Well said.  I really don't want to outfit my soekris box with a 256MB flash
card (from 16MB) just because a few people "needed" a ton of services.  Not
to mention what that might do to the now amazing GUI.  Possibly ruin it;
turn it into a pile of menus that lead to hundreds of places for services
that don't have any business being on a firewall.

the idea about enhancing a 4801 distro with those features was an amazing
one.  That platform would be much closer to what I would expect as a
customer for running many services.  As long as I can turn them off, that is
the platform I'd goto if I wanted those services.

I like my m0n0wall as it is.  Darn good peanutbutter & jelly sandwich with a
glass of cold milk.  Not caviar and champaign with frilly foofoo silver
platter garnishes.  Its honestly better than every single other package I've
used for where I use it.  The only features I'd add from this moment on
would be optional ones (defaulted off) and updates :)



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Gifford" <jim at giffords dot net>
To: <m0n0wall at lists dot m0n0 dot ch>
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: [m0n0wall] Feature request which would make m0n0wall even
better ;)


> On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 11:33:49PM +1000, Hilton Travis wrote:
> > m0n0wall is a firewall.  It isn't a file server, nor is it a BSD distro
> > designed to run as a fish tank controller.  I cannot understand why
> > people want to compromise the security of a security device by running
> > additional software on it that is not designed, suited, or even safe to
> > be running on a firewall.
>
> I personally (and professionally) couldn't agree with you more.  However,
> there are many people in the world that prefer to have less machines to
> manage and prefer to have more things integrated into their network
> services machine.  This might mean making their network services machine
> potentially a little bit less secure, but many people are willing to take
> that risk.  Especially small home network users.  A home network with 1
> user might not want to have 3 or 4 or 5 machines providing everything in
> their network (a firewall, a client machine, and a 'server' being the
> minimum).  If there is only one users on the network, they're likely the
> one in charge of the network, and as such, they aren't the security risk
> (or to look at it the other way, they're the primary security risk).

<snip>