Future of pf / firewall in FreeBSD ? - does it have one ?

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 20 Jul 2014 13:41:33 -0400, Alexander Kabaev wrote:
> It was stated repeatedly by multiple people that FreeBSD's network
> stack is way too different from OpenBSD, we support features
> OpenBSD doesn't and vice versa, vimage is a good example, which throws a
> giant wrench into the plan of following OpenBSD 'as closely as
> possible', even as the expense of throwing away all of the SMP work
> done in pf to date.

The difference between FreeBSD's and OpenBSD's network stack
is also a problem that you can hardly compensate by maintaining
two versions of pf, one provided with the system, one available
via ports (as FreeBSD 10 did with unbound / bind), and you also
would have to decide which version ("old" or "new") goes with
the OS and which comes from ports. Of course following a "moving
target" is much easier to do with ports (higher frequency of
changes is possible) than with an OS component, and I should
emphasize OS _core_ component, as pf is _very_ tightly integrated
with kernel and OS mechanisms.

Learning a new syntax is the smallest problem here, and BSD folks
(as UNIX people in general) have a great reputation of being able
to learn new things, evaluate them, and use them as needed, in
comparison to those poor guys over in MICROS~1 land... ;-)


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...