[HN Gopher] Simplewall Has Been Discontinued
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Simplewall Has Been Discontinued
Author : akyuu
Score : 44 points
Date : 2025-02-22 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ementally wrote:
| FOSS alternative is Fort https://github.com/tnodir/fort
|
| But unfortunately you have to disable core isolation for the time
| being https://github.com/tnodir/fort/discussions/108
| baal80spam wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning Fort. I've never heard of it but I'm an
| avid user of Simplewall. Looks like I will need to take a close
| look now. Thank God it's not another crapp written in Electron.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Used https://tinywall.pados.hu/ when I was on Windows (at least
| a decade ago).
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I would recommend Fort, back when i ran windows i tried all the
| available firewall and simplewall ended up being buggy after
| some times.
|
| Fort worked perfectly, it had more settings and once you took
| the time to set it up you could just save the rules, the
| configuration and export it to another computer.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Creators / maintainers owe us nothing, but I am always slightly
| bummed when I don't see a reason for the discontinuation.
|
| Can speculate all day of course, and any reason is a good one.
| Again, I know they don't owe us anything, even an explanation,
| but curiosity always gets the best of me.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Creators / maintainers owe us nothing_
|
| I would argue that they do, in fact, owe us _something_.
|
| All people who make public announcements are in effect holding
| a conversation with the public, until such time as they
| publicly announce its end. A person in a conversation is
| socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and
| respond to other people's questions, comments, and concerns. If
| they don't, or suddenly stop, they have abandoned the social
| etiquette of a conversation. This is not the public "being
| entitled" (as some like to claim), but is instead the quite
| reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a
| conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect
| the social rules.
|
| (I should not need to say this, but in addition to being a user
| of many software projects, I am myself a maintainer of software
| publicly available - in official Linux distributions, even. I
| do not think that I ask my fellow maintainers for much - only a
| smidgen of respect for their users.)
|
| (Previously:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38301710#38304918>,
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22073908#22074287>)
| baq wrote:
| The tax you're describing is exactly why maintainers burn out
| and why open source projects die, or worse - they're never
| born. The only way to win is not to play.
| belorn wrote:
| It is very similar to club activities and volunteer work.
| People burn out fast when they stop finding value in the
| work. It is exceptional common with instructors where say
| parents pay to a club for their children membership, where
| the parents might not be fully aware that the cost of
| operation would be significant higher if the people
| involved were paid employees rather than people
| volunteering their time. One has to regularly remind people
| about the social aspects that are the foundation of such
| activity, and that the activity can only exist when enough
| people join in and help. When that fails you get very high
| burnout rates which quickly can cause a death spiral of the
| whole activity.
|
| Normally such activity comes with one year commitments.
| Leaving in the middle of things unannounced and without
| warning would be breaking the social etiquette. No one is
| forced to work but there are social expectations and
| obligations in social activities. How much open source
| project is similar to such activity, and how much social
| expectation there are will depend on the context. For
| example, if you are volunteering as treasurer to a large
| open source project, the expectations are going to be very
| similar to that of a club, as will the burn out if the
| person doing the work don't get value from it.
| henning wrote:
| The social etiquette is set by the license the code is
| distributed under, which says things like "THE COPYRIGHT
| HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS"
| WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
| INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
| MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" in all
| caps.
|
| That social etiquette indicates that maintainers don't owe
| you shit.
| teddyh wrote:
| That's the legal warranty disclaimer. It has nothing to do
| with support, security fixes, or future development, and
| certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably
| responsive when being contacted by users.
|
| Also, and this might be hard for overly rules-obsessed
| people to understand, _this is not a legal matter_. It is a
| matter of _social etiquette_. I of course agree that nobody
| is _legally_ owed anything. But this is not about legality.
| closewith wrote:
| > It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or
| future development, and certainly does not speak about
| simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted
| by users.
|
| Actually, if you re-read the GP, all of those points are
| covered. You just don't like the answer.
| teddyh wrote:
| They are covered _in a legal sense_. But that was not
| what we were discussing.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| That's not the social etiquette, that's the legal
| situation.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Correct. The relevant social etiquette here is "don't
| look a gift horse in the mouth."
| brudgers wrote:
| _A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make
| reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people's
| questions, comments, and concerns._
|
| Slaves and servants and subjects have the obligation you
| describe.
|
| It is the nature of their bondage.
|
| Asking questions and complaining and unsolicited opining are
| hallmarks privilege.
|
| To the extent a social contract is a contract, it requires
| both parties to receive consideration.
| teddyh wrote:
| Comparing mainainers being socially obligated to respond to
| questions to _actual slavery_ , is unseemly.
|
| If people don't want the social burden of being a public
| person or even the relatively small burden of having a
| public project, they have the option of _not being public_.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Or -- stay with me -- they have the option of running
| their public project in the manner and with the level of
| effort they want. If you don't like that, you are free to
| run your own projects according to your own standards.
| teddyh wrote:
| People "have the option" to say whatever they want - it's
| called Free Speech, and it's an important legal right.
| But that does not mean that I think that everything
| people _do_ say is right and proper. I can, and will,
| criticize people for what they say, and I will also
| criticize maintainers who treat their users with less
| than reasonable respect.
|
| You are conflating legal rights with what is socially or
| ethically right, and I think this is a dubious rhetorical
| trick.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| I don't "keep" doing anything - this is the first and
| only time I've ever replied to one of your comments, nor
| have I said anything that a reasonable person could
| construe as conflating legal obligations and social
| etiquette.
|
| I'm well aware of the difference between between the two
| concepts. What I, along with basically everyone else in
| this thread, is telling you is that this social
| obligation on the part of open source maintainers you
| seem the believe in _is not a thing._ People who give
| away their software for _free_ do not owe any debt to
| anyone who might choose to use that software. As I said
| to the 1 (one) other person who seems to agree with you
| here, the relevant social etiquette is "don't look a
| gift horse in the mouth."
| teddyh wrote:
| > _I don 't "keep" doing anything_
|
| Fair; I have edited.
|
| > _this social obligation on the part of open source
| maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing._
|
| Many people do think it's a thing, though. See my links
| to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion.
| See also various Linux Distributions' rules for
| maintainers.
| Novosell wrote:
| Those rules are generally not put in place by users
| though, they're put in place by other maintainers right?
| pjot wrote:
| When Forest Gump said "I'm pretty tired, I think I'll go
| home now" was he breaking an obligation to keep running
| just because others were following him?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well in this case, imagine if he _didn 't_ say that, or
| say anything. It would be pretty rude.
| zoogeny wrote:
| Why only two options? It seems limiting the options of
| engagement only serves to create a false dichotomy for
| the purposes of supporting your argument.
|
| If the only two options are to become obligated to the
| public or not to engage at all, what a sad world this
| would be. Thankfully, there are many, many alternate
| options in the reality we share, even if not in your
| imagined reality.
| teddyh wrote:
| I only mentioned two options to simplify. I agree that
| there are many levels, as I have written about
| previously:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538256>
| zoogeny wrote:
| I could write a lot about this but you may be too dug in
| to hear it. The obvious rebuttals are "caveat emptor",
| don't judge a book by its cover, don't buy a product just
| because the box looks professional, etc.
|
| But you are actually arguing for something different. You
| are insisting on an implication where the rest of us
| don't see one. If a project has nice documentation, an
| up-to-date license, etc. you believe that there is
| ethical/moral implication that the maintainer will fulfil
| some responsibility.
|
| This isn't just about misrepresentation (which is almost
| a side-effect), it is about a proposed belief in duty,
| almost like a chivalry that goes beyond gentleman-ness.
|
| I tend to think of Postel's law in those circumstances,
| liberal in what I accept and conservative in what I do.
| I've heard it said that the happiest cultures of the
| world have low expectations.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Agreed. Sometimes it's personal challenges or tragedy. So
| perhaps best to let it lie if it's not volunteered.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think a lot of open source maintainers start before they have
| found their favorite languages. And now you have a problem if
| you see that the language you wrote your library in creates a
| bunch of make-work problems that you can solve by switching
| languages. How do you retire without it sounding like an insult
| to the ecosystem and the people who helped you make the product
| good?
|
| If he keeps pushing commits, I won't place bets but would say
| don't be surprised if they're in a new language.
| fra wrote:
| I think this is the reason in fewer 0.01% of cases. Languages
| are not in the top 10 things that make being an open source
| maintainer difficult.
| gwerbret wrote:
| There's an important discussion in the sub-thread by @teddyh
| that has unfortunately been voted dead, so I thought I would
| comment on it here instead. I suspect teddyh is being
| criticized for use of the word "obligation", so maybe I can
| clarify.
|
| People can create and operate channels on YouTube for free. Yet
| we frequently see reports of Google acting unreasonably towards
| people who come to depend on YouTube, often for their
| livelihood. We expect Google to act _morally_ by providing the
| bare minimum of human oversight when a person 's channel has
| been banned by an AI mistake. But there is no legal or ethical
| obligation, because YouTube is "free", and Google just doesn't
| care enough about morals.
|
| We also see lots of examples of FOSS authors getting burned out
| when their sense of morality is used and abused by users.
| That's also not okay. But perhaps we can aim for a happy medium
| where the "norm" assumes people can be reasonable, mature
| adults. No one wins when we optimize for the outliers.
| shagie wrote:
| > ... in the sub-thread by @teddyh that has unfortunately
| been voted dead ...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
|
| > Dead posts aren't displayed by default, but you can see
| them all by turning on 'showdead' in your profile.
|
| > If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can
| vouch for it. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then
| click 'vouch' at the top. When enough users do this, the post
| is restored. There's a small karma threshold before vouch
| links appear.
|
| I'm not sure if your karma is sufficient for that action, but
| it's not a dead comment anymore.
| UltraSane wrote:
| What is wrong with the Standard Windows Firewall? It is quite
| powerful.
| Cartoxy wrote:
| the UI is garbage. Talk about unintuitive. Where it's simple it
| to simple and when it's advanced it's not intuitive and the
| relvant info is scatterd to the point of disfunction.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I'm guessing it has a lot of undocumented features and doesn't
| behave as expected.
| uncletammy wrote:
| You can't block Windows/Microsoft traffic
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| Windows Filtering Platform (what Simplewall is based on) is
| simultaneously one of the most powerful network access management
| APIs that exist, and also the most frustrating to use. The way it
| works in practice doesn't always match the documentation.
| greggsy wrote:
| I wonder if there is change afoot in the way those APIs are
| designed and interacted with?
|
| MS did indicate during the CrowdStrike DOS that they would work
| towards opening up or at least documenting those APIs and some
| other aspects of the kernel to help improve the situation for
| vendors.
|
| I believe there might have also been antitrust concerns about
| the way they deliver Defender as part of the OS, but
| simultaneously offer premium cloud platforms? Don't recall the
| full story.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Is the archiving of its repo the only "proof" of it being
| discontinued?
| baq wrote:
| Do you need more? Is the hardest proof you can get
| snailmailstare wrote:
| It might be the hardest proof to expect, but there is an
| unarchive button and people archive for reasons like moving
| rather than stopping a project permanently.
| Sarky wrote:
| Love this litle app. Author did this once before. I hope he
| changes his mind.
|
| I would hate to need to look for a replacement.
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(page generated 2025-02-22 23:01 UTC)