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G-WAN, Another Free Web Server 217

Posted by kdawson from the dioing-it-in-a-hundred-k dept.
mssmss writes "Has anyone used G-WAN — a free (as in beer), supposedly fast and scalable Web server? The downside is it supports only C scripts, which the author claims is a plus since most programmers know C anyway. There is currently only a Windows release and no clear answer in their FAQs whether there would be Linux/Solaris releases. As an interesting aside, releasing a Web server while at the same time fighting a losing battle (PDF) with a large bank over a piracy claim of $200 million (the bank is alleged to have done the piracy) is quite a feat."
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G-WAN, Another Free Web Server More

G-WAN, Another Free Web Server

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:34PM (#30264300)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Big Plus! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:45PM (#30264390) Journal

      i C your point

      -1 Bad Pun

    • Re:Big Plus! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:55PM (#30264452) Homepage
      Absolutely. What makes me especially excited about trying G-WAN is that whenever it crashes I'll have the extra fun of figuring out whether the reason it crashed was because my own C code crashed, or because the code in his web server crashed. But wait, there's more! Adding to this really enjoyable programming problem will be the extra challenge that comes with the fact that his code is closed source, so if the crash occurs inside his code, I'll be able to get in there with a debugger and spend an afternoon figuring out what happened and whether there's any way to change the data my code gives to his code so that his code won't crash crash. I can see many really enjoyable weekends ahead of me in my parents' basement, with a bowl of nachos and a liter jug of root beer. Good times!

      • Re:Big Plus! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by onefriedrice ( 1171917 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @08:00PM (#30265216)

        Absolutely. What makes me especially excited about trying G-WAN is that whenever it crashes I'll have the extra fun of figuring out whether the reason it crashed was because my own C code crashed, or because the code in his web server crashed.

        Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).

        I'm as much a fan of high-level languages, nice runtime environments, and useful abstractions as anyone, but I also happen to think that C gets more flak than it deserves. I really think universities are doing their graduates a disservice by educating them in the safe, comfortable confines of Java if they don't also teach them C. In my own subjective experience, the most capable and successful programmers I know (in any environment) are also the ones who are very comfortable in environments without garbage collection and restricted memory access.

        • That is assuming that you have symbols so you get at least a meaningful stack dump.
          Without it you're SOL.

        • I'll one-up you and say we need a good Fortran education for our youth. Same reasons, but its even easier to produce dangerous code.

        • Re:Big Plus! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jfim ( 1167051 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @11:17PM (#30266436)

          Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).

          Except when your non-protected runtime doesn't crash and instead overwrites the stack, corrupts the malloc arena or writes to a dangling pointer causing corruption in a completely unrelated part of the program. Hours and hours of fun!

          One of the most important thing that managed programming languages brought is the fact that other parts of the program can't corrupt the system enough to make things undebuggable and that an error in a module is self-contained enough that it can't trample other parts of the program due to a memory error.

          I do agree though that C and other unmanaged languages should still be taught.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Panaflex ( 13191 )

            People that never learn C or delve into actual hardware & kernel architecture have real troubles with issues such as concurrency, atomicity and threading. High performance code is difficult to master in Java, as you much understand what's happening in the implementation.

            You seem to forget that the Java core is written in C/C++? I've worked at top tier industry web sites - java is not immune to stupid code practices. It crashes a bit nicer, but downtime is still measured in lost dollars.

        • I'd rather bug hunt crashes and core dumps than dig through bugs related to misuse of massive dynamic type systems.

          On the otherhand I would not want one silly double free() bug to take out my entire site.

          I demand something that is:

          1. Fast
          2. Robust
          3. Easy to diagnose/debug
          4. Secure
          5. Free

          When I find it, I'll be sure to share it with all of you. Well, there is Yaws [hyber.org], but it's written in Erlang (not sure how to exclude Yaws given my list).

      • Finally a platform with built-in buffer overflow support!

        Let the exploits games begin!

      • You can't read hex core dumps? Sissy.

        P.S. At first I thought "G-Wan? Must be Obi-Wan's brother."
        Too bad that "Use the source, Luke" doesn't apply.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by noidentity ( 188756 )
      Hey, look on the bright side: at least you don't have to write your scripts in asm.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      Well, atleast for C you can get thousands of open source scripts and internet libraries to set up your website or help hack your own...... yup......

    • ...the thing about C is that libraries written in it are among the easiest for higher level languages to interface with. It's almost ironic in a way that C gives more freedom to those who refuse to it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 )

      ...could be worse - it could've used only the .NET framework

      Oh, wait...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kagetsuki ( 1620613 )
      C scripts are not C, it's just a scripting language that looks like C. You can't actually import normal C libraries and if I recall (I've only used C scripts once) you can't do much in terms of memory operations. On top of that they are scripts, so if they screw up the parser will tell you where thing crashed. Please don't be so critical of something you don't understand, scripts with C like context are nothing new and there are a variety of advantages to using the same syntax between your actual code and y

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by physburn ( 1095481 )
      In case anyone missing the above authors obvious sarcasm. I'd like to add, that C is the natural language for creating buffer overrun errors. Lets Sigfault the webserver just by putting too long a string into your web form. Overruns or not, strings.h is not want I want to be using when trying parse text from a web form.

      ---

      Web Servers [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]

    • A big upside, though, is C's first-class string handling, especially where Unicode is concerned. Scripting languages just aren't in the same league.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Richard W.M. Jones ( 591125 )

      Yes, writing scripts in C is a great idea.

      It's certainly not a new idea ...

      Minimal webserver, written in C, supporting C scripts ... [annexia.org]

  • Value? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:36PM (#30264320) Journal

    Where's the value/point in releasing another limited-utility webserver?

    I see the point in having a few options for a particular category, so that you can choose between different optimizations for things like cost, performance, and compatibility. But why something of limited utility (only runs C scripts) compatibility (only runs on 'doze) AND cost? (not OSS, but it's free!)

    I don't know. Even with a fairly "heavy" web server such as Apache, the performance increases by going with another "lighter" platform seldom represent more than a year or so of hardware advance.

    So.... Why?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      So.... Why?

      afaik, the main reason for giving it away for free is: its author needs much traffic on his site, in order to hide some very secret traffic happening there.

      hard to believe, but this is what he pretends!

      so, please, download it, even if you don't plan to use it :-)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Only if it does something of value.

      I recall a very lightweight web server that some large outfit uses to serve up images. That's it. only images. Apparently it made things speed up significantly.

      I don't see G-WAN being anything special, though.

      • I did some testing for a company not all that long ago. They needed to serve up images fast. No html. No parsed code. Just images. Lighttpd, thttpd, and a bare bones stripped down Apache 1.3.x. My money was on thttpd. I was sure it would outperform the others, but we went to serious comparative testing anyways. I had done similar testing many years before, and switched a farm of servers doing images and static HTML files over to it.

        As it turned out, lighttpd and the bar

    • The real question... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by amirulbahr ( 1216502 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:17PM (#30264614)
      So the guy wants to write a web server to scratch an itch or something. No big deal there. The question is WHY THE FUCK DID IT MAKE SLASHDOT?

      • Re:The real question... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @07:08PM (#30264932)

        The question is WHY THE FUCK DID IT MAKE SLASHDOT?

        Numerous people on this site have loudly proclaimed "Alternatives are great!!!" and have had their comments modded up for it.

      • Re:The real question... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @07:16PM (#30264978)

        So the guy wants to write a web server to scratch an itch or something. No big deal there. The question is WHY THE FUCK DID IT MAKE SLASHDOT?

        C'mon. Whenever some new Linux distribution (or variant on an existing distro) is announced, it automatically becomes a Slashdot submission. Why should it be any different with new web servers?

        Of course, whenever we have those HIGYALD (Hey, I've Got Yet Another Linux Distro) stories, there is always at least one post similar to yours, asking why it's news. And there's always at least one response to that post, explaining that alternatives are great - which is true here as well, so the circle is now complete.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jsled ( 11433 )

          Yes, but the value in sites like /. is *EDITING*. They should filter shit like this so their s/n ratio is high, and thus their feed is valuable. This will bring subscribers and thus attention and thus ad impressions. At present, slashdot posts 90% crap found on other sites 4-9 days ago, and 7% crap like this and 3% interesting stuff, mostly hard-science stuff I'd find if I was still in school or in a non-CS/Real-Science job.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dkf ( 304284 )

        The question is WHY THE FUCK DID IT MAKE SLASHDOT?

        Let's see...

        Posted by kdawson on ...

        Looks like we've got an answer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kjs3 ( 601225 )

      > Where's the value/point in releasing another limited-utility webserver?

      Well...that depends I suppose. I don't think G-WAN is worth paying attention to, but Marcus Ranum semi-famously wrote a "limited utility" web server for an porn site that was both very fast and very secure in 1996, and still was a decade later. I agree with his point that not everything requires Apache level functionality, and all those bells and whistles come at a cost. Right tool for the job and all that.

      http://www.ranum.com/sec [ranum.com]

  • Spite? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:36PM (#30264324)

    It looks like this chap has a grudge against Microsoft (he says his company was "eradicated from the market the usual way", apparently by Microsoft) so he wrote this webserver to hit them "where it hurts".
     
    I don't know if spite is the best motivation to write excellent software.

    • Re:Spite? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zblack_eagle ( 971870 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:46PM (#30264398)

      I don't know how writing a web server that requires a Microsoft OS exactly hits them "where it hurts"

      • Buffer overflows resulting in server pwnage?

    • Re:Spite? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tobiasly ( 524456 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:57PM (#30264862) Homepage

      Not just against Microsoft, this guy just seems to be full of piss and vinegar in general. Every entry in his blog [gwan.com] is a rant against something, whether it's Microsoft, the world economy, the Western Hemisphere, or those stealthy, mysterious corporate hacker ninjas who spend every waking hour trying to take down his ironclad website due to the obvious danger he poses to The Man.

      Even the software's FAQ [gwan.com] takes cheap shots at the objects of his vast paranoia. Stay far, far away from anyone with that big a chip on their shoulder.

      • Every entry in his blog is a rant against something, whether it's Microsoft, the world economy, the Western Hemisphere, or those stealthy, mysterious corporate hacker ninjas who spend every waking hour trying to take down his ironclad website due to the obvious danger he poses to The Man.

        So he sounds just like a typical Slashdotter. What's not to like?

      • Ouch - the design on that site makes my eyes hurt. The content just makes my brain hurt.

  • Help me out here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TimHunter ( 174406 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @05:38PM (#30264336)

    Why does the world need a non-free web server that only runs on Windows when there's already plenty of free (as in speech) ones out there (http://www.apache.org/ [apache.org], http://www.lighttpd.net/ [lighttpd.net]) that run everywhere?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AlexBirch ( 1137019 )
      Plus IIS is free as in beer (if you've paid for winders)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ralish ( 775196 )
        I'm pretty sure IIS is factored into the cost of the licences of the versions of Windows that contain it (whether you use it or not) ;)

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Rary ( 566291 )

          But I think the point is that, since you need Windows to run G-WAN, then you've already paid for IIS, so why the need for a different closed-source (but free as in beer) web server?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 )

      Speed and security. The endless permutations and add-ons to Apache do, in fact, cause a significant security and compatibility and performance burden, much as the endless and often poorly written add-ons to Perl create similar issues. The idea can be taken to extremes, but how many of todays Perl and PHP website scripting security issues would evaporate if the authors were forced to write in a less flexible language that took a few moments to actually compile before being enabled?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by loconet ( 415875 )

        The idea can be taken to extremes, but how many of todays Perl and PHP website scripting security issues would evaporate if the authors were forced to write in a less flexible language that took a few moments to actually compile before being enabled?

        .. and you actually think C is the answer to that?

      • Re:Help me out here (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Draek ( 916851 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:45PM (#30264774)

        how many of todays Perl and PHP website scripting security issues would evaporate if the authors were forced to write in a less flexible language that took a few moments to actually compile before being enabled?

        None. Contrary to popular belief, lower-level languages don't make shitty programmers competent.

        • Contrary to popular belief, lower-level languages don't make shitty programmers competent.

          True, but at least the clued-in know that up-front. Too many of the upper-level ones tend to mislead the masses into thinking they're competent.

        • I would far, far rather have the truly awful Perl and PHP I've been seeing the last few years fail outright to compile, rather than being published over at CPAN and corrupting every downstream project that is automatically built with the latest release of the author's fantasies. Compilation failures, and compilation warnings are helpful to cleaning up code. And taking the directly legible source code away from the programming equivalent of script kiddies and forcing them to read genuine source code helps ra

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by slifox ( 605302 ) *
            So? A higher level language makes the job easier for experienced programmers who understand how the interpreter works at the machine-level.

            If you really do have a good understand of how it works, you can avoid most security and performance issues; you can dictate efficiency boosts like specific typing, precompiled regular expressions, etc; and you can still embed C and/or assembly when appropriate. You also gain all the advantages and lack of other common low-level security flaws, like buffer overflows.

            • Re:Help me out here (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Monday November 30, 2009 @12:17AM (#30266898)

              But those lower level programmers are not getting the experience that turns them into good programmers. They're cutting and pasting bad code and propagating errors which are nightmarish to track down after the fact. And yes, I'm trusting the language designer to write a good _compiler_ to write small utilities, well written, rather than presenting every programmer with that stunning mass of debris I find coming out of places like CPAN.

              We should not resist new tools for good programmers. We should resist toolboxes that include that many slightly different hammers, many of which are liable to break and many of which have handles likely to slip in the grip of a normal user, sending a large and spinning object flying towards anyone working near them. I'm afraid I've been that person near them and struck with those handles too many times in the last five years, and from observation, far too many of the scripting language authors need to go back and be _mentored_ in how to do efficient or even safe code, because they certainly didn't learn it dealing with Perl.

              For examples of the insanity, I'll point you directly to mod_perl itself and resolving which versions of mod_perl itself are compatible with your project. Though that utility was written in C, it has to deal with a lot of Perl's vagaries, and it can be very awkward to coordinate multiple old and new Perl utilities with a single mod_perl release.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by slifox ( 605302 ) *

                But those lower level programmers are not getting the experience that turns them into good programmers.

                I assume you mean 'those new programmers'... lower-level programmers would be working with ASM, or even C in this context, not perl.
                I disagree anyways -- there have always been bad programmers, and there always will be. The lower level languages have even more potential areas for insecure programming, and that fact will not stop people from writing bad code, nor will it make them understand the underworkings of the computer. Just because a good programmer must know more about the computer architecture, do

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Jesus_666 ( 702802 )
                You're arguing that nobody who doesn't already know how to program should be allowed to learn it. Inexperienced programmers always create shitty code, in any language. And they will resort to cut-and-paste code from random websites whenever convenient.

                Forcing them to use C for web development won't change that; you'll see websites that leak memory like a sieve, open supposedly read-only files in read-write mode and then reuse that pointer (which the coder doesn't notice because he only ever tested with th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Improv ( 2467 )

        C has lousy string support. It's really easy to screw them up, just like most memory allocation-related stuff in C is a big burden. Perl, Python, PHP, and even Fortran handle strings more sensibly, eliminating one of the most common sources of security problems in one go.

        It may be true in theory that compiled languages that enforce discipline (ML, for example) would be better yet for security, particularly when used by people who have a good security model in mind, but Perl, PHP, and Python do well with suc

      • You have already heard of JSP, right? And CGI has been around for ages.

        I can tell you from experience that writing in a compiled language does not force one to write cleaner code. It just forces one to click "Build" and deploy the new version before the changes go live. In fact, most sloppy coders would generate significantly less secure websites if they were forced to write in C. With PHP, being sloppy means that an attacker could download files they're not supposed to or inject SQL statements. With C, b

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by SharpFang ( 651121 )

        Maybe some but C as a text generation and processing language (which is the basic function of CGI) is definitely a very bad choice. C strings are inherently fault-prone.

        In Perl or PHP you do $y .= " $x \n"; and it is totally fault-proof. It is easy and straightforward, and totally foolproof. Now write something like that in C. Allocate buffers for x and y, check for overflows, reallocate if buffers are too short, make sure the number of arguments matches the format string, and within maybe 15 lines have the

    • There's still an entire world of people who think in terms of Windows-only and shareware. They're living in a 90's time warp, really. Never mind that C is inherently dangerous to use for scripting (not to mention primitive), or that there are smaller, freer web servers out there.... Some people feel compelled to reinvent the wheel, and then feel like heroes when they only pack in a few advertisements or dial home every once in awhile. People who don't know any better will still use it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msimm ( 580077 )
      No kidding. And if you really want to play around with cool web server technologies slightly off the beaten path there are plenty of more interesting options like Resin [caucho.com] (open source java/php servlet).

      Honestly I've got to question anyone who wants to run Windows server for any kind of performance-oriented or scalable solution, which would make this an ad?
  • From the PDF (about the bank piracy claim)

    in its report made on May 26th, 2006 M. MARC MORTIER from BEFTI reckons that "the 10.249.17.10 network address belongs to the address range of FINAMA bank", and that his "laptop is using the 10.249.24.60 IP address".

    If their claims are based on the assumption that 10.249.*.* is a Finama bank owned IP subnet, then they are in trouble.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Spad ( 470073 )

      From the open letter to the French president [google.com] (Google Docs PDF), although the English takes some effort to comprehend:

      GROUPAMA is not offended at seing the bailiff JEAN-CLAUDE DAIGREMONT and the judicial expert JEAN-MARIE HUOT in charge of the seizure of September 7th, 2005 at 22-28 Joubert street PARIS 9th, refusing to seize evidences pretexting that they did not exist (they reported that the 10.249.x.x network did not exist) -a fact that their own official report denies (a FINAMA bank router returned the 10.249.80.49 network address -FOUR TIMES).

      They do appear to be referring to the internal network of FINAMA bank.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eln ( 21727 )
        Even so, claiming they use 10.249.x.x is not proof of anything. The entire 10.x.x.x subnet is reserved for private network use, so any number of companies could be and probably are using that exact same subnet. All they need is a halfway-competent network administrator to tell the court about the concept of private IP space, and that bit of evidence is worthless.

        • Re:10. subnet? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:34PM (#30264710)

          That would be like saying "the fifth floor is in our building, not a public street address, so this warrant is useless". I bet that would be a useful bit of precedent to establish for lots of people who are served with search warrants. Given the router information mentioned in the article, and the settings of the laptop with an address in the address space, it's unsurprising that our plaintiff was upset that those machines did not get reported or searched properly.

  • People claim Apache is slow, but why not using a reverse proxy like Varnish to "speed it up" and still keep the features. I really see no reason why I should use G-WAN or lighttpd.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thetagger ( 1057066 )

      People claim Apache is slow, but why not using a reverse proxy like Varnish to "speed it up" and still keep the features. I really see no reason why I should use G-WAN or lighttpd.

      Not everybody is serving easily-cacheable stuff. Reverse proxies are great for semi-static websites like news sites, but they are useless for social-networking, webmail and other interactive sites that need to render customized content for each particular user.

      Anyway, nginx is my current favorite web server.

  • Sorry, but I won't run a HTTP server where the author think running native code extensions with no security checks is good.

  • IIS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:17PM (#30264610) Homepage

    If you're going to be "scripting" in C on Windows you might as well go fully compiled with IIS (free with any Windows OS you'd be running on a server) and C# (Express version also free). Get MySQL with ODBC and you're all set.

    I use PHP on Apache for flexibility. If I wanted to use C I'd compile it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by argent ( 18001 )

      GWAN in user space is faster than IIS in the kernel on Windows. When they port to Linux it should toast IIS nicely.

  • It can't even talk http properly (Score:4, Informative)

    by RJabelman ( 550626 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:31PM (#30264698) Homepage

    His server returns 404 for errors:

    http://www.gwan.com/csp_crash.html [gwan.com]

    That's going to make wirting for this thing really confusing.

    • Re:It can't even talk http properly (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Phroggy ( 441 ) <.slashdot3. .at. .phroggy.com.> on Monday November 30, 2009 @01:12AM (#30267250) Homepage

      Oh geez. He's returning Error 404 when a script crashes? That means he can't be bothered to find the list of HTTP status codes [thinkgeek.com], because if he did he'd see that 404 is clearly the wrong choice. It also means he can't be bothered to look at other implementations, because then he'd have noticed that popular servers such as Apache and IIS return Error 500 when scripts are broken.

      From this we can conclude that he probably hasn't read the HTTP protocol specification (because it'd be hard to read the spec but miss the list of status codes), and he has no idea how current servers work (so instead of copying their good ideas, he'll be reinventing his own broken wheels).

      And from THAT we can conclude that his browser is a steaming pile of crap. The reason it's not open source is probably because he's afraid that somebody would read his code and make fun of him for it.

      Heh, check out the actual 404 error message - it's malformed HTML 2.0! If you're going to go to the trouble of including a DOCTYPE declaration, you ought to at least validate the code.

  • Ah g-wan... (Score:3, Funny)

    by martinmarv ( 920771 ) on Sunday November 29, 2009 @06:35PM (#30264716) Homepage

    ... g-wan, g-wan, g-wan

    G-wan, g-wan, g-wan, g-wan, g-wan

    Mrs Doyle approves

  • It looks to me like someone took their homework project from Freshman year and decided to toss it out on the internet to see if anyone bites.
  • FAQ Entry [gwan.com]:

    Why isn't it Open-Source?
    TrustLeap's technology could be mis-used, diluting or even compromizing it: open-source is now an on-ramp to very profitable closed data services. And if you are not rich enough to prevent others from stealing from you in the first place, then the 'rule of law' just helps the guilty to ruin you.

    And after reading items on this timeline [gwan.com]. I begin to question the author's sanity...

  • ...and want their CGI back.

  • This seems like an ideal tool if you want to have a drop-in solution for a zombie network to host illegal or pirated shit all over the internet.

    Runs on cruddy already infected hardware! Perfect for Grandma Gertrude and Grandpa Horace to have hidden in their computers.

    Feature set of this thing seems like a newer version of that pile of crap ORielly WebSite Pro.

    Stay away... this dude doesn't want to kill IIS, he wants to kill every windows install anywhere on the planet.

  • Few people can do string processing in C (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Casandro ( 751346 ) on Monday November 30, 2009 @12:49AM (#30267110)

    Only very few people can do string processing in C. Actually I believe more people can do string processing in assembler than in C, as with assembler you see where the problems are whereas C makes you believe it has some kind of string support.

  • I sent a message via his error log (Score:3, Informative)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr AT telebody DOT com> on Monday November 30, 2009 @01:07AM (#30267224) Homepage Journal

    I can't tell if sane or not but it certainly sounds like he is putting much effort into some software.
    So it would help to defuse the impression of insanity that most of the posters here are suggesting. He doesn't sound insane at least not for a French programmer who has left the country due to corruption apparently.

    Personally I would suggest an online explanation in more detail of two points:
    1) Would he offer source to a company/institution that will sign an NDA? I bet he would sell it to say Facebook if they wanted to compile their own.
    It isn't a crime to do closed source software although to my mind not offering the source in any way is going to slow adoption.
    2) I took the time to read the blog and pdfs. His legal problems seems to have started when he caught a bank using his software. See: groupama.pdf [remoteanything.com]

    This refers to software he makes (in Switzerland now), Remote Anything [remote-anything.com]

    Okay. First, the pdf shows they have installed packs of 65535 units of his software. This makes no sense at all and looks like a dumb programming bug. He doesn't show the evidence he has, or how he got the reports. I imagine he has a phone home routine in his program. This is maybe why it gets called a virus too I could imagine, if that is the app he is talking about. The $200M fine he is seeking is therefore either crazy, a lie, or else based on such strong evidence I can't imagine not mentioning it. I think he needs to explain what the evidence is, how he got it, and why the numbers suggest some binary math errors. He has four lines that look like "64 DS + 256 Masters + 65536 Slaves = 34 million euros" and this is totally crazy. He seems to be suggesting they are using 250,000 clients if I am correct. His own site says Fortune 500 companies often buy tens of thousands of licenses. He should explain the discrepancy.

    I think if he does these two things then he could expand his market more. If he doesn't want to go open source fine but comparing it to open source projects then should include this caveat. Maybe he could get a university or famous security company to audit the code.

  • A while back I had written a minimal HTTP server to figure out I/O completion ports in Windows over a weekend. You can download it from (BSD license): http://arunsagar.com/Code/rani.cpp [arunsagar.com]
    Similar throughput specs as the OP's server, and the C++ code can be part of the server itself (great for debugging). Buggy and incomplete, but you can play, fix and extend as you wish.

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