15 ms·

It may be the same strong sense of ownership and control that precluded the liberalisation of Truecrypt's license during its lifetime in the past decade.

by quasque 12y ago

Zancarius 12y ago
Your reply seems to be the most sensible out of the lot. (Side note: I presumed there'd be a couple other ones that suggested it's open source--never mind that prior to the removal of some of the license text it wasn't "free as in beer" open. To be fair, I had forgotten myself that TrueCrypt wasn't exactly open source.) Perhaps ownership does run deep, even if you've never really released a product for money and it's always been free. Still, it's something I don't understand: If I had a tool that I released for free and finally gave up on it, I'd like to think I'd open it up under an exceptionally liberal license or just dump it in the public domain. That'd be especially true if it had a lot of users. That's what makes me think that if this isn't some elaborate scheme it's likely the result of some sort of legal requirement or action (e.g. Lavabit) which would preclude the author(s) from doing anything else with the software. It's a shame they couldn't take a scorched earth-esque approach of dumping everything in the public domain, including notes on why this was happening, everyone else be damned, but I'd imagine their entire career might be in jeopardy at that point (and possibly their freedom).
- tacotime 12y ago
  The one thing I have to add. Maybe by taking this route, the author(s) hope to inspire others to see the obvious need for a project like truecryp more dramatically. It's not like old bin/source repos aren't available in 100 different locations across the net; if you need the program you can get it. But this action does send a strong message and it's that there is no adequate existing cross-platform solution to this problem outside of trusting your os or using (not so plausibly deniable) file archives. I'd like to think that the author(s) are trying to highlight the necessity while secretly cheering on the next generation of trucrypt.
  - Zancarius 12y ago
    That's a good point, and it's certainly true on many fronts. Commercial alternatives are questionable at best (particularly given the NSA revelations), but the F/OSS community (and others) relied perhaps too heavily on popular software like TrueCrypt to fill the void. Now that it's gone and the other alternatives aren't quite as cross-platform as one might like, it does seem to illustrate a dearth of cryptographic software available for the general public. Given that border searches of electronic hardware are becoming more commonplace in the US, I should think that something like this is important. I know when I was driving back and forth to university, the thought crossed my mind when I had my laptop with me as I went through the border patrol checkpoint that there wasn't anything much I could do (outside lawyering up) if they took it upon themselves to grab it and search. Sure, the worst they could have done was read my email (and maybe clear out the junk folder for me while they're at it), but it was the principle of feeling so violated by the act itself that drove me to stuff all my school work into a TrueCrypt volume. (This was years ago, and TC was the best option for XP. Though I later switched the laptop over to Linux.)

It may be the same strong sense of ownership and control that precluded the liberalisation of Truecrypt's license during its lifetime in the past decade.

by quasque 12y ago

It may be the same strong sense of ownership and control that precluded the liberalisation of Truecrypt's license during its lifetime in the past decade.

Zancarius 12y ago

Your reply seems to be the most sensible out of the lot. (Side note: I presumed there'd be a couple other ones that suggested it's open source--never mind that prior to the removal of some of the license text it wasn't "free as in beer" open. To be fair, I had forgotten myself that TrueCrypt wasn't exactly open source.) Perhaps ownership does run deep, even if you've never really released a product for money and it's always been free. Still, it's something I don't understand: If I had a tool that I released for free and finally gave up on it, I'd like to think I'd open it up under an exceptionally liberal license or just dump it in the public domain. That'd be especially true if it had a lot of users. That's what makes me think that if this isn't some elaborate scheme it's likely the result of some sort of legal requirement or action (e.g. Lavabit) which would preclude the author(s) from doing anything else with the software. It's a shame they couldn't take a scorched earth-esque approach of dumping everything in the public domain, including notes on why this was happening, everyone else be damned, but I'd imagine their entire career might be in jeopardy at that point (and possibly their freedom).

tacotime 12y ago
The one thing I have to add. Maybe by taking this route, the author(s) hope to inspire others to see the obvious need for a project like truecryp more dramatically. It's not like old bin/source repos aren't available in 100 different locations across the net; if you need the program you can get it. But this action does send a strong message and it's that there is no adequate existing cross-platform solution to this problem outside of trusting your os or using (not so plausibly deniable) file archives. I'd like to think that the author(s) are trying to highlight the necessity while secretly cheering on the next generation of trucrypt.
- Zancarius 12y ago
  That's a good point, and it's certainly true on many fronts. Commercial alternatives are questionable at best (particularly given the NSA revelations), but the F/OSS community (and others) relied perhaps too heavily on popular software like TrueCrypt to fill the void. Now that it's gone and the other alternatives aren't quite as cross-platform as one might like, it does seem to illustrate a dearth of cryptographic software available for the general public. Given that border searches of electronic hardware are becoming more commonplace in the US, I should think that something like this is important. I know when I was driving back and forth to university, the thought crossed my mind when I had my laptop with me as I went through the border patrol checkpoint that there wasn't anything much I could do (outside lawyering up) if they took it upon themselves to grab it and search. Sure, the worst they could have done was read my email (and maybe clear out the junk folder for me while they're at it), but it was the principle of feeling so violated by the act itself that drove me to stuff all my school work into a TrueCrypt volume. (This was years ago, and TC was the best option for XP. Though I later switched the laptop over to Linux.)