Comment by dhaavi
4 years ago
CTO of Safing here.
Yes, this is rather unfortunate. There are also some more "portmaster" things around, which were partly mentioned in an older HN thread.
We thought about a rebrand, but it's just way to expensive right now, as we are still bootstrapping.
I also don't think that there is an immediate issue, as both application domains and presence on operating systems don't interfere. If you think otherwise, please share your thoughts!
AFAIK 'sed' is pretty easy to use :)
All kidding aside though, I do wonder how collisions like this happen/persist.
Also, if you port to support pf you'll probably need to rebrand for real.
Haha, yes indeed. That is the easiest part. The tail is unbelievably long though. Nothing I have to tell you. ;)
Well, in our case I think the security world does not have many words to start with. When we looked for a name, everything was already taken by a direct or indirect competitor. We then settled on an allegory (which we threw away later), which then brought us to the "port master", bringing together the meaning of a network port and a port/harbour from our allegory. I don't remember exactly if we somehow missed the BSD name clash or found it acceptable - I do think it's rather stupid to have that clash today. Well, decisions.
Als, BSD's "port master" is yet another meaning of "port".
Yes, if we ever go down that route, things will get interesting. But I don't see that our short/mid-term future, as the need for something like this is too low on that platform.