Hi Guys,

I would like to throw my 2 cents in on this discussion as well.  I have
been designing, developing and project managing UNIX software projects
for over 20 years and one thing which I learned very early in my career
was the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

M0n0wall is a great concept and from what I can see does a great
specific job.  One of the biggest issues I have had with software
engineers in general is that we all like to build the "all singing, all
dancing" solution all the time and often lose focus of the original
objective we wanted to achieve.

Keep m0n0wall small, fast and reliable.  This will build more success
for the product; if you want to build a replacement for something like
e-smith; use m0n0wall as a base and take the additional functionality to
a new project which plugs-in on top of m0n0wall.

This way we cause no harm to m0n0wall and people who decide to add the
additional plug-ins do so in a deliberate fashion. I would love to have
additional features added to m0n0wall, but integrating them will effect
everyone (whether they want them or not).

Take this discussion, and lead it to a new project on sourceforge, I
will definitely volunteer my time and effort to the project(s).

Sorry for being so long winded.

Rick Ruggiero

Scorpion Holding Co. Ltd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Manuel Kasper [mailto:mk at neon1 dot net] 
Sent: Sunday, 4 April 2004 4:03 PM
To: Chad R. Larson
Cc: m0n0wall at lists dot m0n0 dot ch
Subject: Re: [m0n0wall] Where is the SSID???

On 03.04.2004 16:28 -0700, Chad R. Larson wrote:

>> m0n0wall is a firewall, not an access point or a bridge. And IMHO,
>> hostap  isn't reliable, featureful and fast enough to be a
>> complete replacement  for a real commercial AP.
> 
> The tone of this came off a bit testy.  Not that I disagree with

Yes, I don't like to pretend.

> you about  any of it, and I probably would have jumped in a lot
> sooner if I were  you.  It's one thing for folks to want to fork or
> modify on their own, it's  another for those not skilled enough to
> do so to push for it to be part of  the formal project.

That's it! Since m0n0wall is one of very few comparable projects,
it's clear that people would like it to do all kinds of things, for
lack of (free) alternatives. Still, I don't want it to be a
m0n0router, m0n0bridge, m0n0AP, m0n0server or whatever at the same
time.

> Maybe cranking up a forked project space on SourceForge would
> satisfy some  of those needs.  That and the creation of a m0n0wall
> user's group?

Why would this be a prerequisite for anyone to start doing some
development, and why should I of all people do that? People who
really want to develop and contribute good code to m0n0wall can do
so. We even have the m0n0wall-dev mailing list for that purpose. But
making promises and beating about the bush is easier than taking
action...

> It'd make me nuts to have something fairly cool I built for myself
> and then  decided to share to become a second, uncompensated job.

Yes, that's why I have the nerve not to implement everything people
are asking for. There's no need to say yes to everything.

- Manuel

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: m0n0wall dash unsubscribe at lists dot m0n0 dot ch
For additional commands, e-mail: m0n0wall dash help at lists dot m0n0 dot ch