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FreeS/WAN Project Bows Out
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Mar 01, 2004 08:43 PM
from the ideas-don't-die-though dept.
from the ideas-don't-die-though dept.
V. Mole writes "After five years, the FreeS/WAN project has decided to end development. The main reason seems to be that although the project was technically successful, it was not making much progress with its political goals of encrypting a significant portion of all Internet communications, although one might guess that the selection of KAME for the standard Linux IPSEC implementation might also have influenced this decision. And don't panic, the software will remain available, and of course some other group is free to continue development."
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OSS advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
this is probably one of the reason why OSS is A Good Thing.
I call troll. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Computer_Go)
Both in the open source world and in the commercial world, the vast majority of projects die. The difference is that in the open source world, the dead projects can still be put to good use in a new reincarnation down the line.
Dlugar
Re:OSS advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OSS advocate (Score:5, Interesting)
Not if they go out of business, change business models, or decide that a particular product is no longer profitable.
In all of these cases, if you depended on access to and updates for their software, you would be SOL.
With OSS, you get the source code and have the freedom to recompile it to new targets and make whatever small patches are neccessary to keep it running. If it's important enough to your company (or to you as a personal user) you can take over the maintainence yourself.
The parent is alluding to this fact.
Re:OSS advocate (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday February 04 2007, @04:09AM)
Usually. But when they don't, you're fucked. See the Vortex2 / 3DFX driver situation.
Ecco Pro (Score:5, Interesting)
That was a very long time ago and today there is still a vibrant community of ecco users who swear up and down that no other product even comes close. They beg Netmanage to sell the code to them or to open up the source code but Netmanage just ignores their requests. Oddly enough Netmanage does let people download the binary.
To me what netmanage is doing is just cruel. They are not making money off of it, they don't support it and yet they refuse to sell it or open it up. Why did they buy this program for so much money just to mothball it?
Companies are like that. They sometimes suck.
corporation (Score:2, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday April 24 2003, @05:25PM)
Re:corporation (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.openswan.org/)
I've taken my Super FreeS/WAN tree, and formed a company with some other ex-FreeS/WAN folks.
Openswan is new name of the project, you can already get code from www.openswan.org [openswan.org].
Commercial support + services from us via Xelerance [xelerance.com]
Ken
Re:corporation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:corporation (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.openswan.org/)
Thanks! Some of us have been doing this stuff for many, many years. We might even be good at it by now
Re:corporation (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/)
Support from a guy with a slashdot ID that is a 1024 bit RSA encryption key?
I have been doing crypto for a long time now. One of the points that Eric Rescorla raised with me when we were speaking at the RSA show was that more email has been secured with SSL in the first year of deployment than has ever been encrypted with S/MIME and PGP combined.
We all screwed up, Bruce said so in secrets and lies, but he still only half gets it. Almost all the crypto 'truth' turned out to be bogus. End to end crypto is a crock for a start, especially when you try to retrofit to a legacy protocol.
We spent years deplying S/MIME in almost every email reader, but we never made it easy to distribute certs. We also wasted time getting people to implement S/MIME when it would have been better to get them to start by simply not doing harm - if someone gets a multipart/signed message that they don't understand the mail reader should present the signed text without any complaint, just the same as any other unauthenticated content. Same with a message from a person with an invalid or expired cert.
The big screw was messing up the policy aspect. We need an infrastructure to tell people the security that an Internet server supports. DNS is fine for this, as folk point out DNS is secure enough unless there is a pretty difficult active attack.
My criticism of the inanities of the IETF wrt DNSSEC still stand. They just do not understand security there. it would have been better to have deployed DNSSEC with OPTIN two years ago than to continue to wait for all parties to agree on perfection.
Re:corporation (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.openswan.org/)
And 2.1.0rc1 was released a few minutes ago. Need to update website again
Ken
The letter (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/)
After more than five years of active development, the FreeS/WAN project will be coming to an end.
The initial goal of the project was ambitious -- to secure the Internet using opportunisitically negotiated encryption, invisible and convenient to the user. For more, see our history page. A secondary goal was to challenge then-current US export regulations, which prohibited the export of strong cryptography (such as triple DES encryption) of US origin or authorship.
Since the project's inception, there has been limited success on the political front. After the watershed Bernstein case, US export regulations were relaxed. Since then, many US companies have exported strong cryptography, without seeming restriction other than having to notify the Bureau of Export Administration for tracking purposes.
This comfortable situation has perhaps created a false sense of security. The catch? Export regulations are not laws. The US government still reserves the right to change its export regulations on short notice, and there is no facility to challenge them directly in a court of law. This leaves the US crypto community and US Linux distributions in a position which seems safe, but is not legally protected -- where the US government might at any time *retroactively* regulate previously released code, by prohibiting its future export. This is why FreeS/WAN has always been developed outside the US (in Canada and in Greece), and why it has never (to the best of our knowledge) accepted US patches.
If FreeS/WAN has neither secured the Internet, nor secured the right of US citizens to export software that could do so, it has still had positive benefit.
With version 1.x, the FreeS/WAN team created a mature, well-tested IPsec VPN (Virtual Private Network) product for Linux. The Linux community has relied on it for some time, and it (or a patched variant) has shipped with several Linux distributions.
With version 2.x, FreeS/WAN development efforts focussed on increasing the usability of Opportunistic Encryption (OE), IPSec encryption without prearrangement. Configuration was simplified, FreeS/WAN's cryptographic offerings were streamlined, and the team promoted OE through talks and outreach.
However, nine months after the release of FreeS/WAN 2.00, OE has not caught on as we'd hoped. The Linux user community demands feature-rich VPNs for corporate clients, and while folks genuinely enjoy FreeS/WAN and its derivatives, the ways they use FreeS/WAN don't seem to be getting us any closer to the project's goal: widespread deployment of OE. For its part, OE requires more testing and community feedback before it is ready to be used without second thought. The project's funders have therefore chosen to withdraw their funding.
Anywhere you stop, a little of the road ahead is visible. FreeS/WAN 2.x might have developed further, for example to include ipv6 support.
Before the project stops, the team plans to do at least one more release. Release 2.06 will see FreeS/WAN making a late step toward its goal of being a simple, secure OE product with the removal of Transport Mode. This in keeping with one of Neils Fergusson's and Bruce Schneier's security recommendations, in A Cryptographic Evaluation of IPsec. 2.06 will also feature KLIPS (FreeS/WAN's Kernel Layer IPsec machinery) changes to faciliate use with the 2.6 kernel series.
After Release 2.06, FreeS/WAN code will continue to be available for public use and tinkering. Our website will stay up, and our mailing lists at lists.freeswan.org will continue to provide a forum for users to support one another. We expect that FreeS/WAN and its derivatives will be widely deployed for some time to come.
It is our hope that the public will one day be ready for, and demand, transparent, opportunistic encryption. Perhaps then some adventurous folks pick up FreeS/WAN 2.x and continue its development, making the project's original goal a reality.
OpenSwan (Score:5, Informative)
(http://divinehawk.com/)
Ouch. This is going to hurt. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ouch. This is going to hurt. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.openswan.org/)
Re:Ouch. This is going to hurt. (Score:5, Informative)
I've done a couple FreeS/WAN installs on 2.4 and they were kind of difficult to set up. Not too bad - just painful enough to appreciate them.
However, the other day I decided to try the Linux kernel's new native IPSEC modules (that have been backported to at least 2.4.24). Using 2.4.24 and KAME it was an absolute pleasure to set up. Works beatifully, and no more patching. You couldn't pay me to return to FreeS/WAN.
Opportunistic encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://arcterex.net/)
Also, aren't there other problems inherant with OE? IE: the need to have secure DNS before this can really happen, or a PKI infrastructure or public key escrow or something? I'd love to just install freeswan on my firewall and have encrypted connections happen, but a) would it really help things and b) would it be like being the first one on the block to have a videophone?
Re:Opportunistic encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
OE doesn't *need* DNSSEC.
It just benefits from it. Without it, you are vulnerable to *ACTIVE* attacks against the DNS. With DNSSEC, you are totally immune.
The real thing that bones up OE is that you need a static, public IP (since OE isn't defined for NAT'ed IPsec). If you want to do full OE, then you access to the reverse map too. How many have that? Well, if you don't, you probably don't have static IP or an AUP that even lets you sneeze.
But, it could be made to work with NAT'ed IPsec, and it could also do enrollment in the reverse map via DHCP.
Re:Opportunistic encryption (Score:5, Funny)
(http://hamete.com/)
I thought the Internet was encypted (Score:5, Funny)
Elucidation (Score:5, Informative)
"Hello World" -> "Uryyb Jbeyq"
triple-DES is a more modern encryption scheme still in use today.
The humor comes from the fact that applying rot-13 twice results in the exact original text, so saying that the Internet uses 'double rot-13 by default' is just noting that it's completely unencrypted but in a way that makes it sound like a real encryption scheme.
It really was quite an amusing post... unlike this one.
Re:I thought the Internet was encypted (Score:4, Funny)
Wrong. Double-ROT-13 was found to be insecure. I mean, come on - it's obvious that the second ROT-13 undoes the first ROT-13! So the internet has since been upgraded to quadruple-ROT-13, which is twice as secure as double-ROT-13.
There's one more release in the works.... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/)
Shame and a loss (Score:1)
(http://www.yonkeltron.com/)
Just to bad, (Score:1)
(http://www.netnoise.com.kh/)
I guess I will never find the support or help now, I just feel bad for the guys in Vietnam that
Now will get all data traffic looked at I'm still looking for some help to get it to work.
*gasp!* (Score:3, Funny)
KAME (Score:2, Informative)
Either it means, that *YET AGAIN* Linux can't play
nicely, and has to import code from the BSD world
to make things work.
Or, it means nothing, because KAME wasn't imported
to the kernel. Only one or two libraries, and the pfkey code was. And, the userspace KAME tools leave so much to be desired, that nobody would want to
run them.
Openswan lives.
Trolling? Maybe...but here is my experience (Score:5, Informative)
I fought with it for a week - did tons of google research, and still couldn't get Phase2 to work. I eventually caved in and bought a Linksys VPN endpoint router that comes with a simple web administration tool. I had it up and running in 15 minutes. I'm just sorry I wasted that week on FreeSwan.
Re:Trolling? Maybe...but here is my experience (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.openswan.org/)
You know what's funny? Recent Linksys VPN routers (ie: WRV54G) use FreeS/WAN for IPsec (they are built on the OpenRG platform).
So you might be using it anyways
Re:Trolling? Maybe...but here is my experience (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://ian.testers.homelinux.net/ | Last Journal: Sunday March 18 2007, @01:47PM)
I don't think you're alone there. I myself have tried FreeS/wan several times over the years and have always found it a frustrating experience. I think the documentation should take a lot of the blame for the problem. It was never too clear and gave only a few wildly different (and sometimes conflicting) examples. Left side? Right side? They would often switch the left/right-side convention for no apparent reason. And it I found it wasn't always clear what configuration settings were required and how they interacted. Because of this it was hard to condense a working configuration out of the few examples they did give.
Many years ago I was trying to connect my network with my familys' network (linux to linux) I eventually went with vtun [sourceforge.net]. It worked fairly well. More recently I went with OpenVPN [sf.net] when I needed to connect my dads' Win2K laptop back to the family network over a dial-up line. In both these examples I originally tried using FreeS/wan on the linux side(s). I thought it would be easier (especially with W2K in the second case) because IPsec is a standard. Nope. Now I'll go look at this new Kame [kame.net] port in the 2.6 kernel and IPsec-tools [sf.net]. Hopefully it's fairly easy to setup.
I'm afraid... (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday October 04 2002, @09:21AM)
Re:I'm afraid... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.openswan.org/)
Support for FreeS/WAN will continue, the code certianly won't just wither up and die. A number of us forked it awhile ago, and keep two active trees going for stable and feature development.
www.openswan.org (I've karma whored enough tonight).
Ken
pgp.net (Score:3, Interesting)
PGP.net (oh, where have you gone) provided opportunistic encryption with no infrastructure requirements other than the two machines communicating use the PGP.net software.
Controlling the two endpoints seems a lot easier than trying to control them plus the DNS servers to exchange info.
Anyone know what happened to PGP.net?
mod me flamebait but... (Score:2, Informative)
I have to look after a large network of VPNs across a small country and a lot of things about FreeSWAN bite bad wind.
For one thing, not only does it encrypt network traffic; it encrypts its error messages as well. They are all but unintelligible, even after looking at the sourcecode.
Actually, after looking at the sourcecode one is frequently more confused than ever.
And googling for the error messages often seems to find threads where the FreeSWAN developers burble to the effect of "yeah its confusing but I can't be bothered fixing it".
I'm not a developer, but my (highly competent) developer colleague assures me that its 'spaghetti code'.
For another thing, running it over ADSL is a pain in the proverbial; it seems highly intolerant of the so-called 'micro-outages' that pervades ADSL.
Good riddance.
I just hope that we can shift everything over to KAME before the next gaping security hole in FreeSWAN makes its appearance.
Re:mod me flamebait but... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.renaughty.com/)
That being said, I did believe (from reading the docs) that the development team was far more interested in making a (pointless, IMHO) political statement than in creating a useable piece of software. For most small / medium businesses, Oportunistic Encryption is the last thing you want - typically these companies have one interface to the Internet, and having trusted and untrusted-from-random-IP-subnets coming in on the same connection creates a firewall design nightmare. I'm sure there's a way to make it work, but frankly if information is worth securing, we can and do secure it. If it isn't, then we just don't care - I'd rather just Keep It Simple, Stupid.
alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
Would it really be that difficult for somebody to take over the development? Maybe their role could be more to administer the operation rather than code a lot of it.
Also, this (google's cache) [216.239.37.104] or the PDF version of the above [sosresearch.org] claims that FreeS/WAN does not support PKI.
Doesn't it seem that... (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday May 09 2007, @08:30AM)
Re:Doesn't it seem that... (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday September 20 2001, @04:07AM)
Why the heck can't IPSec have a set of "must implement" specs so that there could be a standard default config that works with every single ipsec vpn?
Plus, it all runs in userspace, and it works on every single operating system ever, can be port forwarded, natted, mangled in just about every which-way and still works.
What a pleasure to use. Try it. You'll like it.
who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.infiltrated.net/ | Last Journal: Monday February 16 2004, @01:07AM)
No I'm not trolling I'm asking a question here. Outside of admins, how many people really care whether their connection is secure or not. I always reference this out regarding IPSec and the likes, so I'll point out eBay as an example. Now a company such as eBay in my opinion should have SSL based log on by default, period. It's optional. Why? Because most users outside of the geekrealm, and system admin realm don't understand the escape key from their space bar. So when it comes to things like... "Will you accept this certificate?" and the likes, they don't know, and they certainly don't care. Same goes for VPN's. Why should the people care if Freeswan "was not making much progress with its political goals of encrypting a significant portion of all Internet communications" when the typical user doesn't know about Freeswan, and more than likely wouldn't care.
I've used FreeS/WAN (Score:3, Informative)
perhaps there is another lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday April 21 2007, @06:17PM)
to be learned here. The stated goal of the project was to increase the amount of traffic that is encrypted on the internet. While this does not directly conflict with the goal of making as much software as possible "free" (as in beer), it does set a different goal.
Why the hell am I bringing this up? Well, one of the problems with FreeS/WAN was that it would not work with low-bit encryption. This was done to promote their political goal. But it also had the side effect of inhibiting adoption at the places where for whatever reason people had to interoperate with low-bit encryption applications or setups. The last time I checked (which I have to admit was over 2 years ago) the FreeS/WAN project explicitly stated that they would refuse to cooperate with anyone who tried "subvert" the project by building-in interoperation with low-bit encryption.
So what is this lesson to be learned that I am talking about? When fighting an uphill battle (which a volunteer project challenging for-profit institutions always does), it may not be wise to make it more difficult for people on the sidelines to agree with your cause.
Linux was built on much better technology than Windows (nfs vs smb, ext vs fat, separate windowing subsystem vs windowing system as part of the kernel, etc), but it didn't gain in popularity because it decided it replace all the Windows boxen. The technical decision was made to cooperate with them. The fundamental decision on priorities was to hold interoperability above politics. FreeS/Wan took the other road.
Probably a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The 2.6 implementation is not as mature, but it has excellent success factors. It was written by an alpha kernel hacker, it's in the mainline, and it's open in the Linux tradition. An influx of former FreeS/WAN users may be just what it needs to work out the kinks. FreeS/WAN has done a great service, and is now doing another by throwing its momentum behind an implementation with better long-term prospects.
How little I knew ye. (Score:1, Redundant)
(http://www.numbski.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday May 26 2005, @10:44PM)
I would have used and backed this to teh hilt had I known.
were FreeSwan users afforded "luxury of ignorance" (Score:5, Insightful)
That sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Hopefully openswan will be a good replacement
FreeS/WAN was a bad codebase to start with (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://blog.case.edu/moof/)
FreeS/WAN is an unfortunate example of a project too focused on a far out goal (OE) to make the simple foundations work.
SSL based VPNs (Score:3, Informative)
(http://validate.sf.net/)
Re:SSL based VPNs (Score:5, Informative)
(http://blog.jwiz.org/mt/)
Typically, an SSL "VPN" is really just a web app that uses ssl between your browser and itself. It runs on a box on the private network, and provides file browsing capabilities, "intranet" access (e.g. an internal purchasing website), etc. But it doesn't let you encrypt your ping packets, since you're not even really connected to the secured network.
I think the companies who created the thing called it a "VPN" because it was the buzzword, and not because it is at all a Virtual Private Network.
I use FreeSWAN (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://members.xoom.com/ikekrull/)
There was absolutely no way that 'normal' users were ever going to be able to make use of this product for the 'opportunistic encryption' the project aimed for, I honestly don't think you could design a more opaque and confusing piece of software if you were actually trying.
That being said, once you get over the configuration hurdles and realise you will have to employ script-based kludges to do simple things e.g. get it to route packets though multiple tunnels terminating on the same local IP address, it mostly works quite well.
Not surprized (Score:2)
I'm both disappointed and relieved (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday September 30 2004, @01:33AM)
I tried to set up OE. In fact, I did have it working, sort of. The problem is that a box running OE presently needs to use another machine as it's nameserver (or at least, use another machine's nameserver in preference to a local process). There was talk of fixing this through a port 53 passthrough, but I don't think this ever happened.
Also, OE requires the use of the TXT field. There are many other projects also proposing to use this field (well, a few anti-SPAM proposals), so conflicts could arise in the future.
However, I hope that Ken Bantoff will be successful with Openswan. My company uses FreeS/WAN for a VPN solution to provide secure WAN access between international sites.
I suspect the SSL-based alternatives may have problems with the tcp-over-tcp problem is the link is not good.
Why They Weren't Used As Much As They Wanted (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem with the FreeS/WAN group was that they DIDN'T WANT TO INTEROPERATE. Their attitude toward single DES was that they refused to support it because it wasn't sufficiently secure. As I recall, they wouldn't even accept patches that provided it as an ifdef with the default turned off. So, they were a pain in the ass to use for any serious interoperative commercial development, which obviously requires stooping to single DES.
This quote from the FAQ at freeswan.org sums up their attitude regarding interoperability:
"As we see it, it is more important to deliver real security than to comply with a standard which has been subverted into allowing use of inadequate methods."
FreeS/WAN saw it wrong. Sure, single DES is not macho enough, but interoperating is pretty damned important, even if that means supporting a protocol that is beneath your 'leetness.
question (Score:1)
(http://www.acidchat.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 29 2004, @04:09PM)
What about freeswan.ca? (Score:1)
(http://www.kdedevelopers.org/blog/4267)
so the fat lady has sung (Score:1)
(http://ruptime.com/)
OE... (Score:2)
(http://www.sealbeater.com/)
providing seamless ipsec without configuration, depends on having control of
your reverse dns. A lot of ISPs won't allow you to change or won't change for
you the reverse, as this is often encoded with useful info for the ISP, such as
node id, and geographic location. This has had as big an effect at slowing
down the spread of it as anything else. Some are cool, and I am actually very
disappointed cause I recommended it to a friend of mine, and even tho I know
it'll be useful for more time to come, I am planning on installing it on all my
boxes, (I have control of the reverse for my lan, if not for my dsl ip, which I
will inquire about).
SealBeater
Freeswan vs KAME and other useless BS (Score:5, Informative)
And just for the record, tail -f
For those who hated freeswan because error messages sucked, try the above. For those who say it sucked because of politics, welcome to open source!
To me it seems obvious that freeswan will still deployed and maintained -- it's just too good of a thing to let go. Try to think of this as a releasing -- openswan and the rest are not going anywhere. Freeswan's active development is done... since their main goal was OE. Since I didn't want OE, I don't care. It's not like freeswan doesn't support some IPSEC feature or that its behind the times. What else needs to be done? Maintenance I would gather
Considering the responses i've seen here, it's going to be maintained. I'm glad we're in opensource land and I don't HAVE to use kame if I don't want to or have some reason where freeswan is slightly better for my situation.
Imagine! (Score:1)
Why is it corporations kill products so you have to buy their news ones?
Open Source projects get killed since the main developers/supporters seem to get bored (as most nerds tend to do) without serious motivation (cash).
It seems open source these days has so much competition with itself that things get abandoned too easily.
Competition is supposed to be good. But when for profit software competition has none and free software ( beer and speech ) is competing with itself people lose out.
A simple example is me trying to choose Gnome or KDE... ugh! Really! The winner would be nice... if someone would tell me who it will be please. Sounds ignorant, but honestly... am I alone on this?
Aw RATS (Score:2)
(http://www.xrayspx.com/)
If anyone takes over development, I will definitely be testing each new version, at least as it pertains to my setup.
Ecnryption just doesnt sell (Score:1)
I would get many responses but I think it could be summed up with: I dont need encryption I got nothing to hide.
I think this a big problem. The general public has drawn the conclusion that only criminals need encryption to hide malicious behaviors. They believe that internet is safe enough without it and that governments would never "spy" on them.
Some of you who have tried to use my product may say my product suffered from product quality. I would agree, as that was big challenge. But, much of the feedback I got was from people that never ever tried my product....
Freeswan is nice for wifi (Score:2)
(http://00f.net/)
It's why I just disabled it on my OpenBSD gateway that is also the wifi access point, and I'm using IPsec instead.
It works beautifully with a laptop running Linux (thanks, Freeswan), with the same laptop running Windows (thanks, Windows XP) and with another laptop running MacOS X (thanks, Racoon).
IPsec is a defacto standard. It's a bit complicated to set up (especially with different implementations), but implementations are interoperable, that's very nice.
the reason acceptance is relatively minimal: (Score:2)
(http://forums.boiledfrog.us/ | Last Journal: Friday February 21 2003, @01:08PM)
The configuration is complex, the initial knowledge required to do it is high, and the documentation explaining how FreeSWAN works is negligible - at best. If the documentation had been enough to shake a stick at, then maybe - maybe - we'd have seen significant adoption of it. But it's not.
Too bad I don't have more time. I've been meaning to tackle FreeSWAN and write up some useable documentation for it, too.
Why I didn't pick them (Score:1, Insightful)
In actuality, this means that those boxed sets never got F/Swan because by the time the F/Swan community migrated their code to the newer kernel versions, the boxed sets had been on the shelf for a long time already.
I don't use boxed sets, but this attitude of being a year or more behind current development pretty much frustrated the heck out of me. So when the LK folk picked something else to include by default in the kernel, I was more than happy.
It's akin to a widget driver group who's last version only works on 2.4.x; refusing to support 2.6.x until it's been out for half a year and x is
They shot themselves in their own foot repeatedly with this attitude, it's no surprise that F/Swan never gained widespread share.
YAY (Score:1)
i've suffered under your boot, and KAME is way better than you. Fuck off, politically biased software.
Re:Politics Trumping Development (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday August 09 2006, @03:53PM)
The failure of the Hurd was a bad gamble. Possibly encouraged by the fact that they had written almost an entire operating system (using tried-and-true designs), the GNU projecteers decided to try a latest-and-greatest (fad) design for the GNU kernel - it didn't work out as it was meant to, but luckily Linus had worked on this same project from the conventional angle, so we still ended up with a completely free software OS.
Re:Politics Trumping Development (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 07 2004, @08:25PM)
Most people don't give a flying fuck what political goals your project has. Only the code, and the software matter. All else is gravy.
You can add this to the graveyard of noble goals brought down by zealotry.
I find this particular outlook sad and disturbing, especially when that outlook is probably more than a little true. It's the nature of the human animal to push boulders up hills, and then become resigned, cynical, and despairing when the effort seems to be overshadowed by the results (or lack thereof.) It's also part of the human animal that a room full of us passionately engaged (or for that matter enraged), will just as likely pull in twenty different directions as a single useful or meaningful one. That said, we can be certain that nothing lasting or important will ever get done if we can't put our own egos, and personal agendas aside for the greater good.
In any project that seems to be as much social engineering as software generation, the two arms must be separate, distinct, and managed tightly by a group of wise men that can be trusted to steer that project. The code heads must be safe, and cozy, whacking away at the bits, while the political engineers are busy spreading memes and building coalition in legistative circles. All the while, cool heads, men and women selected for their integrity and sanity, must guide and nuture the process with patience and forebearance.
Protecting the security, and anonymity of people, is an important endeavor. It deserves bringing to bear, people with moral distinction and the skills needed to manage the long haul, because we live in a world that doesn't do the logical thing, and this will certainly be a long haul. I hope that the software finds a new home, and people with the fortitude to take it to it's logical conclusion. As well, I hope that OSS projects like this can begin to create operational structures that insure the realization of their goals, even in the face of great political/social resistance, and internal conflict. In the end, being a part of an OSS project is ultimately about making a contribution to the human condition... when it becomes something else, projects fail and we all lose.
Genda
"A business man can pull a phone out of his pocket and talk at length to someone halfway around the world. The same man, will sit in a dark room with his wife and childen all evening and never say a word.. clearly something isn't working." -- Dave Cunningham