Hi Luca Sorry for not answering until now. I did not see this mail back then. And now it is 2009 and all. :-)
I like your ideas and I think the comments you have got already is valuable. What I would like to see (I have limited time to make that happen though) is the following: * ntop engine that parse traffic as today * Web interface could potentially be made into an interface only part. Maybe let it run as CGI, php or other scripts using a normal browser. For this I think the perl api would be perfect. This way I think it is easier for people to contribute to the parts that are not the core and thus the hardest part to understand. I do understand that this requires a lot of work, and unless someone want to spend lot of time on it it will not happen. However I think the most important step is to advertise that it is possible to contribute, and give instructions on how to do that. But this has already been said already. ;-) Best regards, // Ola On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 03:31:25PM +0200, Luca Deri wrote: > Dear all > I want to share with you some ideas that I have in mind since a few > months. After 10 years of ntop (as project I mean, not just an > application) I believe there's a need to tackle some rough edges. In > particular, the main problem I see is that ntop is perceived as an > application I mostly develop and (beside very few users) you use with > limited (if any) contribution in terms of code development. In a > nutshell I can expect bug reports but no code. IMHO this is due to two > reasons. First, is my personal failure to build a real ntop developer > community (I'll came to this argument later in this email) and second > because ntop is not simple to hack for everyone. > > Even if I'm not an open-source expert, I believe that in order to > increase the number of people that can contribute to the project as > developers, is to reduce the amount of knowledge needed. For this > reason, as you might have noticed in the past weeks, I have started to > implement a Perl (more languages will follow if there's a request from > the community) interface that allows users to become developers. I > envisage (this in a few months as soon as the API is stable) the > creation of a ntop contribution site where users contribute with perl > scripts. My vision is to turn ntop into an engine, with a default web > GUI (the one you know) but with the ability to have a richer user > experience by means of an perl scripts. If this move will succeed, I > hope that many people will contribute and that development will be > parallelized. Done that, some other parts need to be open but this is > perhaps too early to discuss. > > ntop as a community. This is certainly a weak point of the project. I > believe that the core ntop team (that's basically me) need to be > enlarged by establishing responsibilities/duties, commit to them, and > avoiding that the whole project would depend on me. I have no clue how > to achieve this. I've asked some people around, and I would like to > come up with a response at the end of the summer. I need your > contribution here both in terms of ideas and contribution to the > project. > > Please send me your thoughts. The ultimate goal is to allow ntop to > grow both in terms of application and community. > > Cheers Luca > _______________________________________________ > Ntop-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop-dev > -- --------------------- Ola Lundqvist --------------------------- / [email protected] Annebergsslingan 37 \ | [email protected] 654 65 KARLSTAD | | http://inguza.com/ +46 (0)70-332 1551 | \ gpg/f.p.: 7090 A92B 18FE 7994 0C36 4FE4 18A1 B1CF 0FE5 3DD9 / --------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Ntop-dev mailing list [email protected] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop-dev
