Shorewall – The End of the Road • Hacker News Board

Shorewall – The End of the Road

#1

Post by esaym » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

Shorewall – The End of the Road
sourceforge.net

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#2

Post by merlincorey » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

Very impressive that this software was built and maintained by a mostly solo developer into their 70's.

Talk about software lifecycle.

I wonder if there is much of a community around this software and if there is someone who may take over the future direction, much like how Emacs' head maintainership was recently (relatively) given up by RMS.

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#3

Post by mythz » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

That's quite a somber read and end for his pet OSS project. EOL posts like this are going to become more frequent as the GitHub/OSS age starts eclipsing generations. Kind of sad he wasn't able to find someone to take on the mantle before pulling the plug on his decade old project.

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#4

Post by _wmd » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

A project of this popularity and maturity essentially announcing they're shuttering because a single long-term contributor is retiring.. if ever there was a damning indictment of modern consumption-driven open source, I don't know what is

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#5

Post by rzzzt » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

mythz wrote: post #3

That's quite a somber read and end for his pet OSS project. EOL posts like this are going to become more frequent as the GitHub/OSS age starts eclipsing generations. Kind of sad he wasn't able to find someone to take on the mantle before pulling the plug on his decade old project.

It might be a good candidate for that project shelter which was on the front page a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199647

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#6

Post by neosavvy » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

Man I think I used this software back when I was working out of my closet back in 2004 trying to finish school. This was a nice abstraction on top of IPTables.

I definitely remember screwing up rules which caused me to have to drive to the data center about 15 miles from my house after kicking myself out of machines I was SSH'd into.

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#7

Post by dharmab » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

neosavvy wrote: post #6

Man I think I used this software back when I was working out of my closet back in 2004 trying to finish school. This was a nice abstraction on top of IPTables. I definitely remember screwing up rules which caused me to have to drive to the data center about 15 miles from my house after kicking myself out of machines I was SSH'd into.

You're giving me flashbacks to working on ASAs and issuing a "reboot 15" before making config changes, so that the device would reboot into the last config if you locked yourself out. And those were still in the same building!

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#8

Post by ansible » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

_wmd wrote: post #4

A project of this popularity and maturity essentially announcing they're shuttering because a single long-term contributor is retiring.. if ever there was a damning indictment of modern consumption-driven open source, I don't know what is

It is possible the maintainers of the various OS distribution packages will band together and maintain development.

BTW, what's the general recommendation for people looking to migrate to another Linux firewall package?

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#9

Post by riffraff » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #7

neosavvy wrote: post #6

Man I think I used this software back when I was working out of my closet back in 2004 trying to finish school. This was a nice abstraction on top of IPTables. I definitely remember screwing up rules which caused me to have to drive to the data center about 15 miles from my house after kicking myself out of machines I was SSH'd into.

You're giving me flashbacks to working on ASAs and issuing a "reboot 15" before making config changes, so that the device would reboot into the last config if you locked yourself out. And those were still in the same building!

How would it reboot on the old config if you had just changed it?

Re: Shorewall – The End of the Road

#10

Post by esaym » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

neosavvy wrote: post #6

Man I think I used this software back when I was working out of my closet back in 2004 trying to finish school. This was a nice abstraction on top of IPTables. I definitely remember screwing up rules which caused me to have to drive to the data center about 15 miles from my house after kicking myself out of machines I was SSH'd into.

>after kicking myself out of machines I was SSH'd into

I still remember my first 'ifconfig eth0 down' over ssh!