[KLUG Members] Are "we" sure that SmoothWall is "good"?????

[Bruce Smith]

Depends on what you mean by "good".

If by "good", you mean secure and easily configurable from a web
interface, then YES, IMO it is "good".

If by "good" you mean Richard Morrell is a nice guy, then probably not. 
I've heard many others complain about his temper and nasty emails. 
Although I've had no first hand contact with him.

It should also be noted that Smoothwall is going commercial.  They are
going to start charging for the product with some release in the near
future.  So, to get new features on Smoothwall, you will probably have
to pay for it.  The current 0.9.9 release of Smoothwall is GPL (no
cost), so if it does everything _you_ need, then you should be all set
for quite awhile.

On the bright side, there is a spinoff of Smoothwall called IPCOP that
will be adding a lot of the features you'll find in the commercial
version of Smoothwall for free.  IPCOP is currently beta and I'm going
to wait for another release or two before I switch.  IPCOP can be found
on sourceforge.

P.S.  As far as your previous email with the link that says Smoothwall
is insecure, the best I can tell is the author of that page has had a
run in with Richard Morrell and is quite upset with him.  The only
evidence I can find on his web page out this is in reference to the CGI
interface of the configurator.  So, even if the CGI is insecure, if you
trust the people on the inside of your LAN, and you don't open up the
web interface to the internet, your internal LAN is still secure.  I
also sent the author of that page an email a couple days ago asking for
more details on his claim.  I've yet to get a reply ...


> Attached is just one scary Email I have received from the SmoothWall users
> Email list.
> 
> It is a reply from, Richard Morrell - Operations Director and Founder of
> SmoothWall Ltd, to a user asking a support question.
> 
> Richard Morrell's entire reply to the user question is,
>  "Have you 1) donated or 2) bought a box ??"



--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
--------------------------------------------