It has been my intention to continue the beta period for 4.0 through the
summer and to release 4.0 in the September time frame. Several factors 
have
caused me to rethink that schedule.

- The rate of problem reports against Shorewall-perl has dropped rapidly 
and
  the code seems to be quite stable.
- The 4.0 Documentation has come together more quickly than I had planned.
- 3.4 and 4.0 are now on nearly identical code bases except for
  Shorewall-perl. I have patch files to make up for the differences so it 
is
  now possible to make maintenance updates to 3.4 and roll those updates
  into 4.0 with almost no additional effort.

In light of these factors, I'm thinking of producing one more 4.0 Beta
release then releasing 4.0.0 RC1. Assuming that the release candidate
doesn't encounter problems, I would anticipate final release some time in
late July or early August.

Because supporting 3.4 will not present any burden over supporting 4.0, I
plan to break the "two supported releases" rule and to support 3.2, 3.4 
and
4.0 until 4.2 comes along.

Comments?

-Tom
-- 
Tom Eastep    \ Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool
Shoreline,     \ http://shorewall.net
Washington USA  \ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Public Key   \ https://lists.shorewall.net/teastep.pgp.key


========================================================

Tom -

I noticed Herr Kirchdoerfer's response and have an entirely (maybe 
unfounded) reason for not migrating to 4.x.  First off, I love the 
capabilities, the support, even the sporadic scoldings (which I can say in 
my case at lease, deserved).  To my knowledge, a hack like myself has NOT 
been compromised since starting to run Shorewall.

But, therein lies the rub.  I happen to be using SuSE, and older (now 
unsupported) distro.  But, what little mentoing I have received, is to 
never leave the tools for your "desturction" on the firewall box.  So with 
SuSE's YaST, I have to meticulously delete packages I don't want, remove 
X, etc., etc., when I install.  So when I (was able to) update, I relied 
on the SuSE YaST tool to update the kernel, and in keeping with leave 
tools/packages off, have to rely then on the binary distribution because I 
don't even install a compiler on the Shorewall box.

So this puts me at a disadvantage from some tools, such as Perl, which has 
a great library of modules.  But, there's the dilemma, and, maybe my ill 
conceived view, of my security -- I do NOT have the tools to make it 
easier to be compromised.  So from that perspective, NOT having Perl seems 
to be more secure.  A buddy of mine says that if "they're gonna getcha, 
they'll getcha" but I like to think otherwise with great tools, such as 
Shorewall.  But, on the other hand, I don't want to leave the gun sitting 
out for the granchildren to play with, to use a stupid analogy.

Comments, thoughts ?  When I rebuild the firewall, do with a Perl 
installation as well ?

Bill

A sufficiently talented fool

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