[anti-censorship-team] obfs4/lyrebird terminology

[meskio]

Quoting David Fifield (2024-08-21 06:03:26)
> A coupld of forthcoming papers are using "Lyrebird" as if it were the
> name of a protocol, a synonym for obfs4:
> 
> https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13310
> > Obfs4/Lyrebird is based on Scramblesuit [56].
> 
> https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1086
> > The obfs4/lyrebird protocol, specified in [60], is separated into two
> > distinct phases:
> 
> This, to me, seems like an incorrect use of terminology. I am planning
> to tell the authors so. But I just want to check that my understanding
> matches the consensus opinion, which I would summarize thus:
> 
> There is no such thing as a "lyrebird" protocol. Lyrebird is a program
> that implements several protocols, including obfs3, obfs4, and meek.
> Lyrebird is a fork of obfs4proxy, which likewise is a program, not a
> protocol. Just as there is no "lyrebird" protocol, there is no
> "obfs4proxy" protocol; these are names of programs that both happen to
> implement an identical protocol, which protocol is called obfs4.
> 
> Do you agree?
> 
> Tor renaming its fork of obfs4proxy Lyrebird was an effort to reduce
> confusion. I worry that we will have years of confusion to deal with if
> the mistaken assumption lyrebird ≈ obfs4 (rather than lyrebird ≈
> obfs4proxy) gets consecrated in print.

Yes, your description matches my understanding of it. I was pushing for a rename 
to something not obfs4 to avoid that confusion, but as you say it looks like it 
creates it's own confusion.

Thank you for looking into it.

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