2019-08-01 - Re: [GRASE-Hotspot] Update - Have your say on future development

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From: Tim <ti***8@gmail.com>
Message Hash: 5ef2e61085ce2ace8b1ba80591ddf5527f9dd1b8d4975854108b32fb9519db08
Message ID: <CAESLx0Kb52N-_R6vdeHcQB=78e9e+zPUTF99hv6jGTe9JJB6yw@mail.gmail.com>
Reply To: <7eddc4d5-ee5d-d4d2-3c39-2e44da0b102f@gmail.com>
UTC Datetime: 2019-08-01 15:07:13 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2019 08:07:13 +1000

Raw message 

On Fri, 2 Aug 2019 at 01:42, Charles Chambers <cc***2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, if it were entirely software based, no.
>
Regardless, updates are needed from a security point of view. For example,
SSL libraries have changed over the years with security fixes.

>From my perspective:
>
> 1)   I just tried to do a fresh install.  Ubuntu no longer has any of the
> version 14.04 package repository available, as the OS version is now
> retired.  The fresh install is going to be quite problematic if I cannot
> access the package repository from 14.04.
>

Thankfully, Ubuntu isn't that nasty. http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ Will
get you the 14.04 packages. Hopefully that gets you moving for now.

2)  The underlying dependencies (coova-chili and the rest) as required are
> also unmaintained versions dating from *prior to* 2014.  In other words,
> the underlying dependencies are now also abandoned.
>

Interesting. It does appear that Coova Chilli hasn't had a release since
2016. However, development is still occurring in the repo, sporadically. I
build the Coova Chilli packages that Grase depends on, purely so we can
make sure the features we need are present. For each Grase release, I
attempt to build the latest Coova Chilli package.

3)  *Tim* is using a development framework dating from 2014 (or earlier).
> As I understand it, he needed/needs to update that to go with a change
> implemented by Canonical in version 16.04 (three years ago).   We've been
> waiting for *that* update since 2016, three years ago.   It hasn't happened
> yet.
>
The original code had no framework, and relied on MySQL/PHP things that
aren't supported in PHP 7. 16.04 onwards ships with PHP 7, which is a good
thing, but makes the job of updating Grase to PHP 7 a pain. For that
reason, the update that I wanted 3 years ago essentially has turned into a
massive rewrite of core functionality on the Symfony framework. Work on
that is in a branch (
https://github.com/GraseHotspot/grase-www-portal/tree/symfony4)

4)  Everything is set up as open software, so developing a derivative
> package that bundles everything together is permitted, and the source code
> is also freely available.
>
Correct. More recent branches have gitlab CI files as well that should help
with building the packages. If anyone wanted to help, they don't need to
fork it, just talk to me and start helping. Forks are welcomed as well
though.

5) Canonical has designated 19.04 as worthy of the LTS designation.  So now
> we have either one of two mileposts to achieve - update to 18.04, or update
> to 19.04.  Bundling everything as one package without dependencies would be
> a MAJOR added bonus, as it could then be distributed through the package
> repositories.
>
This is news to me. 18.04 has the LTS tag, I've not seen anything about
19.04 having that tag, and the releases page still shows it as EOL next
year (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases). Unfortunately, it's not possible
to package everything in 1 deb package, especially not if you want it to be
carried by a distro. They require that individual dependencies are in their
own packages, so that you can share dependencies. This is why I've run a
repo specifically for Grase over the years, to make it easier to install.

6)  My present platform is now generating warning messages from the lack of
> hardware support caused by the retirement of Ubuntu 14.04.
>
> From what I understand, the project does not pay well enough to be
> maintained.  Am I correct so far?
>
Yes and no. The project doesn't pay, we have one regular donor at the
moment and unfortunately that wouldn't even cover 1 day/month of
development. I have a family to support, so my day job is my focus during
the day (it pays the bills), and my family when I'm at home. It is actually
thanks to the one donor that I'm continuing to work on the Grase hotspot,
because obviously someone has faith that it's still useful.

I've put >10 years into this project because it was a niche that didn't
really have a free open source solution when I started. However, if that
donor wished to withdraw his support, I'd happily refund the last 12 months
of donations and then bury the project. Over the years, the donations
haven't even paid for all the hosting (including the VPN servers that many
use to remotely administer their hotspots) and domain names.[1]

There are other options out there now. They may not be fully free, or may
not have all the features, but there are options.

A quick google found the following (that appear to have been updated in the
last 12 months):
* https://packetfence.org
* https://www.pfsense.org/
* https://www.spotipo.com/ - Not FOSS
* https://sourceforge.net/projects/easy-hotspot/
* https://zeroshell.org

Put simply. I'm time poor, and I need to pay the bills which dictates where
my time needs to be spent. I have no need for the Grase hotspot anymore, in
fact my niche requirement for it was removed 8+ years ago. I'm happy to
continue trying to plod along if the community wants it, but unfortunately
I need income to support my family if I'm doing that. If the community
wants me to abandon it, I will. I'm not going to try and give projected
update dates, because I've learnt that no matter how good I am at
estimating how long a project should take (that is part of my job after
all), I'm really not good at estimating how much free time I have to work
on it.

Also, please don't take this as an attack on the community. The community
have done a wonderful job over the years including translating into many
languages, and really helping each other on the mailing list by answer
support questions, trying to work through strange hardware issues, etc. If
the community hadn't sprung up, I would have stopped development 8 years
ago.

Have your say at https://forms.gle/5Pw3nMC8N5kUt7cQ9 about future
development. However, donors (all 1 of them) get a much louder voice than
the rest.

Regards

Tim

[1] I have had offers of hosting before, but it's actually more pain than
it's worth, I have a good hosting platform already at a low price, so
having to deal with a donated host isn't actually helpful.

Charlie
>
> =================
>
>
>
> On 8/1/19 7:29 AM, emre erdoğan wrote:
>
> Please do not misunderstand me. It is your natural right to ask for the
> new update.
> But there's one thing I don't understand. If such a system is running
> well, if there is no problem, should there be an continuous update to that
> system?
> Please do not consider this system as a normal server or desktop operating
> system. It's a closed-loop system. Users do not have the right to make many
> changes to the system. They cannot upload files. No FTP accounts. No
> database users, no one makes query. A closed main system for users.
>
> We are not claiming that we have a full-featured firewall. We don't have
> security systems like PFsense that require constant updates.
> Using Grase, we only provide simple and easy internet access.
>
> I think of my modem. It didn't receive a firmware update for years, but
> it's still working.
>
> Would it be too wrong to look at it in this way?
>
>
> Charles Chambers <cc***2@gmail.com>, 1 Ağu 2019 Per, 16:49 tarihinde
> şunu yazdı:
>
>> Not to sound like a broken record, but do we have *any* projected
>> possible timeframe for an update?
>>
>> I just tried a fresh install and apparently Ubuntu has finally taken the
>> 14.04 repositories offline.
>>
>> I have a working build, but it's cast in stone until an update.
>>
>> In the meantime I have a project that just came to a stop.
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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