[Arm-netbook] Side-Topic: Liberating PocketCHIP

[David Niklas]

On Tue, 30 May 2017 03:36:24 +0100
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:

> ---
> crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 10:48 PM, David Niklas <doark at mail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I am just a tad confused.
> > 1. You started a reverse engineering project on NT domains.
> > 2. You presented your success to MS as a security problem.  
> 
>  and also a collaboration and interoperability opportunity (which
> worked extremely successfully).
> 
>  and it also galvanised them to do a proper documentation effort.
> basically there wasn't any.  at all.  the code had been organically
> develeped by engineers that were getting on for retirement age.  as
> they were the only ones left who understood the security implications,
> they began a rather urgent process called the "CIFS Initiative" to
> document the protocol so that their *own engineers could understand
> it*.
> 
>  frickin funny, really.
> 
> > 3. You were hired.
> > 4. Someone in MS complained.  
> 
>  some fuckwit in the brain-washed marketing department, yes.  what's
> hilarious is that microsoft's own employees - the ones with good
> reputations and standing - had to tell this particular specimen of
> brainwashed fuckwittery, "you _do_ realise what this one individual
> could do to our company if you ever pissed him off??"
> 
>  :)
> 
> 
> > So, the FLOSS folks never saw your work anyway?  
> 
>  they did.... and they resented it, very very badly.  the so-called
> leaders of the samba team *really* did not like the fact that i knew
> more than them about MSRPC, and that the work that i spearheaded
> increased the codebase of samba at the time by a whopping THIRTY
> PERCENT.
> 
>  so they engineereed a way to get me out.
> 
>  by 2003 someone in the FLOSS community tracked my work on Exchange
> 5.5 reverse-engineering, copied it, reimplemnted it, and did not tell
> anyone that i was the one who had done the reverse-engineering.
> 
>  20 years later samba is considered to be a failure.  samba 4 was
> something like 10 years in the making, and yet failed to deliver.
> companies that had held on to samba 3, which the samba developers
> STOPPED work on because they didn't understand it properly, were
> struggling to keep it up and running and were totally incensed when
> samba 4 was finally released and was even worse and even harder to
> configure.
> 
>  they pushed me out and FLOSS has suffered as a result, because the
> complexity is so high it's beyond their ability to cope.
> 
> l.

I'm shocked.
I've met so many nice people, like you, working on FLOSS projects...
Just out of curiosity, did you ever consider developing a new version of
samba that works right, just for fun and kicks?

Sincerely,
David