[CentOS] CentOS Based Linux Firewall Document

Wed Jun 6 19:30:07 UTC 2007

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pctech at mybellybutton.com wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately, I have had nothing, thus far, but bad experiences with wikis.  
Especially when you begin letting others "mark up" something that you've posted 
there.  At that point, because your name is on it, you "own" all of their 
mistakes.  I'm not saying that the CentOS wiki is like that, just wikis in 
general.
> 
> WikiPedia is probably one of the most horrifically obvious examples of what I 
am talking about.  Not only do you have all of the blatant inaccuracies, which 
tend to get attributed back to the original article author, but you also have 
all of the drama that goes along with it.
> 
> Things start to go sideways when you begin to let others exert their own 
creative control over something with your name on it.  I'm all for the free 
exchange of ideas, information, and knowledge.  I'm not all for getting blamed 
for some crap someone added to something with my name on it.  Been there, done 
that, don't need that drama anymore.
> 
> Some wikis, again I speak in general, not of the CentOS wiki, also demand 
that you turn over any and all rights to whatever you post there.  While I 
enjoy sharing my knowledge with the world for free, I will be damned if I will 
give up my rights to profit from it in the future.  Even the BSD license 
doesn't expect this.
> 
> This document, the firewall one, is the first in a series of documents that I 
plan on writing.  I've worked very hard to get it to the state that it is at 
right now.  It's what I consider a "living document" and will be changing as 
necessary.  The second in the series is a document on building a network 
monitor based on open source tools.  I've just begun writing it.  I am hoping 
to have it completed in a couple of months, now that I have a format I am happy 
with for my documents.  The third of the series will be on building a VPN 
concentrator based on open source tools.  Part of what takes me so long to 
write these documents is that I don't actually enjoy writing.  I enjoy doing.  
The firewall document started out of necessity to build multiple Linux based 
firewalls consistently and rapidly for myself and just morphed into something 
that I decided to share with the community.  I figured that since there wasn't 
much out there that was useful others might like it.
> 
> While it's, most definitely, not the be-all end-all of Linux based firewall 
information, I think it's a pretty good document that I've worked very hard to 
write in a presentable manner that most people could understand and even expand 
upon for themselves.  I am all for receiving comments and suggestions for 
future revisions of the document, any document that I write for that matter.  
I'm just not all for having my documents hacked apart by every Tom, Dick, and 
Harry on the Internet and then all of the misinformation getting lumped onto my 
shoulders because I happen to be the person that wrote the original document.  
I've already had enough drama from the CentOS forums where I got accused of 
being an e-mail address harvester for a spammer.  No thanks.  I don't need that 
in my life.  I'm just a computer network engineer that THOUGHT he was doing the 
right thing by giving back to the community.

Understood, that's your right. It seems kind of silly, though, to go to
the trouble of writing so much, then limit yourself with sharing to only
a very small percentage of the CentOS community by broadcasting a
message to e-mail you for documentation. Documentation is supposed to be
readily available, that's the point of it, at least from my perspective,
no matter what the license or stipulations of the content are.

Although you can pick out a license for your material that would cover
protecting the interests you have expressed, yet at the same time
allowing others to share in your material. One of the Creative Commons
license, or another, would do the trick.

That said, do you not have a place to host the document then? It seems
that if you've gone to that much trouble to write something, then
perhaps you just need a spot somewhere to host the document?

----------------------------------------

Currently I have a domain, yes, however my bandwidth is rather limited.  By cost, not by speed.  I don't feel like incurring hundreds of dollars in usage fees to post this on my domain.

Licensing is good and fine, except for the fact that once you post something on a wiki, in most cases, anyone that comes along can freely add to and modify the content of what you've posted.  This happens on Wikipedia quite frequently.  This doesn't cover the "It's your fault because you wrote the document" blame that gets lumped on you when something goes wrong from a change that someone else made.  The person who's name is on the document is the one that is going to get his or her neck wrung by the pissed off person.  I've had it happen in the past.  I don't care to repeat it.  I really don't like lawyers sending me letters because of stupidity like that.

I originally chose the method that I use for disseminating it because, to be honest, I don't really see that there is enough interest in it to invest the time or money into something larger.  I have, however, considered asking the admins of the IEEE Computer Society, LOPSA, or AZSAGE if I could post it on their sites when I renew my memberships.

Regards,
Max
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