Tags: ssh, openssh

Recientemente se ha anunciado la disponibilidad de un parche para OpenSSH que permite hacer las copias SCP más rapidamente mediante el uso de varias técnicas, desde aumentar los buffers hasta usar más de un thread (hilo de ejecución).

Chris Rapier, el autor del parche, ha escrito un mensaje en la lista openssh-unix-dev en el que, con un tono que le honra (en vista de las agrias polémicas que está habiendo entre Linus Torvalds y los desarrolladores de FreeBSD respecto del asunto de vmsplice), deja que los autores de OpenSSH verifiquen si su parche cumple con los elevados estándares de seguridad que mantienen desde hace años. He aquí sus comentarios:

Well, I'm the developer of this patch and I fully respect their decision 
not to incorporate at this time.

The OpenSSH dev group has, I believe, different priorities. Security is, 
and must be, foremost in their mind. Performance rightly takes a back 
seat to security concerns. On the other hand, as a developer for high 
performance networks I have a client base that needs the performance so 
that is foremost in my mind. I don't believe my patch compromises 
security but the development group has to be sure of this. Their 
reputation will be far more affected than mine if there turns out to be 
a problem.

Eventually, I believe that some version of the buffer tuning concept 
will be incorporated but it has to meet the high quality requirements of 
the development group. In the mean time, early adopters and other people 
willing to incorporate this patch are perfectly free to do so. In fact, 
even when communicating with non-HPN hosts a performance boost will be 
seen if the bulk data flow is in the direction of the HPN patch host. So 
even without incorporation of the patch into the main source tree people 
  can see these advantages.

Este es un gran ejemplo de actitud del que muchos deberían aprender en vez de dedicarse a defender sus técnicas de programación insultando al adversario, un tipo de falacia conocida como "Argumentum ad Homimem, que, en pocas palabras, es algo así como decir: "tu argumento es mentira porque tú eres un sinvergüenza". A lo largo de mi vida he visto a algunos sinvergüenzas elaborar extraordinarias propuestas y a mucha gente buena decir estupideces. Creo que los argumentos deben ser evaluados independientemente de quien los proponga.

Para finalizar esta entrada vamos a taparnos la nariz y a leer las malolientes palabras de Linus Torvalds en la polémica a la que me refería al principio.

I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots. 

I also claim that Slashdot people usually are smelly and eat their 
boogers, and have an IQ slightly lower than my daughters pet hamster 
(that's "hamster" without a "p", btw, for any slashdot posters out 
there. Try to follow me, ok?).

Furthermore, I claim that anybody that hasn't noticed by now that I'm an 
opinionated bastard, and that "impolite" is my middle name, is lacking a 
few clues.

Finally, it's clear that I'm not only the smartest person around, I'm also 
incredibly good-looking, and that my infallible charm is also second only 
to my becoming modesty. 

So there. Just to clarify.

       Linus "bow down before me, you scum" Torvalds

Vamos a suponer que Linus Torvalds está usando técnicas de los antiguos filósofos cínicos y su tono se debe al uso deliberado de la anaideia. No se si le estaré sobrevalorando, pero le voy a dar un voto de confianza.