[eqvinox]

I do think it's fair to make an argument that DJB's expertise in practical cryptography (both in e.g. engineering against side channel attacks as well as in publishing his own libraries) gives him a reality-minded perspective/attitude.

That said, personally speaking, his behavior as a software publisher (packaging & whatnot) is something I'd call… let's go with "subpar" and leave it at that. So while I do believe it's a fair argument, I'm not accepting it, because from my perspective he isn't putting in the necessary work to really understand software publishing.

[adrian_b]

Bernstein as a "software publisher" cannot really be compared with anyone else, because what can be considered as great flaws in comparison with others are compensated by equally great advantages.

He has published a very large quantity of open-source software, but after publication he never bothered with any kind of maintenance, which is understandable, because he went on doing other work.

On the other hand, unlike almost any other software packages, those published by him almost did not need any maintenance. The only required changes, after decades since they were written, have been caused by external changes, e.g. the continuous evolution and instability of the Linux APIs and the replacement of various IETF RFCs.

I am still using several software packages written by DJB, which have been run continuously 24/7 for more than a quarter of century, on many servers, without ever causing any kind of problems or incidents, unlike a lot of much more notorious software packages, which had various bugs despite permanent maintenance.

[tptacek]

The problem here is that for too many people, Bernstein is one of two living cryptographers with name recognition.

[eqvinox]

Ah I see what you were trying to say. It read to me (with "He's a cryptographer. You're describing cryptographers.") like you were dismissing that knowledge about implementing and shipping cryptographic libraries is a relevant expertise (or that every cryptographer would have that, which they absolutely don't.) But, yeah, he's one among a whole bunch of experts in some of these fields and certainly shouldn't be given special weight just due to his name recognition.

[tptacek]

Even the side channel stuff in particular --- Bernstein was certainly a popularizer of it, but that's been mainstream in cryptography research since the mid-2000s (and, obviously, it's Paul Kocher's claim to immortality).

One very big problem I have with Bernstein's recent activism is the way he writes to an audience you can just very clearly tell he thinks little of. He's assuming everybody who pays attention to this stuff has paid basically no attention at all to any cryptography he himself didn't write about. It's a bad argument, but that's not my big issue; my big issue is that he's making fools of his supporters. Not OK.