My personal opinion about Eraser 6 - Pros and Cons

[imnotrich]

Sorry guys, the title of this thread was "my personal opinion about Eraser 6 - pros and cons. If you interpreted my opinions and suggestions for improvement as a rant, that was not my intent and I apologize. I was expressing sadness at what seems to be a huge step backwards from version 5 to 6 and I don't find anything in the FAQ's to change my opinion.

Any running process that is not currently needed is, in my opinion, a resource hog.

And I'm not sure why pointing fingers at Windows for a problem Eraser is having makes sense, especially if - as you point out - Eraser has always been a Windows program. It's supposed to work WITH windows, not conflict with windows.

Not sure what outreach was done to the community seeking their input while version 6 was in development, I surely wasn't aware of it and from the tone of other posts it would seem a lot of people were caught flatfooted by the changes. I will give version 6 a fair test drive but I could very well end up returning to the previous, stable and more useful 5 series.

Finally, I do hope you spend more time on user input. When you say "please do come forward with useful ideas and we would try to accommodate them, unless it runs against our design philosophies" you might just as well have said "we know what is best for our users, so we alone will make the decisions."

[DavidHB]

Please be assured that I did not think that your post was a rant, and its tone was entirely in keeping with both the forum in general and this thread in particular. My reply was intended as a courtesy as well as an expression of my own views. I read Joel's response in the same way.

We'll have to agree to disagree about the running process. As a fix is in the pipeline, it's probably not worth a lengthy discussion in any case.

The problem with Windows is that it changed, and changed in ways that were not helpful. For example, UAC is in my view a disaster (and despite widespread comment to the contrary, has not really improved in Windows 7), because it limits user choice without, as we have discovered, materially improving user security. In certain respects, therefore, Windows has made it significantly harder for applications such as Eraser to co-exist with its security model. This manifests itself in a number of ways, so the solution to the problem is necessarily complex, and, with the resources available to the Eraser Team, both requires the progressive approach they have adopted and involves trial and error.

As regards the issue of user input, I too am on the user side of the fence. Joel seems to me to be making a fair point, which is that, with an open source application, users need to become participants if they want to influence the development. Trac has been available for user input from Day 1. If I didn't take the trouble to find out what was there while development was in train, and so was surprised when I downloaded and installed Eraser 6 (and that is pretty much what happened in my case), does that give me a legitimate beef against the Eraser Team? My own view, having thought about it, is that it doesn't. You are free to think differently, and that is a good thing.

David

[Joel]

Eraser is open-source -- but it's only worthwhile being so if community feedback came along consistently and constructively. It's not too late to provide your constructive viewpoints -- rants and attacks do not help -- please do come forward with useful ideas and we would try to accommodate them, unless it runs against our design philosophies (mostly already outlined in the FAQ thread)

Hello imnotrich, I guess I should clarify my post.

When I was talking about rants and attacks, I wasn't specifically referring to you, but as a general reminder. My apologies if it seemed as though it was directed towards you; I don't think your initial post nor your second post were rants.

And I'm not sure why pointing fingers at Windows for a problem Eraser is having makes sense, especially if - as you point out - Eraser has always been a Windows program. It's supposed to work WITH windows, not conflict with windows.

Well, we aren't exactly pointing fingers; we're just explaining what's going on. Eraser 5 didn't depend on the PKI infrastructure of Windows, Eraser 6 does for the safety of our users. Technically, the internet connection is to verify that certificates used to sign the program have not been revoked by the certification authority, as is possible when a developer who went through proper channels for identity verification etc turns out to be a malware author. It's a safety mechanism to ensure that code that runs is always trusted. Perhaps it may be bothering you, but in my opinion it's a rather important feature to have. In the event that the internet connection isn't available, the check is just skipped.

Finally, I do hope you spend more time on user input. When you say "please do come forward with useful ideas and we would try to accommodate them, unless it runs against our design philosophies" you might just as well have said "we know what is best for our users, so we alone will make the decisions."

I was trying to qualify my statement, lest it be used as a blanket statement against us in future. Our design philosophies are relatively general and quite flexible. The intent of the qualification was to ensure that outrageous requests (such as those meant for one person alone, with little benefit to the rest) do not get implemented as a high priority task and the person suggesting holding us at ransom. My apologies once again for the misunderstanding.

[Visitor]

From the FAQ

The confirmation box with user-selectable overwrite passes which may differ from case-to-case has been done away with. At least allow an option for those users who prefer to have it. This also served as a warning in case a user made a mistake when clicking on Eraser right-click option; currently there is none!
This will be dealt with in 6.2. However, the design of 6.0 is still sound as "defaults" are there for a reason. If the information that one deals with warrants 35-pass erasures all the time, you should be setting that as a default. If you think that you just want to get rid of file headers, use the First/Last 16KB erasure method. The idea is pick one default that works for all the files you deal with. Defaults should be chosen by the you (you have the ability to!) and adhered to for the majority of use cases (hence "Defaults")

Also this concern is raised in this forum topic several times and the answer always seems to be you "should" do it the way I (the author) thinks is the right way to do it. And a bit of lecturing going on about why defaults exist and so on. Is it accurate this long after the FAQ said "this will be dealt with in 6.2" or that in fact the decision is that the ability to select erasure type on the fly will never be returned?

The ability to select different methods was there for a reason. There are many user situations / security strategies that do not neatly fit into a fixed default setting, hence the ability to "select" erasure method.

Obviously it is perfectly legitimate for an author, particular one who is providing code freely, to impose his own doctrinal view about what people "should" do. But it would also be nice to know if this is a permanent philosophical decision or one that will be adjusted as indicated in the FAQ.

Most Important Question: are there any known issues with version 5.8 that strongly indicate it is no longer safe to use?

[Joel]

6.2 has the feature implemented. It will not be backported to 6.0 because the minor versions are supposed to be compatible with each other. There are no weaknesses identified in 5.8, Eraser 6 and 5.8 use the same approach to erasure (in terms of broad strokes), only the exact implementation differs.

I think my original point still stands, though. There'll never be a situation where very user's wishes are taken into consideration, it would be natural for developers (open source or otherwise) to develop code as they wish. Just that in the case of proprietary code if their licensing model is that involving monetary gain, they have market forces to contend with. Generally, a balance must be met between configurability and ease of use. Eraser's now a lot more accessible than before (visibly seen by the number of questions and the type of questions raised in the forum), what may be useful to one may be confusing to others.