Hi,
On Tue, 2016-01-19 at 15:59 -0600, R. W. Rodolico wrote:
Ok, just adding my opinion.
I agree that IPFire is, for me, a firewall/vpn/router. I really have very little use for anything else. I like (and have used) the Tor addon, and I have used Cacti installed on it also, but really, the lack of any of these would NOT impact my use of IPFire. I install Samba simply so I can get old Windows name resolution (NOT for file storage), but again, the lack of that would not impact me.
My personal opinion is that the core developers work on things which make IPFire a better firewall/vpn/router (yes, I use the hell out of VPN), and everything else is fluff. Asterisk? Really? flac and alsa? nagios/cacti? Owncloud (I use it, but it is on a separate server and I'd never think of putting it on a router). sane? "My router can scan better than your desktop!!!" And transmission is on my desktop, not even my server.
Well, many of these things have been removed from the distribution. There didn't be to seem any interest in them and we couldn't detect any users.
Currently there is a problem with dnsmasq, and Matthias is going crazy trying to figure it out (I think there will be a time when he dreads any bug reports from me, and that time may have passed). Michael has been talking less and less about the new version of IPFire in the works, and I can only guess it is because he spends so much time supporting non -core functions.
I don't want to get into the dnsmasq thing. That is something else.
However I would like to explain a little to where my time goes. Just so that you can get an impression. It is actually not a lot that goes into supporting anything. Most of the time is wasted on admin. I am in touch with people who are doing various stuff around the project. I have been investing a lot into our rotting infrastructure. I have been trying to set up a marketing team. I am constantly busy with trying to motivate people. I am doing taxes. I am trying to find sponsors. I am replying or deleting senseless emails where people could have just googled. I am relying information from one group of people to an other group of people because nobody can either communicate directly or use the fucking mailing list. I have been trying to establish a productive developer summit and other exhibitions the project could attend. I am trying to keep the bugtracker updated and triage bugs. I remind people about their bugs and other promises they made.
Then there is my day job.
So at the very end of a day I maybe have like 15 minutes left to do development work. That is nothing at all. It is nothing that will get this project to move anywhere.
So that is why I have decided to just cut off some things and not invest too much time there any more. Like the developer summit. At that point where you don't see any outcome what so ever from that there is no point in doing it any more. That is just wasted money and wasted time for me. Let's see what else there will be in the future just to get rid of.
I hope that this will be a way to find me some more time to do development work because that is actually what I would like to do.
I don't know if it is feasible, but could a secondary repository of non-firewall related projects be set up and NOT supported by the core developers. There are very few core developers, and losing their interest to non-firewall related projects is, and will continue to hurt the project. Anything in the secondary repository would be clearly labeled "These 3rd party applications are not supported by the core development team."
We are trying to establish something like that with IPFire 3.
Many people have applications set up on top of IPFire. These are usually companies who make money from that and do not give back anything whatsoever.
Hell, for that matter, I eat, breath and sleep with the editor joe, and was very happy to see it included in the available modules. But, if joe wasn't available, I'd use vim (YUK).
I don't think that having joe in there is loads of trouble. You can maintain that package yourself and send patches when ever needed. That is how I imagine development to be working in the future if we can get to that.
Don't kill the enthusiasm of people developing the non-firewall related modules, but definitely separate them out. Maybe even a separate mailing list.
We do have various lists for that. Mainly they use the forums any way. So they do that automatically. I find this is exactly the issue that I want to talk about here. Is that a good idea to single them out?
But before anything is added to the core project, ask the question "does it enhance IPFire as a vpn/firewall/router" and if the answer is no, then don't include or support it. Let the third party developers do that.
Let the few core developers we have get back to making IPFire the great project it is.
Get back?! oO
-Michael
Rod
On 01/19/2016 02:56 PM, David J. Allen wrote:
While I am only a user, I am on this list so I can keep up with the progress and tone of the project. One can tell a lot about the health of the developer community involved in a project and thus the health of, and likely future of the project itself (e.g. likely to improve, getting stale, dying).
So my comments should be taken in that context: one user's perspective.
On 01/18/2016 05:16 PM, Michael Tremer wrote:
Hello,
I am actually at a point now where I think we need to talk about this. A lot.
So many people have been starting to contribute to this project - or as I sometimes see it - to parallel projects. Projects that are developed in parallel to the main distribution. Projects that have different goals or are at least from my perspective heading into a different direction.
The mail proxy/mail server/web mail project is one like these. There are also others like multiple versions of the update accelerator and some more.
I use IPfire intentionally and *only* because it is a router/firewall, and a good one. I am /not/ interested in it as an alternative Linux distribution, or as web server, development platform, DNS server, printer server, graphics workstation, or gaming zone.
It's my router. Period. I don't need or want other non-router, non-firewall crap added to the recipe. If I wanted a Swiss Army knife distribution, there are plenty of others to look at*.
"Do one thing, and do it well".
*I'm already not happy that IPfire has followed the herd into Systemd-land, since that path will lead (has lead) to more bugs and (hidden) security holes, as there are virtually no reliable security audits or real testing done by the ignorant "Change-for-change's -sake hipsters developing Systemd. However I can understand why you have gone that way, given that you depend on upstream code for most of your core systems, and it is now pretty much impossible to remove systemd's tendrils from even userland code ("One ring to bind them all").
And now that pretty much every Linux distro is defacto a Redhat/Fedora distro, you have no choice.
These changes are never submitted on here. There is not even a conversation on here about that being a goal. Despite me having multiple chats with people about how this process works and that they want to do it, soon-ish.
So here we are. Months later. With no progress at all.
So, then just ignore these "parallel" projects. They may be parallel in that they use IPfire as their code base, but they are, in my opinion, *not* Ipfire and should not claim to be.
Instead I am getting requests and bug reports for that software that I am not involved with at all. People tell me that bugs are fixed there or that there are features available they want to use. They ask when this will be available in the distribution.
I don't have an answer to that. And what is even worse is that right now I am too tired to look into this.
Again. I suggest you just ignore those requests in as tactful manner as possible. Tell them to talk to the hand.
Why should you be responsible for someone's fork of /your/ project? Do you feel obligated to answer questions about any other distro (and Ipfire really /is/ a Linux distribution)?
These projects have diverted a lot in that sense that an easy merge is no longer possible. It will take a lot of work to split up the changes, test them, confirm that they work, do QA and then release them. This process itself is not foolproof and we are not getting a lot of feedback. We just get the backlash when something is not working properly. It will be very tough.
Very tough *and* very unnecessary. Don't do that work. If if diverts your attention from Ipfire-the-router, then eventually if will negatively affect the quality of your code, and robustness of Ipfire. The last thing I want to use is a poorly built router/firewall.
Working on these changes step by step would have certainly avoided getting to this state. Now we are at it. Frankly, I do not know what to do.
Such work would still have served no legitimate purpose in the context of a secure software router.
What to do? Easy. Get back to your roots or risk losing users.
I will certainly not sit down and take these things apart myself. I have actually not much interest in working on these things any way. Cleaning up after somebody else won't be my main job for the next few weeks. That is partly because I don't want to and partly because that won't work any way. It is not my code.
There. You've said. That's all the reason you need right there. No need to apologize or wring hands over that kind of honesty.
The other option would be just to leave these projects as they are. That may either be getting old and rot in a git tree. That may either be them becoming something else. But I do not think that any of these is the best option for the IPFire project as a whole. I am very much interested in keeping that as the main target of my work.
How about just kick non-router/firewall-related projects to the curb.
Tell those who wish to add non-Ipfire cruft to go start their own distributions, set up their own servers, support teams, build up their own user community, and distribution, marketing, infrastructure, and all the other shit it takes, on their own dime.
And that might me or other IPFire developers to do the same work again. In this specific example update apache. From my point of view that only wasted valuable developer time. In both projects. That can't be the ideal.
So I would like to hear that from the people who are working on these parallel projects what they are intending to do and what they are expecting from me/the other developers. I honestly do not know if you think yourself that this is an issue, too. So let's have a productive discussion about that. I am expecting some answers...
Best, -Michael
You seem to have made what sounds like a disclaimer of your responsibility for what amounts to non-Ipfire (the concept) code. Why stop at halfway. Just do it:
Tell us "IpFire is a software router and firewall. That's it. It hopes to be the best in class at what it's intended to be. Nothing less. If you want something other than a world-class router and firewall, go somewhere else. If you want to help us in /our/ goal, then welcome aboard."
I can tell you that as a user, I know what *I* want from a router-firewall. I want rock solid security. I want robustness. I want a reasonably small footprint. I want the best possible performance. I want maintainability. I want it to just run and do the job it is designed to do. Nothing less, and certainly *nothing more*.
If I can't get that from IPfire, I'll go somewhere else. You have some good competition. In light of recent events in the Linux world *cough*cough*systemd* you're already at risk of losing users to similar BSD-based utilities.
And I still have an expensive, and very good appliance router -firewall sitting on the shelf which is not very happy about being replaced by IPfire. ;)
Just my opinion as a user.
Best Regards, David.
[snip]