like the CloudFlare lawyers got a little too aggressive to the point of absurdity, but I still think it's fair to call out CloudFlare for this.
    - ldoughty 5y ago
      Note that the CEO had replied too this parent thread and said he is removing that language
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        Plus it was there to prevent DoS attacks which is understandable. Even without the ToS language, if you're really going to stress test a service, it's probably a good idea to give them a heads up, lest you get marked a bad actor.
      - dmurray 5y ago
        He still should take some responsibility for it being there in the first place. "Our legal department insists on adding user-hostile clauses everywhere they get the chance" is an OK excuse for a Cloudflare sales rep or engineer, but it's disingenuous coming from the guy who is in a position to tell them to take a friendlier approach by default. I'm assuming this isn't the only overly restrictive clause in the contract. Maybe it's an anomaly in an otherwise respectful ToS.
        floatingatoll 5y ago
        He’s the CEO. He acknowledged it and is fixing it. There is no more responsibility left unclaimed. We aren’t owed a historical explanation, and yet we’ll likely receive one with what I presume will be a TOS update blog post in a few weeks. I feel like this is that moment where someone lays on the car horn because they want to be sure the other driver understands that they’re a bad person, and should feel bad about themselves. It’s not about making you right by their actions, it’s about making sure they know the depth of your anger at them. That has little value here. It’s socially valuable in interpersonal interactions, but it’s a tire fire when left uncurbed at Internet scale, and becomes vitriolic and harmful to discourse. I may have misunderstood your specific intentions and desires from the CEO, and if so, I apologize; but I stand by my point in the general sense for all of us.
Waterluvian 5y ago
FWIW that semantic difference is meaningless to me. A senior member of CF just commented in detail about CF and a competitor.
- kentonv 5y ago
  Sounds like you have it right.
ddtaylor 5y ago
It seems weird to want to claim authority (eg. that you are the tech lead) but not be willing to also be accountable for your statements.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  What statements do you feel he should be held accountable for that he is not? Please quote.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  In general, the situation is the exact opposite: companies want to claim authority, but when an employee makes a statement they don’t like they want to have the deniability of “oh they weren’t representing us, if you want our real opinion please talk to our spokesperson”. Corporate PR is a strange mix of wanting engagement but also being incredibly risk-averse, and it’s very different from how people typically communicate.
  - bubblethink 5y ago
    I propose changing these disclaimers about "not representing the company" yada yada, to ICOG, which stands for I am a cog in the machine.
- namdnay 5y ago
  I’m not sure how much authority being tech lead confers? It’s the lowest possible line management position. I wouldn’t expect a tech lead to have any influence whatsoever on legal, contractual or communication issues

staticassertion 5y ago

I wouldn't expect everyone at Cloudflare to be intimately following every competitor's blog posts tbh

dwwoelfel 5y ago
But I'd bet kentonv was following this one, since he said "until Fatly complained about it" and not "until I read the blog post".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

NicoJuicy 5y ago

If you know a little about how corporations work, than a tech lead is not responsible for a ToS, probably doesn't know anything about it and that's fine. Since it's not expected either. It's the legal department... And the CEO already mentioned that they are removing it and he gave a valid response/reason. It seems that they will actually benchmark Fastly in detail now ( could be after another improvement week), which probably isn't what Fastly wanted. Something definitely seems to be happening if you read their response and i'm awaiting it with actual stats! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468771 @dwwoelfel that's what you wanted? :)

dwwoelfel 5y ago
My experience working at tech companies is that the tech lead, or anybody at the company, can post in an internal message board or slack to ask "what's up with this weird clause in our ToS" and expect an explanation. It's nice that eastdakota responded here, but he had two weeks since the original tweet thread from Fastly's VP of Eng calling out the problems with their benchmarking. They didn't respond or retract the blog post in those two weeks. As a cloudflare shareholder (and a fastly shareholder), I want Cloudflare to act ethically and either retract the blog post or issue a correction.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  And what i read from his comments is that a follow-up post will come. You are insinuating bad will/faith and that's not the impression i observed.
  - dwwoelfel 5y ago
    Cloudflare's blog post still says, in bold, "Cloudflare Workers is 196% faster than Fastly’s Compute@Edge based on the time to first byte from the tests we ran on 50 nodes using Catchpoint’s data from across the world". It is unethical to leave that up after Fastly pointed out core issues with the benchmarking, like using a free tier that was rate-limited.