Freeradius 2.0 - vmps feature, inaccuracies on FreeNAC

[Sean.Boran at swisscom.com]

Hi,

I just came across your blog post commenting on the release of the 2.0
version of freeradius. I was kind of surprised by the upcoming support
of VMPS.

While trying to know more, I also found a post commenting on OpenVMPS
(http://lists.cistron.nl/pipermail/freeradius-users/2007-May/063152.html
) and I have to say that I've been really dissapointed by what you
wrote. I really didn't expect that animosity or that amount of FUD
coming from you.

Quote, from Alan Dekok, Mon May 28 14:21:56 CEST 2007
" 2.0.0-pre2 has "Magic feature number one" :)"
> Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
> > Neat , unfortunately only Cisco switches seem to support it, and we
run 
> > entirely on HP Procurves.
> > Guess it means people will no longer have to use OpenVMPS to proxy
:)
>
>   Plus, OpenVMPS is not under active development, so there's no
> maintainers.  It claims it's part of another project (that I won't
> name), but that project includes the *binary* of OpenVMPS, and not the
> source.  GPL concerns may apply...
>
>   On top of that, the project is funded by a commercial company, as a
> loss-leader for their commercial support, and the "community" that
works
> on it is limited to the employees of that company.  Good luck getting
> patches added if they conflict with the corporate agenda...
>
>   Alan DeKok.

The project in question that you did not want to name is "FreeNAC" and
I'm the lead developer. You'll understand that I cannot let those things
stay uncorrected, so I'll quickly make some issues clear :

- This project has been, from the start, a GPL project, sources have
always been published. Just because an OpenVMPS binary is there doesn't
mean there's no source : look into the contrib directory.

- The main sponsor is effectively Swisscom Innovations, but there's no
need to put quotes around community. Even if it's small (70 registered
users), I let you check our forums to verify that it is not limited to
Swisscom. We received some contributions (patches, documentation) that
we accepted and we don't have any hidden agenda.
[FreeNAC is GPL, and we respect the GPL of OpenVMPS too].

- "Good luck getting patches added if they conflict with the corporate
agenda"
  The community are free to change FreeNAC themselves, and submit
patches, 
  if we don't do it fast enough. That is what OpenSource is about.
  The core team is not closed to Swisscom Innovation people either. I'll
welcome 
  anyone with the motivation, skills and time.
  This is, I repeat, a GPL - OpenSource project.

But, at the end, I'd really like to close this misunderstanding and move
further. There's no point in arguing or flaming each other as we're both
working on closely related opensource project.

In fact, FreeRADIUS was always in our mind, we announced FreeNAC on the
"freeradius-user" mailing list in 2006 and we also integrated it. This
is natural because the core value of FreeNAC is in at the "policy
level", and not in the support of underlying protocols like VMPS or
802.1x.

We've also closely followed the development in the NAC area and
contacted other opensource projects (SecureW2,  NAC at FHH) for that
purpose.

We would enjoy a collaboration that would lead to create _the_
opensource NAC framework.

Regards,

Sean Boran, www.FreeNAC.net