[mosh-devel] Naming, was Re: Termius + Mosh

[Andrew Chin]

I think that's a good observation.  I think this conflation has also
happened because there are very few compatible clients and servers.
 (Actually, I'm not aware of any other implementation of the mosh-server
component besides mosh).

Would "mosh protocol" be an appropriate compromise between accuracy and
clarity?   Statements like the following would be, I suspect, pretty easily
understood by people looking for remote access clients:

"Run multiple concurrent terminal sessions on any device you own, using the
SSH, Telnet and Mosh protocols"





On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 8:15 PM Jim Cheetham <jim.cheetham at otago.ac.nz>
wrote:

> Part of the broader miscommunication here (assuming good faith, of course)
> seems to be around the use of protocol names vs product names; using "SSH"
> and "Telnet" to refer to protocols and not products. The protocol name SSP
> isn't well-known, and currently the public recognise only the name of the
> canonical server software, which is Mosh.
>
> In practice, people set up "an SSH server" and don't tend to remember the
> name of the actual server software ... OpenSSH for example, or
> OpenSSH-Portable, which most Linux distributions are actually using :-)
>
> Mosh's own website says "Mosh is a replacement for SSH", which conflates
> the software with the protocol. Perhaps "SSP is a replacement for SSH"? Of
> course, SSP is capable of more than that as far as I can see, SSP isn't
> actually a replacement for SSH, but the Mosh application uses SSP in order
> to replace users of SSH ...
>
> Naming things seems to be one of the hardest things in computer science :-)
> https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html
>
> And "mosh" is such an excellent name :-)
>
> -jim
>
> Excerpts from Keith Winstein's message of August 9, 2017 11:51 am:
> > I'm happy to explain our position further, and maybe you can understand
> why
> > this is important to us. Mosh is a piece of software, like OpenSSH or
> > Chrome. The protocol is called SSP (State Synchronization Protocol). You
> > have told us that your program is not derived from Mosh, so we really
> don't
> > want your company to call it Mosh. It's nothing personal -- but users are
> > better served knowing the difference. We had a bad experience with
> somebody
> > writing what they thought was a compatible implementation, and users
> > getting confused and blaming us. So we don't want users to think they are
> > running Mosh when they are running somebody else's application.
> >
> > We would be fine with you making statements like, "Termius is
> > mosh-compatible" or "Termius has a mosh-compatible client" or even
> "Termius
> > works with Mosh servers." They key thing here is that it's fine for
> Termius
> > to claim mosh-compatibility, or to work *with* Mosh servers. It shouldn't
> > claim to *be* or to include Mosh, because it doesn't.
> >
> > Yes, the text "SSH, Telnet, and Mosh in your pocket" and "... with SSH,
> > Telnet, and Mosh." appears on your current website, https://termius.com.
> > You can visit it yourself to see.
>
> --
> Jim Cheetham, Information Security, University of Otago, Dunedin, N.Z.
> ✉ jim.cheetham at otago.ac.nz    ☏ +64 3 470 4670 <+64%203-470%204670>    ☏
> m +64 21 279 4670 <+64%2021%20279%204670>
> ⚷ OpenPGP: B50F BE3B D49B 3A8A 9CC3 8966 9374 82CD C982 0605
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