[Shorewall-announce] The Next Chapter for Shorewall

[Roberto C. S. <ro...@co...>]

Shorewall Community ...

You are likely aware that Tom Eastep, founder and principal developer of
Shorewall, recently announced his effective retirement from the
Shorewall project after nearly 50 years working in technology and nearly
20 years since he started the project.

While Shorewall as a software product can certainly be described as
mature, firewalling in Linux continues to evolve and there is no
technical reason why Shorewall cannot continue to evolve along with it.
To that end, Tom has identified a small group of core contributors with
a history of involvement in the Shorewall project to assume control of
the future direction of the project.

Be assured that the group has already begun discussions on a variety of
issues pertaining to the project.  As we better organize ourselves and
decide upon courses of action that will affect the broader Shorewall
community we will make corresponding announcements.  Our intent is to
continue to grow the community which Tom has so painstakingly built over
the years.

In the short term we intend to ensure that Shorewall remains actively
maintained and will also work to develop a roadmap for the future
development of Shorewall.  If you have suggestions or ideas, or wish to
participate in the public discussions related to these matters, please
make use of the sho...@li... mailing list.  As
always, bug reports and support requests should be directed to the
sho...@li... mailing list.

For the time being, please continue to direct proposed patches for
upcoming beta releases and release candidates to the
sho...@li... mailing list.

We wish Tom well on his travels and thank him for his many years of
dedicated service to the Shorewall Community and larger Free Software
and Open Source Community.

The Shorewall Project Committee

Matt Darfeuille
Paul Gear
Roberto C. Sánchez
Tuomo Soini