So what happens now? the future of CrackMapExec

[bongobongoland]

I'm very concerned. Is my favourite tool in danger of extinction?
Who's running the show now?

[byt3bl33d3r]

as i mentioned in #799:

All further development will occur on this repository and I will be maintaining CME for the foreseeable future.

The repo was un-archived because I will be continuing development on CME as mpgn can no longer maintain this project.

As before, CME releases will be done according to Porchetta's Sponsorware model: all new features and updates will first be made available to subscribers and then they'll be made public here after a time delay.

(If anyone seeing this comment is interested in subscribing go to https://porchetta.industries/)

If you make a meaningful contribution to the public version of CME here, you'll be given a challenge coin and/or lifetime access to the private repository made available to subscribers (for free) depending on how meaningful the contribution is.

[NeffIsBack]

I really feel like moving back to the (semi-) closed project is a bad idea. In the past few months I really fell in love with developing for cme as well as many others. As soon as the repo was open source the activity was incredible high. Many good and important issues, good PRs that got stable and even better with tests and code reviews and many helpful discussions.

Going back to closed source disables all of this, especially working with the community. You can't properly give feedback with PRs and issues and the worst thing is that at the end of every cycle some PRs got so out of date because of all the new changes in the porchetta repo, that some were just useless. To get them working you would have to do it all over again from scratch.

In my opinion cme really should stay open source to be the community driven project it used to be. I think it would be really good for cme as one of the (imho) greatest Pentest tools out there

[bongobongoland]

Please rename your fork and the tool to something else as I definitely don't want you using the CME name and will probably just start a company that makes a closed source commercial version of CME that uses your forks code, cause that seems to be perfectly acceptable to all of you! In hindsight should have probably done that from the start instead of trying to do stupid stuff like attempting to improve open source sustainability.

I think that's a good option.

[rat-bastard]

For all the ppl that had the same thoughts I had and are keeping it quiet. I'm disgusted. Let me clarify, I'm a worthless worm just using CME and other Porchetta tools for my own benefit, so I shouldn't even be participating to this convo, but I cannot keep it quiet.

I'm not sure I understand a thing. How do worthless unknown and brainless "contributors" (e.g. @bongobongoland), who gave less than 200 LOC to this project, dare showing this kind of boldness to who created this project? Did we finally lost our sense of reality? You should all literally be silent in this discussion (as much as myself, tbbh).

@NeffIsBack Maintaining it not under your name would be unacceptable? WTF? Do you have any idea what the term "contributor" means? A Maintainer of a repo is not necessarily the owner of the repo. Look at all the big projects out there. And again, you're not the main contributor by far, so wtf you're even talking about?

Appreciate @Marshall-Hallenbeck has done quite a bit of work, but the Porchetta sponsorware was a guarantee this was gonna happen in the future as well, like a LTS. I'm afraid making this community driven is just a risk that we're gonna kill this project. Maybe all the freaking disgusting people that "claims" to be working for the community will finally achieve that delusional dream of becoming famous with it and abandon the project right after. But that's it.

What will guarantee us that this project is gonna be maintained long-term as @mpgn or Porchetta was doing?

[bongobongoland]

@rat-bastard

hello worthless worm who should be silent in this discussion.

I shouldn't really be asking a worm to do this but still...
Could you please provide a definition to:

brainless
worthless

Because I do have a brain - otherwise I wouldn't be typing.

I could be worthless as a contributor - that is true. I have already mentioned that a couple of times myself. So you are not revealing anything new.

Also, what do you mean by boldness. Like typing on the internets? Actually, I don't care what you have to say, so skip that one and stay silent. On the other hand, shall I be bold enough to allow you to respond? It's a rhetorical question. I'm not asking for your opinion, timid pale worm. Stay silent in the gutter where you belong. Don't come out, you fucking flop.

[rat-bastard]

Triggered some anger out of you? Imagine how the author of all of this should feel if this much is enough to trigger you. Listen, I didn't want to offend you in particular. I just want to know why you're so involved when it's unlikely you are gonna be in the next "offcial" group of maintainers.

Worthless = Yes, you will never be worthless as a person. Just as a contributor of this specifc repo. Nothing new? This is an informal conversation, there is no requirement for "novelty".
Brainless = I went a bit far with this, but it seems to me that you don't understand the implications on not having something like Porchetta behind a project like this.

Your answer surely say 1) you felt offended and you wanted to offend back. Well, this is not how you handle any community, which apparently you'll need to do if you wanted to maintain this code, and 2) you're not even trying to address bigger, legitimate doubts I might have. This leads to a reasonable conclusion: you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. You just like the idea of having your own repo with all your names at the bottom of it with your avatars saying "WE ARE THE BIG MEN OF A WELL KNOWN PROJECT".

I'm not asking for your opinion, timid pale worm. Stay silent in the gutter where you belong. Don't come out, you fucking flop.

If you think you should ask for my opinion for me to reply you're far from understanding what a community even is. You don't give a damn about the community neither to what current users think about this transition. You are being extremely disrespecful all over the places, but you think you deserve respect.

If you are gonna be the new devs of CME, well at least let anyone see your true colors, and maybe try and address some of the community concerns. As @byt3bl33d3r said before, this is for the records. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Marshall-Hallenbeck]

@rat-bastard Please try to keep the discussion civil, some things you have said are completely over the line for a respectful conversation.

We are the only ones developing it. Marcello hasn't contributed to the code in over 4 years, so we are defacto owners of it anyway. It's apparent Marcello is bitter about us not wanting to develop it under Porchetta and refuses to transfer it, so we will rename our fork so there is no confusion or hostility.

[bongobongoland]

I agree. We were moving pretty fast.

[bongobongoland]

@XiaoliChan what's your take on the situation?

[XiaoliChan]

Same as @NeffIsBack thought. :)

[bongobongoland]

I'm wondering if @mpgn has any thoughts on the matter. I know he's done with the project but still...

[Marshall-Hallenbeck]

[NeffIsBack]

I know this looks disrespectful, but before judging us please take a look at the commit history/discord chat/issues/PRs. We don't want to claim this is our invention, we are very greatful to bytebleeder for creating this tool, but we are the people that helped mpgn maintain it and add features for quite a while now. There was no activity from bytebleeder in years.
Mpgn has decided to go open source 2 months ago and we were really happy about that change. As he retired now we are just taking it from here and will further maintain it in our repository. Nobody is forced to use our tool.

Edit: As Marshall already said, to prevent confusion in the future we will probably change the name.

[jmhickman]

I encourage you to change the name as soon as is reasonable, pending the (mostly obvious at this juncture) resolution of the discussion.

[Marshall-Hallenbeck]

@jmhickman thanks for the feedback!

[noraj]

Idea 1

• repo/package name: crackmapexec-ng
• bin short name cme-ng

Idea 2

• repo/package name: crackmapexecx
• bin short name cmex

Idea 3

• repo name: crackmapexec reloaded
• package name: crackmapexec
• bin short name cme

Idea 4

• repo name: crackmapexec community fork
• package name: crackmapexec
• bin short name cme

[bongobongoland]

Kra(c)kMapExec KME :)
Krak = kraken?
Krack could be a bit confusing because it also stands for key reinstallation attacks

[XiaoliChan]

Kra(c)kMapExec KME :)
Krak = kraken?
Krack could be a bit confusing because it also stands for key reinstallation attacks

No way, this shouldn’t happens, even @byt3bl33d3r is doing semi open sources, we shouldn’t rename this project

I think everyone will be sad when this happend.

[jmhickman]

I will not be sad if it happens. I will be less confused. And so will many other users.
(Although I would steer away from phonetically-similar names, since that doesn't sufficiently disambiguate the project when speaking about it, only writing.)

[Marshall-Hallenbeck]

@jmhickman How do you know many others will? Have you discussed this with other people? If so, I'd appreciate them commenting here so we know their opinion.

[bongobongoland]

https://github.com/Pennyw0rth/CrackMapExec needs a discussion section!

[jmhickman]

Have I talked with others about this fork? No, as it hasn't even finalized yet.

I can cite history though:
Fabric -> Quilt (minecraft)
Gogs -> Gitea -> Forgejo
OpenOffice -> LibreOffice
Audacity -> Tenacity

I don't see why this would be any different. All of these projects rename to disambiguate the new from the old.

[Marshall-Hallenbeck]

@jmhickman I was referencing your comment about "and so will many other users" - I was wondering if that was based off discussion with other people or not.

[NeffIsBack]

https://github.com/Pennyw0rth/CrackMapExec needs a discussion section!

Done, discussions are open now