TCP ensures what gets sent on one side gets received on the other side. TLS just encrypts the data. So even without TLS, random corruptions won't happen unless someone does MITM attack.
No it does not. I've had this happen in legacy systems myself. The checksums of TCP/IP are weak and will let random errors through to L7 if there are enough of them. It's not even CRC and you must bring your own verification if it's critical for your application that the data is correct. TLS does that and more, protecting not only against random corruption but also active attackers. The checks you get for free are to be seen only as an optimization, letting most but not all errors be discarded quick and easy. Just use TLS.
The only "downside" is that the format is an open spec, which allows anyone to modify the contents without going through the specific application. And it's only a downside if you are using the format as an obfuscation to prevent third-party compatibility/reverse engineering, or to lock in customers.
Yup. You can strip headers from the file though and keep them in your application though, to keep the file from being easily usable. And/or encrypt it.
I admit, my approach was rather nuclear but it worked at the time.
I think an evolution would be to use some sort of exponential backoff, e.g. first time offenders get banned for an hour, second time is 4 hours, third time and you're sent into the abyss!
To play devil’s advocate - where do you draw the line? They say they’re not going to push further into competing, but what if they did? I don’t know enough about either platform to really comment on how much of a big it is / how much they crossover. I do feel that it shows somewhat bad judgement on behalf of the intern to build something in exactly the same space as a former employer. One of the great things about software is that you can always move into another domain with your skills.
Obviously, I love the likes of Tailscale for embracing and supporting this behaviour - but that’s super exceptional (because they’re a strong team).
Well the line is law: infringing copyrights and patents. And the US law is very specific about ideas not being copyrightable, so clones are usually safe.
Yeah that’s fair - and to be clear, I’m not really defending the CEO in this case. As a founder, I was just imagining a scenario where one of our team did something similar and how I might react to it. My thoughts (and point) drifted a bit.
Serves more as a reminder to the youngsters out there that potential future hirers will use things like this to inform hiring decisions. Legal or not, your history follows you around (I’m old enough to be lucky to not have the stupid stuff I did early in my career available online). Be free, go build stuff for fun but keep clear of your employers space.
I am surprised the CEO does not understand the dynamic of his business. An open source project replicating your product is always a boost to the business. There is no case where that's not the case. The OSS is essentially the minatenance free free tier of the paid product.
I went to a YC event where the founder of a multi-billion dollar open source SaaS said pretty much the opposite and tried to drill home how strategic the choice needs to be for the company to survive.
Nah, their moat is making the software as fiddly and ops heavy as possible. I really like gitlab but having set it up myself several times now, it's kinda a mess and they're not incentivized to make it decent.
I was vibe researching TUN/TAP devices a few days ago. Cool to see such cool projects using them. I was mostly thinking about making a VPN prototype through.
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