FreeLists / openbeosnetteam / [openbeosnetteam] Status update

["Jean Schwerer" <j-schwerer@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings to all the readers of this list :o)

There are a lot of people we haven't heard from in the past weeks, and... 
oops.... I am one of 
those people ^_^ Sorry for that, but I still have no clue whether I'll get a 
new job soon or if I'll 
have to start wondering how to pay the bills.
However, despite the time consumed by this job hunting and despite my silence, 
I haven't been 
completely inactive.

1/ On the *BeOS* side:
I have organized the GeekDay a couple of weeks ago. It's a gathering of Frenchy 
users and 
developers. I introduced the OpenBeOS project to people who weren't aware of 
it. I also 
introduced the BlueOS and Phoenix/BeUnited projects. I gathered opinions / 
reactions about the 
current situation and potential future of BeOS.
I also completed the first phase of development of a little perl script that 
enables me to update 
in a faster way my websites. I have made profuzion.org compliant with this 
script but am still 
working hard on making NPC compliant with it. Talking about NPC, I have 
important projects for 
it: I wish it to be an useful resource for OBOS as well, and I'll open new 
sections on it soon. 
Better late than never, but I realised the NPC website had not been updated for 
more than one 
year already! Updating it in order to show support to OBOS seems important to 
me.

2/ On the *OpenBeOS Network Team* side:
During the GeekDay event I could meet Guillaume Maillard, developer of the Eden 
application and 
Leader of the BlueOS project. Interestingly enough, they have someone from 
Gobe, Inc working 
closely with them. I also talked with Guillaume about a development that could 
possibly be part 
of OpenBeOS and BlueOS at the same time: the BeOS network API rewrite, mapped 
after 
traditional BSD sockets. I *have started* this API rewrite. The reason I didn't 
talk about it yet is 
that I wanted to wait to have something to show, presenting it at the same time 
as a proof of 
concept tof our team. Mmmh... As you can see this mail is sent to the Network 
list only, I'll 
mention it to the main OBOS list when I'm 80% done, not before.

I have thought about some kind of wish-list and development milestones for our 
Team. I'll have a 
couple of things to submit to you about those two topics in the forthcoming 
days (tuesday at 
the latest). I just hope there are more people listening here than just Ithamar 
and Emmanuel. 
We're waiting for other answers! :o)
I think it would be good to include Dr Zoidberg in our thinking about 
milestones and wish-list,  I 
was just waiting for my mail to you about this to be ready to contact them, but 
Emmanuel beat 
me at contacting them :-)
Well hum... you can start thinking about the wish list anyway :o) It's quite 
easy, just tell ALL 
things you would like to see in OBOS Network layer. Don't mind if it is 
feasable at all or not, just 
think of a "perfect world".
For example as far as I am concerned I'd like to see:
Protocol-wise:
- IPv6 support
- ATM and PPPoA support
- Full PPPoE and PPTP support of course, with CHAP authentication ^_^
- Token Ring support (yes, I like Token Ring and think it is a well-designed 
protocol, and 
remember: I talked of a perfect world :P)

Design-wise:
- I wish every protocol would be handled by a separate add-on, then the 
necessary add-on gets 
loaded when a given kind of network traffic is recognized by the lower layer. 
That way it is 
easy to add protocols and to update some protocols' support. The add-on doesn't 
get unloaded 
from memory unless there is a given timer without network traffic observed (if 
the timer is 
reached however it will be wise to assume the machine has been disconnected 
from the network 
and warn the user about it :P)

Feature/API-wise:
- An automatic flooding and malformed packets protection for applications 
asking for it. e.g. an 
application may call a FilterArrivingPackets() function that would tell the 
network API to monitor 
certain kind of parameters, some kind of built-in firewall working at a lower 
level than user-
launched firewalls.
- An automatic non-transparent firewall/proxy support. e.g. an application 
opens a connection 
(BNetEndpoint, BNetAddress...) and instead of having to care about 
firewall/proxy itself it tells 
the BNetEndpoint->UseProxyFirewall("socks5"). Then it doesn't care afterwards 
whether it's 
talking to a firewall/proxy or not, it justs sends the packets as it would to a 
given server, and 
the net_server handles the "translation" in firewall/proxy protocol for it. 
What's the benefit? 
Any application can then handle any kind of non-transparent firewall/proxy 
supported by the 
net_server without having to implement it. Kind of a "translator" function 
applied to the network 
if you prefer :o)
- I read on OSNews (in Eugenia's interview of some *BSD people) about the 
project of BSD 
developers to enable sockets to be passed from a server to another one, which 
would enable 
QoS by ensuring a connection isn't dropped when a server is taken offline for 
maintenance of 
after a crash. I definitely want this in OBOS :o)

Application-wise:
- I'd like OpenSSL/OpenSSH and Apache to compile right out of the box 
(currently not the case, 
it's even lacking proper header files)
- I'd like to have a Perl build for OBOS with socket support

I realize I've been quite long and already offered an insight about the 
wish-list topic :o) Well 
anyway... hope you made it until here and read a little bit of everything, but 
most of all... I hope you'll react to it ^_^

Cheers,

Jean