Heh, well thanks for the honesty :)

> How will you do to P2P without some kind of centralized bootstrapping service with the prevalence of NAT and people who do not know how to port-forward? (I just saw the Github repos, so I will examine this myself in a bit.)

The P2P is done over local networks only. It uses multicast DNS for service discovery. Bluepass syncs between your own devices only. As long as the devices occasionally share a (W)LAN, it will work.

> Why should I trust you? What have you done other than this project? Not to be increasingly blunt, but you are not the Mozilla Foundation and your Github repos do not show much other than work on co-routines and AD service wrappers. That is useful to me, but I would like to see more security work and knowledge of crypto libraries if I trust you with password manager code.

Well, everybody has to start somewhere. I do believe that I have enough experience with crypto to be qualified here. I've got a physics degree and did a lot of maths. And I read Schneier and Wenbo Mao's book cover to cover. Also note that I'm not using any proprietary algorithms. This is all OpenSSL wrapped algo's that I'm using from Python.

But in the end, what should give this the right credibility is that the source code is up on Github, together with my intention to grow a community that can review the crypto. If there is something not right, which can always happen of course, then it will get out sooner or later.

> What else do you work on? Your blog does not show me too much, and I cannot find much mention of you to warrant 60,000 USD for such a project. I am correct in seeing you a Marketing/Product Manager? Sorry to be harsh, but honestly I think most of HN would be worried about these points.

This is not related to my day job. I would say have a look at the code, and decide for yourself if you like the code. I don't think being a product marketing manager in the day is mutually exclusive with being able to write good code.

The calculation of the funds is rather straightforward: $10k for each of the platforms that need work: iOS, Android, Chrome, FF, Mac and Windows.

Thanks for the honest responses. I will not lie: you easily shredded most of my reservations. Not sure if I will donate just yet, but I will definitely consider it in the future.

And I did look at the code. It looks Pythonic and clean, so I am impressed. Definitely above my capabilities.

>As long as the devices occasionally share a (W)LAN, it will work.

How about a VPN? I have a work laptop that is rarely (if ever) connected to my home network directly. -- However it is connected to my home network through a VPN daily.

I am not the network guy at my office, but if you look at his code it uses special DNS records (look-up Zeroconf, it is a discovery protocol for services on a network). Do you remember using Apple iTunes back when you could share music with people on the same network? Same difference, so to speak.

If your VPN provider, you or otherwise, does not block the mDNS/Zeroconf network traffic and had a permissible DNS configuration (almost all commodity routers have mDNS/Zeroconf config available if not on by default), I am sure you will have this work. The author can answer you more clearly.

It depends on how the VPN is setup... Multicast DNS will work if you are in the same L2 domain. Otherwise, a different solution is needed. For example, if you have a smartphone that you bring with you to the office, and that is connected to your office Wifi network and your home Wifi network, then synchronization would still work through your smartphone. Otherwise, a cloud-based "reflector" is needed. See the other comment about that.

And to apologize: re the reflector, I assumed you were doing this, like BitSync, and that is why I question ed you in my first comment. I am glad you do not over-promise with tyour project. Good work.

I'm a big fan of Mozilla as well, but can Firefox Sync handle credentials other than for web? I use KeePass2 to store a lot more than just web username/passwords. Also, I like to keep my password database separate from my browser for security reasons.

As far as trusting this project, it is GPL and you are free to inspect it. I don't think being part of the Mozilla Foundation somehow guarantees secure code. If the author wants $60,000, he is free to ask for it.

Regarding the question around Firefox sync: even if you use your own server, you are sending senstive data that is encrypted with a password or passphrase over the Internet. This opens you up to dictionary attacks now, and if the communications are intercepted, far into the future.

I confirm that [2] is my legitimate Linkedin profile :)