From: Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 1995 07:08:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: CFS and Linux
Message-ID: <199512242026.OAA02586@proust.suba.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> AT&T's refusal to support CFS and other so-called "secure" software
> under Linux is typical and to be expected.

This is the dumbest thread I've ever seen.

First of all, AT&T lets Matt distribute CFS and other crypto related tools
from an AT&T site.  In the current legal environment, I think that's a 
good show of "support".

Second of all, Matt has put in a lot of effort to make CFS usable to Linux
users.  I have personally gotten help on more than one occaision from Matt
with CFS and Linux, and I've seen him answer lots of questions on the CFS
users' mail list.

Here's an example:  when I first started using CFS, the documents were
formatted with a macro that wasn't included with the most popular linux
distributions.  I pointed this out to Matt and took the time to rewrite 
the docs using a different macro, so Linux users would be able to read 
it.  I'll bet he's done dozens of fixes to make CFS run better on Linux 
boxes.

What's more, Matt recently took the trouble to set up a Linux box for the
sole purpose of testing CFS on it. I love Linux and I use it, but the fact
that everyone has a slightly different distribution makes it a tough
platform to support.  As Matt's already pointed out, most of the problems
that people have with Linux and CFS seem to stem from a broken rpgen that
come with some, but not all, distributions of Linux. 

Finally, as Perry pointed out, neither Matt nor AT&T owe us anything, so
it would be impossible to find fault with Matt even if he hadn't done any
work to support Linux. 

Lots of people run CFS on Linux.  I'd even be willing to bet that Linux is 
the most popular CFS platform, judging from the traffic on the list.  If 
you can't run CFS on your Linux box, you might want to consider the 
possibility that you don't know what you're doing.