FC: Peekabooty developer replies to charge of "vaporware"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:

"Peekabooty vaporware already raises alarums at network providers"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03254.html

---

From: mrhappy () peek-a-booty org
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 15:41:36 -0500
Subject: Re: FC: Peekabooty vaporware already raises alarums at network 
providers
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>

> Well, maybe "vaporware" is a touch too strong. But wasn't it supposed to be
> released last summer?
>
> -Declan

Hi Declan,

        Well, vapourware is a _bit_ strong in that dev is still happening 
at a ferocious rate on the project, its just that its got a number of 
non-trivial issues still to over-come. As a brief update: rest assured that 
at the moment there is concurrent development happening for both Windows 
and Linux.

The "will be released in x months/hours/minutes..." rumour is something 
that keeps getting perpetuated despite our best efforts to stymie it 
(nothing dies on the internet <sigh/> ;-) At DefCon a prototype was shown 
and it was expected that a beta would be released within six months of that 
date. Then reality reared its ugly head. At CodeCon another considerably 
more advanced demo was shown but Peekabooty is as of yet still not ready 
for public consumption.

We're not releasing not because we don't want people using it but because 
we believe that to release to the general public Peekabooty in any state 
that isn't satisfactorily secure and tested would be irresponsible. We do 
not want users picking up on a version that might have security holes or 
other flaws in it and using that. In such a situation where using the 
software could compromise the user, not using the software at all is the 
best scenario.

Cheers,
MrHappy

--

"Anyone who creates his or her own cryptographic primitive is either a 
genius or a fool. Given the genius/fool ratio for our species, the odds 
aren't very good." - Bruce Schneier




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