IP Filter FAQ

I. GENERAL

1. Who wrote IP Filter?
2. What is the website for IP Filter?
3. Is there a tutorial?
4. What OS's does it run on?
5. I want to distribute IPF with my product XYZ. Is that allowed, and what do I need to do?
6. I want to use IPF code in a product I'm working on that I intend to sell. Is that allowed, and what do I need to do?
7. I want to use IPF code in a product I'm planning on giving away for free. Is that allowed, and what do I need to do?
8. How does the release process for IPF work?

1. Who wrote IP Filter?

   Darren Reed is the author of IP Filter. There have been many others who have helped him along the way. See the HISTORY file in the IP Filter source code for details.

2. What is the website for IP Filter?

   http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ipfilter/ (or http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ipfilter/)
   or see mirrors at:
   http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ipfilter/#Mirrors
   

3. Is there a tutorial?

   http://www.obfuscation.org/ipf/ is the official tutorial. Someone named Guido Van Rooij also wrote some documentation.

4. What OS's does it run on?

   It comes as part of FreeBSD 2.2+, NetBSD 1.2+, Solaris 10+, and Open Solaris.
   It has also been tested on Solaris SPARC/x86 2.3 - 9, SunOS 4.1.1 - 4.1.4, NetBSD 1.0 - 1.4, FreeBSD 2.0.0 - 2.2.8, BSD/OS-1.1 - 4, IRIX 6.2, OpenBSD 2.0 - 2.9, HP-UX 11.00 (IPFilter 4.x), and QNX Port*. Check the website for more information on the starred items.

5. I want to distribute IPF with my product XYZ. Is that allowed, and what do I need to do?

   Yes, it is allowed, so long as the IPFilter code is not placed under the GPL or any similar licence.
   
   The IPFilter licence requires you to acknowledge that your product is based upon IPFilter. This is the same whether or not it is free, for sale, open source or closed source. In short this means somewhere in the documentation about your product (i.e Credits, etc), it needs to have an attribution to IPFilter and its author.
   
   If you do not wish to include this, or have more specific questions or wish to licence IPFilter under different terms than the public licence, please feel free to email Darren Reed at darrenr@pobox.com.
   
   NOTE: The above is directly from Darren.

6. I want to use IPF code in a product I'm working on that I intend to sell. Is that allowed, and what do I need to do?

   See I-5

7. I want to use IPF code in a product I'm planning on giving away for free. Is that allowed, and what do I need to do?

   See I-5

8. How does the release process for IPF work?

   Take a look at the Development Status Page for information on current releases. This contains what works and doesn't work with a specific release. The goal is generally to have all boxes be "OK" or "PASS" when a release is finalized.
   
   Additionally you can find all patches to the current release here.