Re: Announce: FreeS/WAN Project Ending

Speaking as a user, thank you very much all you FreeS/WAN people!!!
You're work has been very much appreciated - John

On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 14:05, Claudia Schmeing wrote:
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> Dear FreeS/WAN community,
> 
> 
> After more than five years of active development, the FreeS/WAN project will be 
> coming to an end.
> 
> The initial goal of the project was ambitious -- to secure the Internet
> using opportunisitically negotiated encryption, invisible and convenient 
> to the user. (for more, see http://www.freeswan.org/history.html).
> A secondary goal was to challenge then-current US export regulations, 
> which prohibited the export of strong cryptography (such as triple DES 
> encryption) of US origin or authorship. 
> 
> Since the project's inception, there has been limited success on the 
> political front. After the watershed Bernstein case (see
> http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Crypto_export/Bernstein_case/ )
> US export regulations were relaxed. Since then, many US companies have exported 
> strong cryptography, without seeming restriction other than having to notify 
> the Bureau of Export Administration for tracking purposes.
> 
> This comfortable situation has perhaps created a false sense of security.
> The catch? Export regulations are not laws. The US government still 
> reserves the right to change its export regulations on short notice, and 
> there is no facility to challenge them directly in a court of law. This leaves 
> the US crypto community and US Linux distributions in a position which seems 
> safe, but is not legally protected -- where the US government might at any time 
> *retroactively* regulate previously released code, by prohibiting its future 
> export. This is why FreeS/WAN has always been developed outside the US (in 
> Canada and in Greece), and why it has never (to the best of our knowledge) 
> accepted US patches.
> 
> If FreeS/WAN has neither secured the Internet, nor secured the right of US 
> citizens to export software that could do so, it has still had positive benefit.
> 
> With version 1.x, the FreeS/WAN team created a mature, well-tested IPsec VPN
> (Virtual Private Network) product for Linux. The Linux community has relied 
> on it for some time, and it (or a patched variant) has shipped with several 
> Linux distributions.
> 
> With version 2.x, FreeS/WAN development efforts focussed on increasing the 
> usability of Opportunistic Encryption (OE), IPSec encryption without 
> prearrangement. Configuration was simplified, FreeS/WAN's cryptographic 
> offerings were streamlined, and the team promoted OE through talks and outreach.
> 
> However, nine months after the release of FreeS/WAN 2.00, OE has not caught 
> on as we'd hoped. The Linux user community demands feature-rich VPNs for 
> corporate clients, and while folks genuinely enjoy FreeS/WAN and its 
> derivatives, the ways they use FreeS/WAN don't seem to be getting us any 
> closer to the project's goal: widespread deployment of OE. For its part, OE 
> requires more testing and community feedback before it is ready to be used 
> without second thought. The project's funders have therefore chosen to withdraw their funding.
> 
> Anywhere you stop, a little of the road ahead is visible. FreeS/WAN 2.x
> might have developed further, for example to include ipv6 support.
> 
> Before the project stops, the team plans to do at least one more release. 
> Release 2.06 will see FreeS/WAN making a late step toward its goal of being 
> a simple, secure OE product with the removal of Transport Mode. This in 
> keeping with one of Neils Fergusson's and Bruce Schneier's security 
> recommendations, in _A Cryptographic Evaluation of IPsec_ 
> (http://www.counterpane.com/ipsec.pdf). 2.06 will also feature KLIPS 
> (FreeS/WAN's Kernel Layer IPsec machinery) changes to faciliate use with the 
> 2.6 kernel series.
> 
> After Release 2.06, FreeS/WAN code will continue to be available for public use 
> and tinkering.  Our website will stay up, and our mailing lists at 
> lists.freeswan.org will continue to provide a forum for users to support one 
> another. We expect that FreeS/WAN and its derivatives will be widely deployed 
> for some time to come.
> 
> It is our hope that the public will one day be ready for, and demand,
> transparent, opportunistic encryption. Perhaps then some adventurous folks 
> pick up FreeS/WAN 2.x and continue its development, making the project's 
> original goal a reality.
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful folks who've been part of the lists.freeswan.org 
> community over the last few years. Thanks to the developers who've created 
> patches and written HOWTOs. Thanks to the volunteers who've donated Web space 
> and time as system administrators. Thanks to the distributors who've puzzled 
> out the fine points of integrating our software with others'. Finally, thanks 
> to the users who've tested our software, shared interoperation success stories,
> and given others a helping hand. We couldn't have done it without you.
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Claudia Schmeing
> for the Linux FreeS/WAN Project
> 
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-- 
John A. Sullivan III
Chief Technology Officer
Nexus Management
+1 207-985-7880
[email protected]
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