FreeS/WAN Continues As Openswan

leto writes "It seems some of the developers and volunteers of the (recently deceased) FreeS/WAN project have started a new company to develop and support the successor of the Linux IPsec code under the name of Openswan in a "Cygnus style" business model. They announced the new version at CeBIT which fully supports the new Linux 2.6 native IPsec stack. According to the Openswan website, it was started 'by a few of the developers who were growing frustrated with the politics surrounding the FreeS/WAN project.' There is a FAQ that explains how the various parts of IPsec on Linux work together. I guess that means US citizens can finally submit patches, and that distributions like RedHat/Fedora can now include it in their distribution. FreeS/WAN has always had the most features and most the most user-friendly configuration. It is good to see that will continue. And their mailing list finally seems to refuse spam too."

Comments

user friendly?

[Kryptolus]

I guess you never personally configured it...

Re:user friendly?

[arivanov]

Ahem.

The most horrible IPSEC out there. Broken by design, absolutely incompatible with any routing protocol software, broken in operation and utter nightmare to configure and get working.

One of the things I apploaded most when reading the 2.6 kernel changelogs was the port of KAME IPSEC and utilities. They work (TM). They are missing some features that were in FreeSwan that made it useable as a amateur VPN access point (email ID in shared keys, x509 CRL and a few others), but I do not see these as a reason to revive freeswan instead of fixing the omissions.