Re:Signal’s Moxie Marlinspike calls out Telegram founder Pav...
by zeveb on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @02:12PM
(#15287253)
> His point was that upgrading all clients/servers on a federated network is difficult/impossible and you end up with compatibility issues.
I think that he exaggerates the problem. Right now, it's possible for someone to install the Signal client, and then never upgrade it: the Signal servers must have a way, eventually, to refuse service to that client (upon which it will receive a message from the server stating something to the effect of 'your client is too outdated; please update it').
With a federated system, eventually some servers will be so out of date that other servers will refuse service to them. They'll have to send a message to those servers to the effect of 'you are too outdated; please update yourself'; the server can forward that message to its administrator. The clients of such servers might also receive a message stating 'your server is too outdated; please ask your administrator to upgrade or switch servers.'
A similar pattern exists with respect to client updates in a federated network.
Moxie's just wrong on this, I think: it's not significantly worse; the pattern with federation is very similar to the pattern with centralisation; and there are real benefits to federation & decentralisation.
I think that he exaggerates the problem. Right now, it's possible for someone to install the Signal client, and then never upgrade it: the Signal servers must have a way, eventually, to refuse service to that client (upon which it will receive a message from the server stating something to the effect of 'your client is too outdated; please update it').
With a federated system, eventually some servers will be so out of date that other servers will refuse service to them. They'll have to send a message to those servers to the effect of 'you are too outdated; please update yourself'; the server can forward that message to its administrator. The clients of such servers might also receive a message stating 'your server is too outdated; please ask your administrator to upgrade or switch servers.'
A similar pattern exists with respect to client updates in a federated network.
Moxie's just wrong on this, I think: it's not significantly worse; the pattern with federation is very similar to the pattern with centralisation; and there are real benefits to federation & decentralisation.