Hi all,
This response is not really a response - please bear with me.
Regarding Windows GUIs... The situation with them is similar to the
situation we had with OpenVPN back in 2009. Back then, the main
repository (SVN) was managed by James, but he did not have time to
review or merge community patches. This had created several "islands" of
activity, for example IPv6 patchsets from Gert and Juanjo and Eurephia
from David. The OpenVPN forums were also "external", i.e. not managed by
the main OpenVPN project. There was also little to no coordination
between these islands. We merged these islands and slowly took over
project's responsibilities from James. By 2.3-alpha/beta-something the
takeover was complete. The OpenVPN project had become our playground,
something which we as a community owned and shared responsibility of.
However, the Windows part has always remained "external" to the main
project. There is a fairly large number of people working on various
aspects of Windows - here's a crude list of the top of my hat:
- Me (openvpn-build, "the buildslave", openvpnserv.exe replacement)
- Heiko (OpenVPN-GUI, cygwin builds?, interactive service)
- Steffan (openvpn-build)
- Lev (msvc builds)
- ValdikSS (msvc builds?, Win10 DNS fix)
- James (msvc builds, OpenVPN Connect, fixes here and there)
- People interested in joining the Windows team (a few already)
- All the "other" GUI authors and their contributors
We've had #openvpn-devel and this development mailing list for ages, and
we're still struggling to get people to work on Windows. There are
basically two explanations for this:
a) The current model is not working
b) There simply are no people who want to work on Windows
The meat of my proposal is to create a (semi)separate playground for all
those who want to help OpenVPN for Windows to be as pleasant an
experience as possible. If a "Windows team" eventually emerges, fine. If
it does not, we can scrap the idea and go on as if nothing had happened.
The actual steps towards enabling the "Windows team" to emerge would be:
1) #openvpn-windows IRC channel
A Windows-specific IRC channel would attract people who run OpenVPN on
Windows. This exact thing happened when we created the #openvpn-as chat:
two of the current OpenVPN Tech employees were actually recruited from
this channel. So the model itself is highly likely to work. It probably
makes sense to keep #openvpn the official support channel, but forward
the more tricky Windows questions to #openvpn-windows.
2) Windows-specific forum board
A quick look at the forums shows that about 1/5 of topics are related to
Windows, just based on the topic name. Obviously people will post
non-Windows questions to a Windows board, but moving threads from one
board to another happens all the time anyways. Moreover, now people post
their Windows client TAP-Windows questions to "Server administration"
board, so the current situation is unlikely to get any worse.
3) Adding OpenVPN-GUI to OpenVPN's GitHub page
This was proposed by someone else earlier. If nothing else, it would
allow sharing responsibility of OpenVPN-GUI development among more
people, like what happened with easy-rsa, openvpn-build, etc. earlier. I
actually created my own GitHub fork a while back to make my work easier,
as well as to be able to merge trivial patches (e.g. language fixes)
more easily. The versioning in my OpenVPN-GUI tree had diverged from the
"official" one a long time before that.
---
All of the three above are proposals, which probably help us get more
people working on the Windows part of OpenVPN _in the long run_. I
obviously have to present the proposals with the people who actually get
affected by them, i.e. people on #openvpn and the forums.
The way I see it, none of the above can actually harm the project, so
trying this out should be safe. If you disagree or have constructive
suggestions, please speak now or forever hold your peace :).
Thanks,
--
Samuli Seppänen
Community Manager
OpenVPN Technologies, Inc
irc freenode net: mattock
Hi,
Just a couple thoughts here, from a (absolutely!) non-expert ... :-(.
I have been trying to develop my own "GUI" - not because the current one
doesn't work (not at all!), but because I want a bit of an extended feature set ... to be
able to change Tray Icon color with traffic (Tx/Rx), and plot ping timing to a remote
machine over the link, and as well traffic and bit rate plots in the UL and DL.
That all said, I can definitely see that the network adapter (TAP) and
openvpn.exe really are up and down (a lot!) on Windows ... :-(. I am trying to
use NSSM to at least keep openvpn.exe up (i.e. restart it), but the network
connection is a challenge also - often having to be reset (disabled and
enabled). So to the question below ... yes, Windows does need some work.
I'd be happy to help out - but as above, I'm not an expert. So definitely
willing, but usefulness may be questionable unfortunately ... ;-).
Thanks!
... Russell
-----Original Message-----
From: Heiko Hund [mailto:heiko.h...@sophos.com]
Sent: Monday, October 19, 2015 9:16 AM
To: sam...@openvpn.net
Cc: openvpn-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Openvpn-devel] Creating a Windows team for OpenVPN?
On Monday 19 October 2015 10:20:23 sam...@openvpn.net wrote:
I'm thinking it might make sense to create a dedicated Windows team
that could share the burden of Windows issues amongst themselves,
without any one person gettings tagged the "Windows guy".
Judging from the review the Windows patches received I think this might be
an too ambitious goal. Obviously not many care besides the regulars who
make a
Anyways, not many seemed to care about about easy-rsa before it became a
separate project in GitHub. Now we have easy-rsa 3 by pekster and ecrist.
Similarly for openvpn-build we have/had Alon, pekster, me and syzzer. I'm
sure more examples could be found from other projects.
I'm also not speaking primarily of Windows patches, but also all the other
stuff such as debugging, user support, ticket review, packaging, etc.
Ok, I think here is the main misunderstanding. My understanding was that you
want a Windows development team. That I think would be counter productive. For
the other topics I do not have a opinion.
am working on a replacement for openvpnserv.exe.
Please consider reviewing and improving the interactive service patch
instead of duplicating work.
Are you saying that the interactive service also doubles as a Windows system
service? If so, can it be configured to autostart selected openvpn
connections on boot and restart them if they crash/stop?
No, and I do not think that the service should take care of that. That's
rather things that can be handled by the GUI.
Now, can anyone provide proof that having a Windows team would actually
_hurt_ the project? If not, what does it matter if it fails? We could just
scrap the idea retroactively.
Hehe nice turn demanding proof, that'll shut up ppl. =)
Heiko
Sophos Technology GmbH, Amalienbadstraẞe 41/Bau 52, D-76227 Karlsruhe,
Deutschland
Tel +49 (0)721 25516 0 Fax +49 (0)721 25516 200 E-Mail i...@sophos.de
www.sophos.de
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Karlsruhe, Amtsgericht Mannheim HRB 712658
Geschäftsführer: Nicholas Bray, Pino von Kienlin, Wolfgang Hilpert, Jennifer
Onslow.
Sophos GmbH, Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 1, 65189 Wiesbaden, Deutschland
Tel +49 (0) 611 5858-0 Fax +49 (0) 611 5858-1042 E-Mail i...@sophos.de
www.sophos.de
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Wiesbaden, Amtsgericht Wiesbaden HRB 25915
Geschäftsführer: Nicholas Bray, Wolfgang Hilpert, Pino von Kienlin, Jennifer
Onslow
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