ipfilter(4) needs maintainer

[Scott Long]

On Apr 15, 2013, at 1:27 PM, Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at komquats.com> wrote:

> In message <A2450361-D9E9-498F-AD44-846563EF04CB at yahoo.com>, Scott Long 
> writes:
>> 
>> On Apr 15, 2013, at 11:48 AM, Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at komquats.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> In message <18DF99B0-6E66-4906-A233-7778451B8A92 at felyko.com>, Rui Paulo 
>>> writes:
>>>> 2013/04/15 9:55$B!"(BCy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at komquats.com> $B$N%a%C%;!<%8
>> (B:
>>>> 
>>>>> I've been planning on taking on IP Filter for quite some time. 
>>>>> Unfortunately I've left my src commit bit lapse (my ports commit bit is 
>>>>> alive and well though) thus I'm looking for a mentor. In addition I'm 
>>>>> working on an ACER WMI/ACPI kld. One mentor would be preferred but two 
>>>>> would be fine too.
>>>> 
>>>> What are your plans regarding ipfilter? I remain unconvinced that it shoul
>> d b
>>>> e in the base system. Perhaps you can work on it as a port?
>>> 
>>> The initial plan was to import IP Filter 5.1.2 into HEAD. darrenr@ hadn't 
>>> done much with IPF while employed with Sun. Since then there has been some 
>>> development that is long overdue for HEAD.
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure if I'd MFC it into 9 or not.
>>> 
>>> I did consider a port but given it would has to touch bits and pieces of 
>>> the source tree (/usr/src), a port would be messy and the decision was made
>> 
>>> to work on importing it into base.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Why do you want to work on something that people have been trying to remov
>> e s
>>>> ince 2005?
>>> 
>>> I and others have been using it in FreeBSD for over decade. For the longest
>> 
>>> of time we'd use a common set of rules across a FreeBSD and Solaris farm 
>>> (using ipfmeta, makefiles, rsync, rdist, and a local CVS repo). 
>>> Interoperability with other systems which use IP Filter is a plus. If 
>>> there's a maintainer, it only makes FreeBSD richer. Losing IP Filter would 
>>> be a loss.
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> If you're committed to maintaining IPFilter, that's great.  However, it can't
>> be
>> left to stagger along in a  zombie state with nothing more than good intentio
>> ns
>> from well meaning people.  What is your timeline for getting it back into sha
>> pe
>> and re-integrating yourself into the committer community?
> 
> I would think this would be my top priority right now. I'd like to see it 
> at the latest level in HEAD. I would like to MFC to 9-STABLE at some point.
> 
> Given that IPF already lives in src/contrib and src/sys/contrib, would the 
> change in License from Darren Reed's own not so BSD friendly IPF license to 
> GPLv2 be of concern. I recall there was a lot of concern over IPF's license 
> change at the time. (FreeBSD moved it to contrib while OpenBSD removed it 
> completely and wrote PF -- I'm not sure what NetBSD did).
> 


I would assume that the license change would be OK, especially since the other
option is to remove it (or let it continue to rot and be an eyesore) but I'll defer to those like
Gleb and Rui with a more vested interest in it.

Scott