Re: Removing PF

[Maxime Villard <max%m00nbsd.net@localhost>]

Le 30/03/2019 à 16:24, Michael van Elst a écrit :
> On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 03:11:22PM +0100, Maxime Villard wrote:
> > > The best way forward to drop PF is to actively develop NPF.
> >
> > ... and the best way to actively develop NPF is to stop splitting effort on
> > three firewalls
>
> So now you stop maintaining PF and IPF and redirect your efforts to NPF ?
> If not you, who does ? Somehow this doesn't fit into your narrative that
> there are no maintainers.

... yes, when PF is not there I don't have to worry about PF-related PRs
that report huge vulns in the general indifference, and I don't need to
waste time investigating, fixing, and documenting the vulns because I
feel like I should care for the poor vulnerable people that use PF ...
there indeed are no maintainers, just people like me who make (or rather,
have made, and don't want to anymore) changes to prevent the code from
collapsing completely, or who mechanically change APIs without ever
testing for real, thereby possibly adding even more bugs and vulns than
there already are ...

> Of course, if it's really about rototillng things actively in other places
> and to limit the amount of work to fix the fallout, it suddenly becomes
> reasonable to remove something you personally don't care about.

... yes, that's part of the goal, removing dead wood makes stuff easier to
maintain and improve, and as discussed in other threads, things that have
legitimate reasons to go, have legitimate reasons to go ...

> > and stop directing users to the three of them ...
>
> It's a choice, users like that, in particular if that choice makes
> a difference. Someone like you should understand this.

... I've already said I understand the "missing features" aspect of things,
but I've also already questioned whether it was a really good argument,
because I don't understand how someone can possibly want a flawed
firewall, which, in the case of PF, can open more security holes than it
plugs ... so, why? ... Sevan has summed up pretty well the underlying
question: isn't it irresponsible to ship an insecure firewall and give our
users the impression that they can use it, or even the possibility to use
it ... so, isn't it irresponsible?