Endian Fork - Looking for members !

[Guest]

[mrkroket]

Yes, Endian is no community project, no matter if Endian names their free version "Community version" or not.
There is no community.

And would be in a new project? The forum is filled with requests, but I'm not sure there are many developers around there.

It is time to fork and build a true community project. But is it possible without the sources of 2.4 / only fragments of sources of older versions?

Well, On Sourceforge they supposely put the 2.4 SRPMS (a 500MB file). I used it to create an almost complete Devel machine.
I must warn you that they aren't complete, many source packages are missing, and others don't recompile without modifying them. For example I can't compile VMWare Tools on Endian kernel, because they don't give the sources. But they are sources of PAE kernel, so I can compile on it without problems.
The good thing is that many packages are just tweaked RHEL rpms. Endian sources are in fact modified Red Hat packages plus the Endian code on top of it (efw-*.rpm packages).
So it's viable to create a fork, or at least a Source Repository.

So I think that in first place we should make a list of people who are interested in participating, including their skills and how they think that they could help the project.
I can take over this part of organization.

I don't think there are too many... I barely see any modification on this forum except some slight script changes. I hope I'm wrong.

[soggyfish]

Disclaimer: I am only temporarily using efw because pfsense is not yet supported as a PV DomU in Xen (*BSD kernel crashes), so I am forced to use a *NIX based firewall.

As someone who has relevant skills: why would I put my effort toward forking an essentially closed source system?  It wouldn't be a fork, but a complete rewrite instead.  In addition, why would I want to work on efw when I believe other projects are more featured and less buggy (eg. pfsense and its superb QOS system).

TBH, endian has a really crappy community, the two main reasons being that there is more than one support forum and devs don't participate on the forums.  If you check out other OSS projects, the devs keep in great touch with their base.  Here, everyone is in the dark about how everything works.  I made a post here about how wlan0 isn't detected in the webGUI, and NO ONE responded; on something that basic, either it should work or have a known bug report.  I had to bridge it to another VM and use hostapd, but I see no reason why efw itself couldn't have that incorporated.

I don't mean to say any of this in a negative light, but I would love to hear a convincing argument against the points drawn above.

[wavrunrx2]

TBH, endian has a really crappy community, the two main reasons being that there is more than one support forum and devs don't participate on the forums.  If you check out other OSS projects, the devs keep in great touch with their base.  Here, everyone is in the dark about how everything works.  I made a post here about how wlan0 isn't detected in the webGUI, and NO ONE responded; on something that basic, either it should work or have a known bug report.  I had to bridge it to another VM and use hostapd, but I see no reason why efw itself couldn't have that incorporated.

agreed 100%

if we could at least have some contact with the devs on these forums, that would be a great start.

[romacities]

So I guess we will not see a fork of EFW?

Who even administers these "unofficial" forums?

Feels like only members talking here.

To the above proposal to create a REAL open source fork, I can be contacted for sponsorship.

[tomakos]

To the above proposal to create a REAL open source fork, I can be contacted for sponsorship.

Interesting! Could you please be a little preciser on what you mean with sponsorship?
Tomakos

[tomakos]

So I guess we will not see a fork of EFW?

Well as far as the attempt of fellow aender, I do not know, but it seems without activity.
As far as for my attempt in gathering some fellow campaigners, unfortunately I have not received a single email up to today. The interest to contribute seems to be minimal.

Tomakos

[mrkroket]

To the above proposal to create a REAL open source fork, I can be contacted for sponsorship.

What kind of sponsorship? Aimed to what?

[MelissaDaisy99]

i support an endian fork 100%

[sourcefinder]

I like the setup form EFW very much. But it has bugs. The only way I can see it, is that the manufacturer is not interested in his own product anymore. The manufacturer can get help from the community, but remains silent.

This situation has some parallels with Openoffice and Libre office. In short: when the manufacturer doesn't improve his product (with or without help from the community), the product is dead. Personally I think that the manufacturer of EFW is not interested in improving EFW anymore because his corporate products won't sell. Or maybe the manufacturer only want's to sell his corporate products (so he want's to dump the community option)? 

For those reasons I would like to see a fork (there are many descriptions for setting up a new product that is based on an inferior product). I'm not a programmer, but I can write and I can test.

[DaltonStorm]

Disclaimer: I am only temporarily using efw because pfsense is not yet supported as a PV DomU in Xen (*BSD kernel crashes), so I am forced to use a *NIX based firewall.

As someone who has relevant skills: why would I put my effort toward forking an essentially closed source system?  It wouldn't be a fork, but a complete rewrite instead.  In addition, why would I want to work on efw when I believe other projects are more featured and less buggy (eg. pfsense and its superb QOS system).

TBH, endian has a really crappy community, the two main reasons being that there is more than one support forum and devs don't participate on the forums.  If you check out other OSS projects, the devs keep in great touch with their base.  Here, everyone is in the dark about how everything works.  I made a post here about how wlan0 isn't detected in the webGUI, and NO ONE responded; on something that basic, either it should work or have a known bug report.  I had to bridge it to another VM and use hostapd, but I see no reason why efw itself couldn't have that incorporated.

I don't mean to say any of this in a negative light, but I would love to hear a convincing argument against the points drawn above.

I think you were right. I am facing similar query and your post just helps in sorting it out..Thanks for sharing your view.

[GreatGazoo]

Finally everyone is waking up that Endian project is just about dead. Screwed customers and the community. 3.0 community is waiting to come out when the cows come flying home.  Move to pfsense and forget these morons. Why create a fork? More effort for a project that was once ok but you are biting off a lot. Just making it 64 bit is only 8 years overdue. It appears they are in a cash crunch and need everyone to update to fill their coffers. I would not mind if it was or good or maintained up to date. I am sorry to say we should let Endian die out and maintain this project.

[mmiat]

if endian has had some attentions to community: one single official forum, some devs writing. I don't think that more was necessary. Too bed, it was a very interesting project.

[TheEricHarris]

I have a lot of time invested with Endian Community, over 12 firewalls deployed in various state.  Work great but I need a project that is constantly being updated and a large user base.

I have been playing with pfSense the past  of weeks and really like it.  It's a huge learning curve coming from Endian, but much more powerful. 

What other UTMs are you guys moving to? 

[mmiat]

I've seen IPFire, it seems interesting.

[lucagiove]

I think lot of things changed since this discussion started, we learned from our mistakes, for sure the project is far from being dead!
3.0 and now 3.2 improved a lot the quality, the version is now well maintained with constant (monthly) updates.
JIRA bug tracker has been opened to the community to report and discuss about real problems and support/qa/developers are answering and replying officially there.
Weekly we're having a look at this forum to see whether something came up.

Hope this means something.

Cheers,
Luca Giovenzana
QA Manager at Endian