Hank Cohen wrote:
I hope that this clears the air.
I was hopeful too, at the beginning of your message. As I neared the end I was becoming skeptical, and by the time I clicked through to the registration page I was fairly certain where this was heading. Several posts later and it looks like I was right. I'm not the only person who puts a great deal of value on personal data. Your company's personnel seems to do so as well - I have tried fairly hard over the last week to find contact information for your executives with no success. Hmmm, imagine that!
I think that you may have misunderstood your target market, or at least a portion of it. Users of OpenBSD tend to be the most cynical type of person you are going to encounter. Many of us have gravitated towards OpenBSD because we have been burnt in the past. We tend to guard our data jealously. I haven't input my personal data on a website request form for years, and I am not about to start. And I'm nowhere near as hardcore as some of the people here. We have good reason not to trust corporations - look at Enron. If shareholders cannot trust their executives to fulfill the highest duty of a corporation - to maximize shareholder profit - then how can we trust any company (which we do not even have a financial interest in) to protect personal data which we supply? We might as well be done with it and just post it to a website for all the world to see.
Why this should matter to you is that we (OpenBSD users) drive sales of your product. Hifn, on the other hand, does not drive sales of OpenBSD. The dynamic of this relationship puts the onus on Hifn to cater to OpenBSD's requirements if Hifn wishes to continue to benefit from the relationship. OpenBSD requires unrestricted access to documentation, which doesn't create a conflict with the export controls of the USA. Theo will pull Hifn from the source tree if push comes to shove, and at this point I could not care less. My Soekris vpn1411 is sitting on the shelf next to my machine rather than inside of it. This is due to the fact that it does not work the way it should. I would prefer to see something good come of all of this, but if I have to trash my vpn1411 then it really doesn't make the situation any worse than it already is. At least for me. It will definitely make it worse for Hifn.
If this situation does not resolve itself for the better then I will not buy any further Hifn technology. But it gets even worse: I will not recommend Hifn technology. In fact, I will speak very openly and very negatively about the company and their products. This might not seem like a big loss until you look deeper at who I know. My friends all work in the IT industry. We talk about work all the time. Several of them work for the federal and provincial governments and crown corporations of Canada. They will certainly be seeing Hifn products in a new light. One of them works for one of Canada's largest cities in the emergency preparedness department. These guys take their security seriously because they are on the front line of terrorism prevention. He will definitely listen with great interest to what I have to say about Hifn, and he will be sure to pass it up the chain. My wife works for one of the big four global accounting firms. The national IT personnel will hear all about Hifn next month at the company BBQ. My uncle owns several oil and mining companies in Canada. My other uncle was in the military and is well connected. Other relatives and friends work in government, law, accounting, and engineering all across the country. The subject of Hifn is likely to come up the next time I see each of them, as well.
Now multiply my contacts by the number of OpenBSD users who take this stuff seriously (which just so happens to be the majority of them). It's not a pretty picture.
I'm behind Theo 100%. The average person might consider him to be over-reacting. I would counter that the average person will never be involved in the purchase of a Hifn product. I strongly suggest that you consider who you are about to alienate before you go and do it. There is still an opportunity to make this into a positive situation for Hifn and OpenBSD.
Breen Ouellette
