Talk:OPNsense

This article was nominated for deletion on 11 December 2017. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Computing: Networking / Security Low‑importance

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Notes

I took a quick pass over this to remove spam and promo. I need to take a few more. There is a Wikipedia article here. Folks working on this, please see User:Jytdog/How to get your head around the mission of WP and the policies and guidelines through which the editing community tries to realize the mission. Please do read all of it, but before you turn to try to work on this again please especially review the part at User:Jytdog/How#New_articles which gives as-clear-as-I-can-make-them guidance to writing an article from scratch.

Folks started with really bad sources and aimed at writing technical content, often throwing some reference behind some bit of content they wrote based on what they already knew. (it is really easy to see this)

Instead start with the highest quality secondary sources you can get your hands on, summarize them, and only reach for lower quality sources if there is some key part of the story that isn't told in the very good refs. I use press releases sometimes, but they are only for something like an exact date. Not for anything significant.

Please aim for the general public, not for IT people.

Simple content sourced to very strong refs, will be OK, everytime. Hyperdetailed content based on a bunch of self-published sources and blogs will fail almost everytime. We are an encyclopedia, not part of the blogosphere. Jytdog (talk) 00:31, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Project name and developer designation

Disclaimer, I am an OPNsense volunteer developer.

The project name is "OPNsense", and an older draft exists under this name already. The drafts should be merged to concentrate efforts under the correct name?

The developer is not Deciso as the project was created as an open source community effort with broader roots beyond the control of a single company. 2 of the 4 core team members are not affiliated with Deciso and the article should properly reflect that, best by naming the core developers instead of Deciso. But it is still true that Deciso is the founder. It's hard to get a permitable source for this, but it's also wrong to assume that in the absence of a source that things are different. Maybe the open source code^[1] can act as a verification of the core member names^[2].

A thank you to everyone who worked on this. <3

References

Netfitch (talk) 07:21, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have requested the page move - an admin has to do that.

We need secondary sources for your claim about who started it. It doesn't matter if it is "hard" - we go with what refs say and the Infoworld ref for example says "A project named OPNsense, developed by hardware maker Decisio B.V., is a fork of pfSense with its own road map." Please use high quality, independent refs. Jytdog (talk) 16:38, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All the sources that is available in the Web point to Deciso being the owner of the project. There could be individual developers but having individual names in Wikipedia which is an encyclopedia will not be of any real value rather than WP:SOAP Hagennos (talk) 17:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ownership is not necessarily development resources, especially for open source projects. Rather than citing sources here, doubtful information should not be included. A better approach would be either to write "OPNsense core team", "OPNsense developers", more correctly "OPNsense developers and outside contributors" or omit this piece of information for clarity. Netfitch (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if there is a high quality independent source that talks about how this (and pfsense) are actually worked on by a community of volunteer developers and describes the interactions between the community and the relevant company. That high level information would be good to include. I will look. If anybody knows of one please post! Jytdog (talk) 17:54, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The FreeBSD Handbook briefly describes the term "core team"^[1] and development methodology under section 1.3.3, which was inherited by all forks and largely kept alive. Since a core team can change over time, it does not make much sense to add any names indeed.

References

^ https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html

--Netfitch (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of Release information from OPNsense

@Jytdog. I noticed that you had removed the latest release information for OPNsense from the article which I edited. In my view this is important from a security POV as this is a network firewall and regular releases are important from this perspective and is something that any security professional would be looking for when they look for information. This is similar to the infobox of other software distributions like FreeBSD, firewall disributions like IPFire and security products Avast_Antivirus. Your comment was that this is not encyclopedic and is not a web-host which I think is not applicable as this is an important info.

Another info that I believe is important is the languages supported which was also removed earlier as these are some of the information that is required. Also the infobox template that was used has all these info which is the right content for such articles. Hagennos (talk) 18:13, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for posting! So Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Not a buying guide or product brochure. Our mission is to communicate accepted knowledge. Now marketing people (and advocates) mistake the mission for what they do which is to "inform" consumers about their product and all its specs, so that people will buy/use it. In other words, marketing. That is not what we are here for - we are not here to market to security professionals.

The infobox already makes it clear that development is "active". That is the kind of high-level information we aim to communicate. We do not need spam links to the most recent release. Jytdog (talk) 18:20, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I will add that there is going to be continued disruption around this and related articles as long as people who are involved in the projects continue viewing WP as something it is not, and keep trying to use WP to market the products. Most conflicts in Wikipedia are, at their root, problems with people not understanding the mission of WP. Jytdog (talk) 18:25, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that information regarding software releases is marketing. The ink to the website for the release can be removed (but info will be incomplete), but as a security professional myself whenever I look for quick info on a product one of the info that I look for is how recently that the product has been updated as this is one of the most critical information rather than a generic statement that the product is still under active development. An example would be Smoothwall where the product is still under active development but the last release was in 2014. When i look into one of the articles Windows_10 which Wikipedia itself has listed as Good Article the info is present (Even including a link to Microsoft support). Also from a security perspective link to the release info is not specs, but a understanding of what has been fixed and not fixed in the product.Hagennos (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You are still mistaking WP for a product guide. That is not what WP is. I do understand that Wikipedia is full of product-guide information - this is the kind of thing that happens in "an encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and where the mission and policies and guidelines are only as valid as the people working on an article make them.

Probably more importantly, you are missing the larger picture here, which is that advocates for these two products have disrupted Wikipedia trying to get (or suppress) public exposure of these software products, and you are directly continuing that. Please use your expertise elsewhere and let these articles rest. Jytdog (talk) 19:01, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Format of the article

I would like to suggest adding a heading before the WIPO section as this needs a separator from the previous paragraph (full topic switch). Fabianfrz (talk) 09:01, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Section headers are useful to break up articles when they are too long. There is no purpose to a one-sentence section. Jytdog (talk) 17:30, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Notability

User:Staszek Lem, I have removed the N tag. This was passed through AfC legitimately. I commented there that I am not sure this would pass AfD so have nominated it. This is an instance where I find an N tag to be simply... pointless. Jytdog (talk) 20:56, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Borderline notability. Even if survives AfD, it badly needs more serious references. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:48, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WIPO case

There are zillion tonnes of legal bickering all over all businesses. Are we going to litter Wikipedia with these? Unless the case gained reasonable independent publicity, IMO it should not be included into encyclopedia. Right now it is base solely on a primary source, so I suggest to remove it (from both pages). Staszek Lem (talk) 21:52, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there is often legal bickering. In my experience this kind of abuse of a domain name to directly attack a competitor is not common. I think both this article and the Pfsense one need a bit more flesh with regard to the companies that put these products out and this will make more sense in that context. Jytdog (talk) 21:57, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[1] ttps://github.com/opnsense

[2] ttps://opnsense.org/about/about-opnsense/

[3] ttps://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html

[1]

[2]

[1]