The sentence following the one about phoning home/leaking data explains the rationale. The computer user prefers simpler software. It's great that it's possible to compile a client provided by Tailscale from source, but this does not address the complexity issue.^1
Is the Tailscale control server open source. Why not. What's the rationale for that.
There's no problem IMHO with arguing Tailscale can make its own decisions and do whatever it wants. However the same argument must apply to the computer user. He can make his own decisions and do whatever he wants.
1. Wireguard was allegedly written at least in part because OpenVPN, another open source option, was excessively complex. Tailscale relies on Wireguard. If avoiding complexity was irrational, and people behaved rationally, then perhaps Wireguard would not have been written and Tailscale would not exist.
Avoiding complexity where possible sounds rational to me.
Headscale is the open source central server for tailscale - it implements the same protocols etc and when you use tailscale client with it it only connects to the login server you gave it.
The official reason for why there's no official open source server is that headscale got there first, before tailscale team could (their words, not mine) the unholy mess that was the production server into something people could compile and deploy themselves.
The sentence following the one about phoning home/leaking data explains the rationale. The computer user prefers simpler software. It's great that it's possible to compile a client provided by Tailscale from source, but this does not address the complexity issue.^1
Is the Tailscale control server open source. Why not. What's the rationale for that.
There's no problem IMHO with arguing Tailscale can make its own decisions and do whatever it wants. However the same argument must apply to the computer user. He can make his own decisions and do whatever he wants.
1. Wireguard was allegedly written at least in part because OpenVPN, another open source option, was excessively complex. Tailscale relies on Wireguard. If avoiding complexity was irrational, and people behaved rationally, then perhaps Wireguard would not have been written and Tailscale would not exist.
Avoiding complexity where possible sounds rational to me.