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Is wormhole protocol closed source? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I was looking for a good and quick file transfer method and stumbled upon Warp on Linux (flatpak). It says the app is open source but I did a quick Lemmy search and someone mentioned the protocol magic wormhole is closed.

Even though I found the application very useful, like I can transfer files even when connected to a VPN service, the closed source nature turns me off.

Also when operating without a VPN, wormhole connects via local network, my desktop is behind a firewall, but the transfer still happen! How does it do that without opening a port in f/w?

Any alternate suggestions are welcome as well.

Edit 1. The domain for the magic wormhole relay and transit server that most open source clients (like Warp) use is magic-wormhole.io. I have to check if they really are open source.

Edit 2. There seems to a mention of the magic-wormhole.io domain in their PyCon 2016 presentation.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

can you link to the post that claims the protocol is not open? I'm interested in looking into that
anyway, source for the magic wormhole can be found here: https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole which also links to both the Mailbox code and the Transit Relay code.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yeah totally. Here https://lemmy.world/comment/14783333

[–] Limonene 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think that wormhole.app page is different software from magic wormhole (and warp). It just has a similar name. wormhole.app does appear to be proprietary.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Warp uses magic-wormhole.io and my android client uses the same domain for its Rendezvous and Transit servers. I am still learning about what they really are.

So I think the mentioned URLs might be closed source, I don't know. But the default ones that warp use is this magic-wormhole.io (relay and transit) seems to be open source ones.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

ah yes, that, wormhole.app, that is closed source. (but if I am reading this correctly, some early iteration of it is open source. https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole )
Magic wormhole is a different thing.

[–] Limonene 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with warp, and couldn't find it with a search. But I did find magic wormhole, and it appears to be MIT licensed, so it is open source. I also searched packages.debian.org and found it, so definitely open source.

As for firewalls: it might only block incoming connections, or has an exception for LAN hosts. I'd have to see the configuration to say more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

https://flathub.org/apps/app.drey.Warp

[–] Limonene 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Thanks. I think I found its homepage, is it the same as this? That looks like part of Gnome, so should be open source too. (It's maybe available in your operating system without needing a flatpak, if you would prefer it that way)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Wormhole is not closed source protocol and btw I like croc