[Sussex] Smoothwall

[Mark Harrison]

Stuart,

You went to someone, and asked them to include an extra feature you wanted in
their product. They said that they would only do work if you paid for it. So you
wrote:

> All I can say is what a bunch of c*nts..

Remind me never to be a supplier to you!

I thought the whole point of open-source was that if you wanted a feature, then
YOU could add it. I'm not aware of any OpenSource principle which says if YOU
want a feature then SOMEONE ELSE is OBLIGED to add it for free.

Asking VARs to pay to join a reseller scheme is normal, if not ubiquitous
business practice. It's up to Smoothwall to determine whether they want to
charge their resellers or not. If they do, then they get a smaller number of
more committed resellers. If they don't, they get a larger number of less
committed resellers.

1: They used a bunch of GPL products (such as IPChains and the Linux Kernel.)

2: They released a GPL product

3: They released a commercial product... which was, by all accounts, better.

4: They continued developing the GPL product, and everyone I know who's used it
says that Smoothie 2 is way better than Smoothie 1.

Now, I am NOT a Smoothwall reseller. The reason for this is simple - the kind of
organisations that become my clients are the kind of organisations that require
quite a lot of extra features - features that neither Smoothwall nor IPCop can
deliver. Hence, they tend to buy things like Checkpoint Firewall-1.

I did pay a lot of money to go on Checkpoint training, which is (for my clients)
necessary in order for me to sell them solutions based around Checkpoint's
product set. The costs of this training was rather more expensive than, say,
MCSE training, and much more expensive than £200. However, it was an investment
that has been useful to my business.

However, as a result of this kind of business practice, Checkpoint (and their
hardware development partner, Nokia) have something like 2,000 developers
working on their product. As you might imagine, it continues to develop at a
rate that leave both Smoothwall (with its paid-for developers) and IPCop (with
its open-source developers) trailing.

I am incredibly pro-Open Source - I run an OpenSource project in the Home
Automation space myself.

I am deeply disturbed when OpenSource proponents attack anyone who tries to make
money out of software development as if they were fundamentally evil. This kind
of attitude is, in my experience of large corporates, doing more to put managers
off the concept of OpenSource than it is persuading them that OpenSource is a
good thing.

Mark

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Jeffrey" <stuart at sjeffrey.co.uk>
To: <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 6:12 PM
Subject: RE: [Sussex] Smoothwall


>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > [mailto:sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Mark Harrison
> > Sent: 28 March 2003 17:58
> > To: sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > Subject: Re: [Sussex] Smoothwall
> >
> >
> > Any particular reason for recommending IPCop?
> >
> > I understand that Smoothwall 2 is a big step forward...
>
> Ipcop is a branch from an earlier version of smoothwall and contains
> many extra features.. Even over smoothwall 2.  I had smoothwall
> installed for ages and then discovered ipcop.  The main feature I like
> most (ova smoothie) is the fact u can have ip aliases on the red
> interface.  I have also found the documentation and support a lot better
> for ipcop, there is also some good documentation about changing routing
> tables..  Smoothwall was good until they released the corporate version
> and then they just didn't care about the GPL one, there answer to any
> question would just be upgrade to corporate.
>
> You say you need multiple green interfates... Well it wont support this
> out the box but with a bit of hacking it could probably be easily done..
> I my self neeeded this a year back and was using smoothwall they told me
> to upgrad to corporate which I did (at the cost of £75) and then when I
> asked em how to do it they said it couldn't be done and to use the
> orange interface as a second green, with limited functionality.. I even
> spoke to Richard Morell.... They gave me his home number... He did say
> that if my company became a reseller (*cough u have to pay £200 to be
> able to sell their product.. Even tho u are doing their sales work) then
> they may consider adding the functionality if they thought there was
> demand, or we could pay them £100 an hour to do it.  All I can say is
> what a bunch of c*nts..
>
> Sorry as u can tell I don't like smoothwall.....
>
> Ipcop also handles Ms Chat better (it has the mms masq module installed
> out of box)... Oh and it allows you to backup your settings so if it
> screws up u can restore to a good state..
>
> Hope that helped a bit...
>
>
>
>
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