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Comment by MrRiddle | Hacker News Reader

Obscure software company?!

My issue with the “obscure” comment is what it suggests to the non-dev reader. It is easy to think that “Obscure” companies can be pushed around more easily by state actors. That their product has never been critically evaluated for security issues.

There may well have been an issue emanating from jetbrains. I don’t know.

But when you combine these insinuations with the fact that the company is run by Russian nationals (quite different from the Russian government!) you simply get stronger insinuations, not facts.

To anyone outside of tech it's completely obscure. No one besides developers and people who work with them know what the heck JetBrains is. The same way almost no one outside of tech would know what "Vim" is, even though to us it seems like a household name.

But would it be reasonable to call Vim an obscure text editor? Of course not.

Just because a software company isn’t a household name doesn’t make it obscure.

It's amazing to me how many programmers get shook to the core when something that seems so obviously important to them is actually not a big deal to the rest of the world.

I think the characterization is what's surprising. I would imagine there's a major supplier for petri dishes out there that everyone in the medical field knows of, but I've never heard of them and wouldn't call them "obscure" just because it's niche. Using that criteria every software company outside of Microsoft or Apple would be considered obscure.

The characterization really, truly, does not matter.

> It's amazing to me how many programmers get shook to the core when something that seems so obviously important to them is actually not a big deal to the rest of the world.

> The characterization really, truly, does not matter.

I don't think that's a fair sentiment. Within the niche that Jetbrains occupies it is one of the most well known players out there, and so it truly is not obscure. It was an unfair characterization. Furthermore, the reporting provides no evidence to support its very damaging claim. To those of us who are familiar with configuring these types of systems, we know very well how easy it is to leave a single permission unattended to. The damage done by this type of irresponsible reporting is serious. Personally, I hope they get their pants sued off for their complete lack of discretion and disregard for journalistic integrity.

> Within the niche that Jetbrains occupies it is one of the most well known players out there, and so it truly is not obscure.

Doesn't matter. I'll repeat that it's still amazing how many programmers get shook to the core when something that seems so obviously important to them is actually not a big deal to the rest of the world.

> Furthermore [...]

Unrelated to my post :). But I hope investigations show that TeamCity was indeed misconfigured and that nothing nefarious is at play w.r.t. their tools.

> Unrelated to my post :)

Yeah, you're right. My diatribe near the end was something I had to get off my chest, but looking back there was nothing in your comment that it was responding to. I should be more mindful where I tote my baggage around, lol.

That's still terrible reporting. Would it be fair to call Salesforce or PeopleSoft obscure? I've worked in tech for over a decade and I barely know what they are--only that they're giant. I'm confident most people have never heard of them.

I had a flat mate at university who was a music major; I once mentioned that I'd discovered an obscure Italian composer that I liked-- he very quickly made it obvious that the composer was not obscure and that he was one of the most prominent composers of a certain style in a random decade. Obscure is somewhat relative, but it is usually taken in the context of people who know _something_ about the subject matter. My position is that the composer was indeed not obscure, I was just ignorant of the wider culture and knowledge of musical history.

Vim is a bathroom cleaning product to most people in my area.

she is writing for a general audience, please lets not get upset about that one and focus on actual lack of evidence.

She’s setting up a scene for a play. Just from those couple line I’m writting whole thing off as same neocon Russian witch hunt we saw in recent years.

Obscure company? Ain’t that some bullshit.

I'm with you on that, those words serve to diminish the work and reputation of JetBrains even before the ~average reader understand who they are and what they do.

Like "some idiot, edoceo" seeds that I'm a fool vs "my CTO, edoceo" (of course the truth is in the middle)

Read her next tweet, which was clearly part of a sequence of tweets. She wrote, "JetBrains is not a household name but is used by 79/ Fortune 100."

Jetbrains is an obscure software company for most people, despite a number of people using their software daily.

I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that JetBrains has bigger reach worldwide than NYT.

Agree. But Jet Brains is arguably more of a household name than VMWare.

distinction without a difference as far as the new york times is concerned. i'm saying we as developers shouldnt make that our number 1 complaint (which it is, given responses to her twitter) instead of focusing on the irresponsibility of the NYT publishing a "may be" article with 1 line of speculation and 15 paragraphs of context/fluff and 0 lines of evidence or findings.

Gonna build the narrative yo

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