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Re: Smooth wall - more detailed



On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Eli Marmor wrote:

> Alon Altman wrote:
>
> > What about the fact that you can never trust a closed-source product for
> > security?
>
> Maybe the following words (taken from
> http://www.astaro.com/about-us/index.html ) confused me:
>
> > With our commitment to Linux and Open Source Software, we
> > are building on a future-oriented platform that sets technical
> > standards. Our technicians are heavily involved in the
> > development of several open source projects - one of our goals is
> > the release of our products under the GNUPublic License.

I have looked at Astaro long ago. From what I recall, almost all of the
distro is free ('GPL', I figure that there is some BSD/LGPL etc.). In
fact, at install time you are prompted: 'do you want to install non-GPL
components?'

Two of the non-GPL components:

- the web front-end
- the auto-update component

(I'm not sure about the license of the installer and the distribution
itself)

Also note that you can install the web administration etc. and not
register your copy. You can't use the auto-updates, but IIRC almost
anything else is usable.

so they defintle give you the choice.

>
> But as Dani wrote, it's not a reason to ignore them.
>
> The original discussion was about SmoothWall, and several issues were
> raised against it (e.g. 2.4/iptables support). All of those issues don't
> exist with Astaro, while another issue (licensing) exists. As people say:
> "Nobody is perfect"...
>
> Of course, it could be great if "somebody" could port one of the
> "friendly" firewalls (e.g. Firewall Builder) to an existing 2.4 based
> mini-distribution (like Devil-Linux; It requires building also other
> stuff and dependencies like GNOME, and adding that to the ISO); However,
> as I wrote, nobody is perfect, so meanwhile, people can use Linux
> solutions like Astaro, although they involve licensing issues...

OTOH you have 'firewall' versions of Mandrake and SuSE. I think that both
allow you 2.2 and 2.4 . The Mandrake one is GPL. From a number of reviewes
I read about it, it can be nice if you want to setup a small gateway
(those reviews also meant: don't expect much more)

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir



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