[hobbit] Future of Hobbit

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 08:34:01PM +0100, Axel Beckert wrote:
> 
> What about Windows? As far as I heard, the only current Windows client
> for hobbit is BBWin.

Correct. I've been contacted by a fellow who was interesting in doing a
Windows port of the Hobbit server. I've encouraged him to look into it,
but also made it clear that I cannot help with Windows programming.

> coworkers also managed to install the Debian packages also run on
> Ubuntu, so I would expect that the Debian packages will find there way
> into Ubuntu and derivatives.

I believe the Ubuntu folks have picked up the Debian package for
inclusion into the next release, "Hardy" 2008.04.
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/hobbit

[encryption]
> But there's another problem with all those wrapping and tunneling
> solutions: All messages appear to being sent from localhost. A hobbit
> internal SSL would help here, too.

Ok, ok - I get it :-)

> Ack, but be warned that (at least AFAIK) if you want to link GNU GPL
> licensed software with OpenSSL, you do need the explicit allowance of
> the OpenSSL authors. 

Actually, it's the other way around. If you look at the Hobbit README,
it says this:

      Hobbit is Open Source software, made available under the
      GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, with the explicit
      exemption that linking with the OpenSSL libraries is permitted.

That last sentence is copied almost verbatim from the OpenSSL FAQ
http://www.openssl.org/support/faq.html#LEGAL2:

      2. Can I use OpenSSL with GPL software ?

      If you develop open source software that uses OpenSSL, you may 
      find it useful to choose an other license than the GPL, or state 
      explicitly that "This program is released under the GPL with the 
      additional exemption that compiling, linking, and/or using 
      OpenSSL is allowed." 


> BB (and hobbit) really has a few nice advantages over Nagios (which is
> probably the most popular free Monitoring system), so there must be a
> few out there.
> 
> Well, I'm really curios about the number of installations. Google
> helps a little bit:

Another interesting number is that Hobbit is downloaded about 1500 times
per month from Sourceforge. That number has been pretty constant over
the past 12 months.
http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=128058&ugn=hobbitmon&type=prdownload&mode=12months&package_id=140220

Nagios has about 32.000 downloads/month:
http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=26589&ugn=nagios&type=prdownload&mode=12months&year=2008&package_id=0

So Nagios is still ahead of Hobbit, but I am actually quite pleased that
Hobbit has a 5% market share :-)


> A STARTTLS command as with many other protocols would be cool, so no
> new port would be needed. (OTOH, it makes debugging less easier...)

No, STARTTLS is the "right" way of doing it, and the one I have been
looking at.


Regards,
Henrik