Tatu Ylonen's message to the OpenSSH developers

[mouring at etoh.eviladmin.org]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Jim Dennis wrote:

[..]
>  However, it's equally a pity that no one has come out with a fully
>  independent protocol compatible re-implementation.  Tatu published
>  his sources, and a full description of the protocols (both versions?)
>  and has actively encouraged (through his participation in the IETF)
>  an independent implementation.  (IETF guidelines strongly suggest,
>  nigh onto *require* multiple independent and interoperable
>  implementations of all new Internet standards).  lsh/psst
>  (http://www.net.lut.ac.uk/psst/) seems to be a moribund project; the
>  fact that it hasn't even become available as a Debian package in
>  unstable is testimony to that.
> 
I'm sorry, but this feels like a massive sales pitch.  And I'm not buying
the your 'Evil OpenBSD group' story.

First off.. Why are you discounting the other implementations and trying
to 'sell' psst?  What about FreSSH?  Mindterm? The Java(tm) Telnet
Application/Applet? And more.. Just I'm too busy to look them up.  Please
don't attempt to feed people the crap that 'Oh there is only three
implementation and one is not "independent"'.  

Secondly, you can't tell me that all we did was "steal all of Tatu's
work" and then sat around going "Oh we did a great job.  Oh we are such
wonderful people."  Markus has spent a lot of hours re-implementing
v2.  Not counting the hours of clean up v1 protocol.  Stripping out the
crude that has accumated over the years.  Allowing the portable group to
carely add in multiple platform support in a sane and auditable way.

Please push your political non-sense somewhere else.  We have development
to actually do.  If you feel psst is so much better (as your email
states) then I suggest you go and help them improve their product and then
let the public decide which one they will trust and use.

- Ben