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Comment by geoctl | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. I completely understand your point. But as mentioned in the other replies. Octelium is designed to be much more than just a VPN. It is not even tied to provide remote access to "devices" or resources behind NAT. It's zero trust architecture that's equally designed to provide access to internal resources and publicly protected resources such as SaaS APIs, databases, Kubernetes APIservers, SSH, etc... It provides both client-based (i.e. VPN-like) access as well as clientless access for both humans and workloads. For example, Humans can just use their browsers to access internal resources behind NAT like a typical protected SaaS resource. Workloads written in any programming language can access protected HTTP/gRPC APIs, Kubernetes, etc... via standard OAuth2 and bearer authentication without using any clients or special SDKs even such protected resources are protected by different API keys/access tokens.

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But that's what I'm getting at. Even if it is much more, is all of that immediately relevant to a curious/potential new user?

I understand it may not be easy to narrow down the explanation, especially if you invested a lot of time and don't want to do a disservice to yourself by underselling it. Looking at the Tailscale tagline I quoted, it is small and ambiguous enough that it works marketing wise, regardless of all the features and solutions they offer. But it was just an example, I should maybe have used a totally different example of a product that is not in the same realm as yours.

The explanation you gave to me here is good but only because I vaguely know what all this jargon means. Try to think of a short simple sentence that a non-expert could understand.

I am sorry that you find whatever I say as nothing but "jargon". I assume that those interested in Octelium are already interested in zero trust architectures as defined by NIST, simply products such as Cloudlfare Access, Teleport, StrongDM, Google BeyondCorp, Zscaler ZTNA, etc... I will do my best to simplify the README soon.

I’ve read “zero trust” more times today, than ever before in my life. Still don’t know what this project does.

I wouldn't take this line of thinking too much to heart. At some point, a piece of technology is too complex for a person to parse what it means without sufficient background in this space. The "buzzwords" simply aren't buzzwords; you are using real words that accurately describe the project. People look at them, and either don't have sufficient knowledge to parse them in context, or are used to seeing them co-opted for use in low-effort marketing. I have some experience in this space (not a whole lot), and I was able to understand.

I like where you are going with the graphics in the readme; I'd spend some effort on creating "intended usecase" scenarios, scenarios that highlight situations where the project is the perfect fit. Using a few of these to highlight very different applications give people a good mental map of where this project would fit well for them.

"John is looking for a way to provide access to an internal tool to work-from-home colleagues. This isn't simple to do because [...]. Octelium is a good fit because [...]. Here is how John would set it up: [...]"

I am the potential target audience and I assure you it's understandable and clear.

I share some (very little) from some of the criticism regarding the clarity, but I disagree you need a tagine like Tailscale while your solution does several times more things.

Great product, im chewing through the docs already :)

Thank you. You're welcome to ask any questions regarding the internals of Octelium via the emails or Slack/Discord channels. You can find all the contact links in the repo's README or on the website.

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