[Gloucs] I-WORM/Opas.A

[Guy Edwards]

(oh it's a _big_ post)

On Tue, 2002-12-31 at 15:51, Mark wrote:
> It does indeed, ofcourse those people who dont like "sell-out" companies
> should look at IPcop (from the original supporters of smoothwall before
> they..."went commercial")

Just so people (who don't know) know it's maybe not quite as clear cut
as that..... This should be the fullish story, I'll try and cover both
sides....... (this is all just my opinion + references of course)

I don't see any problem with making money from a GPL product, I don't
mind the advertising in the free version of Smoothwall same as I don't
mind the advertising in the free version of Opera. On the very front
page of http://www.smoothwall.org/ is a great big advert for downloading
the FREE version of their product. How many of you are using Linux
distributions where the makers of the distribution make it difficult to
find the free iso download? The smoothwall team do do some good things
like promote Sourceforge
http://www.smoothwall.org/home/articles/dickmorrell/20020316.sourceforge.html
and they are trying to make a living which some open source vendors do
have problems with (Mandrake and plenty more)

The smoothwall authors version of things is basically that a GPL program
they'd written was copied by someone else (which is fine but...) who
then put a new skin on it and claimed it was all their own work with no
acknowledgment of the original authors and flatly refused to acknowledge
them when asked. It's documented by them at:-
http://www.smoothwall.org/home/articles/dickmorrell/20020322.time.html

As I understand it, the Ipcops version is that they forked the code
because they feared peoples effort was being diverted onto commercial
addons and people were getting quickly hacked off with the abuse they
received when asking for help.

IPcops website:-
"IPCop is based on Smoothwall GPL, but that's where the comparison ends.
Version 0.1.1 STABLE offers a later kernel, Ext3 file system support,
the restrictions of only having one VPN tunnel at one time removed, and
the USB DSL code restriction removed. While that version of IPCop may
not be a huge departure from Smoothwall GPL, it shows that the
development team did not just "rip and replace" Morrell's code. It was
important to get a project up to support the user base of people who
were tired of Morrell's abuse, so a product was released that did what
those people needed to do, plus had some of the restrictions put into
place to goad you into buying Smoothwall Corporate removed."

Their full version of events is at the bottom of this email....

My little take on it all:-
Basically I don't think the Smoothwall authors really thought about how
the GPL and commercial versions would work as a commercial venture and
now they have lots of people wanting tech support who haven't bought a
product off them. People are naturally asking them for help because
they're the authors of the GPL product. The main product people want is
Smoothwall and they're not buying the addons.

The lack of "people" skills that members of the Smoothwall team are said
to have will really annoy any people who are working with any important
GPL product, and their actions will have been the major cause of the
code fork.

Finally, you're not selling out by using Smoothwall or IPcops. One is a
free version of a commercial set of offerings, same as Redhat and all
the others, albeit with a interface that has advertising on. IP cops is
heavily based on Smoothwall. Initially at the code fork the
distributions were near identical, but that was some time ago and it now
has new features and is a product in it's self. 

If people hadn't originally supported Smoothwall there wouldn't have
been the GPL code for IPcops. If you download and install either version
you aren't selling out or supporting a sell out. 

Perhaps the main reason for choosing between the two would be
1. Immediate technical support if you are a large company and purchase
the Smoothwall products geared towards such places.

2. The better features (eg ext3 support and certain restrictions
removed) on IPcops 

That last one would clinch it for me, but it means connecting a CD-ROM
drive to my firewall and currently I've lots of other things to be
doing....

Guy

-------------------
Here's the full IPcops response

(I can't post a direct link because they're masking the url on the
website for some obscure web design reason I can't think of. ) any way -
heres IPcops response: http://ipcop.hopto.org/ some of the responses are
quite good too. (do a search on their site for smoothwall to find it)

It's a bit long.............

"Richard Morrell [smoothwall author] waxes poetic in his latest article
on the Smoothwall Community Website, focusing his attention on spreading
blatant lies about the IPCop project. Richard makes some good points
about possible problems that might arise in the Open Source community if
someone were to grab a project's code, edit all of the authors names
out, and then release the result as original code without mention of the
people who actually wrote it.   Announcements & opinions      In typical
style, Morrell is upset because the GPL allows the free distribution of
code. Morrell's main focus is Smoothwall Corporate Server, and myriad of
other plug-in modules that are options for this product. Having a
product like Smoothwall GPL in addition to Smoothwall Corporate
undercuts the bottom line - most average people only need the
functionality of the GPL product and hence, won't buy the corporate
version. Being as that it is GPL, people are free to modify the code as
they see fit. Here's the rub - if you were to release a product that did
100% of what Smoothwall GPL does, plus add some features that are found
only in the non-GPL version of Smoothwall, that makes Smoothwall a less
attractive option for people to use."

"There are several reasons why IPCop forked. First was that development
effort of Smoothwall was leaning heavily towards the commercial product.
There had been a lot of rumors that the GPL product would be shelved, or
crippled even more than it has been. Secondly was the attitude the
Morrell has taken towards users. Many people fled the Smoothwall project
because they were tired of being abused, threatened, or demeaned by
Richard, often when they were just asking support questions. The IPCop
community understands that this is no way to run a project, and that
public relations and how we are viewed in the open source community is
important."

"IPCop is based on Smoothwall GPL, but that's where the comparison ends.
Version 0.1.1 STABLE offers a later kernel, Ext3 file system support,
the restrictions of only having one VPN tunnel at one time removed, and
the USB DSL code restriction removed. While that version of IPCop may
not be a huge departure from Smoothwall GPL, it shows that the
development team did not just "rip and replace" Morrell's code. It was
important to get a project up to support the user base of people who
were tired of Morrell's abuse, so a product was released that did what
those people needed to do, plus had some of the restrictions put into
place to goad you into buying Smoothwall Corporate removed."

"Morrell is afraid. Afraid that he will lose his "niche" in the market
to a product that lives up to all of the ideals that he claims
Smoothwall GPL did. Richard is now bitter, resorting to name calling
("open source wankers" was a description he called the IPCop group),
threats (legal action against me for posting in an IPCop mailing list
that I wanted to switch out my two Smoothwall Corporate Servers for
IPCops and sell the Smoothwall licenses), and general threats and
intimidations. So incensed he is by the GPL that he is changing the way
Smoothwall GPL is licensed, and changing the name to Smoothwall Lite."

"Development is continuing for IPCop. Work is in progress for the 0.1.2
release, which provides more bug fixes and updated versions of the
underlying software in the firewall. The next major release, 0.2, will
be a near total re-write of the code, including a lot of new features
such as a switch to IPTables, ruleset manager, multiple external IP
addresses, support for wireless, etc."

"IPCop may be a fork from Smoothwall GPL, but it's a totally new breed
of software. Instead of focusing on "going commercial," we're focusing
on supporting the GPL community and working with our users to create a
community based not on intimidation and threats, but on openness and
collaboration."

"Watch this space - IPCop hasn't started to cook yet!"