Very impressive that this software was built and maintained by a mostly solo developer into their 70's.
Talk about software lifecycle.
I wonder if there is much of a community around this software and if there is someone who may take over the future direction, much like how Emacs' head maintainership was recently (relatively) given up by RMS.
Just think about the networking changes that have happened in the last 50 years. This guy is insane to have lived through, and engineered against soo many changes in computer networking. I mean... If you are looking back at this guy's career, you need to realize, to this guy, Linux is a young whipper snapper of an OS. Megabit-speed networks werent even really a thing until this guy was like in his late forties or something. I hope that I am able to have a fraction of longevity and impact as this guy did on the computing industry.
Wrapper or not, building a wrapper that works for as many use cases for as long a time as Shorewall has is something.
Frankly, it sounds like your suggesting that because he didn't invent the underlying network stack, or network protocols, that makes it a quick and dirty half day or so project. 99.9% of development work in recent years hasn't been inventing new stuff, it's been building wrappers. Wrappers that compose other well though out tech (which are hard choices to make), while maintaining the flexibility to actually be useful for more than a single project and a short period of time.
I know you said none of those things, however, that's what I read between the lines of a putdown comment like "It's just a wrapper...".
Because it goes against the rhetorical that tech is a "young persons" game that many of the large tech companies seem to imply.
On a side note whilst many people fail to deliver a side project they have spent a few months developing this man has been released and developing his for 20 years which I believe is praise worthy
Talk about software lifecycle.
I wonder if there is much of a community around this software and if there is someone who may take over the future direction, much like how Emacs' head maintainership was recently (relatively) given up by RMS.