I personally manage 10 SmoothWall boxes, both at home and work environments, and know of 5 other friends who use it also. Firewall, VPN's, proxies, intrusion detection, web managment interface, regular updates. A great package to work with, manage, very stable, and great performance on older equipment. Who cares if the guy's who wrote it are "prick's" in some peoples eyes, I think its a good product. Side note: If you where a new person to this list, you may think that there are a few "prick's" here as well. Its all about perception. > I haven't received the digest yet, but apparently there is some concern > about Smoothwall having a "backdoor" built into it. This is utter > nonsense, most likely propagated by the people at IPCOP to justify their > stolen version of Smoothwall's GPL'd software. > > The ONLY thing that happens when configuring a Smoothwall is that it's > first contact with the Internet after initial installation the software > sends a brief message back to Smoothwall. I quote from their FAQ > document: ================================= > The InvBot reports back the following NONPERSONAL data and we don't > actually have to tell anyone we're reporting back at all - but in the > full edition the docs clearly state that: > "agreeing to use SmoothWall is a two way relationship. You as a > company/individual will comply with the terms of the GNU General Public > License and also respect the rights of all developers whose code lies > within the project boundries. SmoothWall requires you to automatically > register the following information so that we can gauge our audience and > also continue to develop SmoothWall for the future. SmoothWall will > report back automatically the following data, no data concerning you or > your civil liberties is infringed upon and no data collected will be > used than for the purpose of continued development of this project." > Information collated: > -SmoothWall version installed > -CPU Vender name > -CPU model name > -CPU Megahertz > -RAM > -HDD size > -connection type > -First 2 octets of IP address (for geographical location) > This is ESSENTIAL information for us to guage usage figures that are > TOTALLY correct and also for us to see where we need to push effort. It > also gives us control over where we need to put FTP servers, support > effort and also where to push SmoothWall with user groups, local IT > press and resources on the ground. > ======================================== > Within another document I saved from SmoothWall, specifically about > IPCOP, they note that the "developers" of IPCOP were junior, tertiary > members on the very fringe of the SmoothWall team (no core developers or > major contributors of the project) and some of there were even ejected > from the community team. > > To be quite blunt, IPCOP stole SmoothWall's work and put their own name > on it. > > I have PDFs of everything I have written here, if anyone wants a copy, I > would be more than happy to send it to you. I find IPCOP's actions > distasteful at a minimum, downright criminal at the max. > -- > Todd Young > 7079 Dawn Ave. E. > Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076 > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list