 Why did the FireWall-1 FAQs on phoneboy.com move to cpug.org?
Because, quite honestly, it was long overdue.
The main reason I started the FireWall-1 FAQs on phoneboy.com was because at the time, there was an obvious need for a public information source about FireWall-1. Check Point certainly wasn't providing it. I knew something about FireWall-1, being a technical support engineer. I could write in a way people could understand, but what's more important, I was passionate about educating people about FireWall-1. PhoneBoy's FireWall-1 FAQs were born.
Mid-way through writing my second FireWall-1 book, which was early 2003, I lost my passion for it. My passion may have started waning before then, but I think that was when I was finally able to admit to myself that it was happening. I made my career out of supporting FireWall-1 and I don't care about it anymore. It also didn't help that my main tasks at my employer at that time were taking me farther away from being in the trenches with FireWall-1.
Without my passion and without any real financial reason to stay on top of FireWall-1 issues, I stopped making any real content on FireWall-1. In fact, the whole act of even maintaining the content that was there on phoneboy.com became emotionally difficult for me. I went from being passionate to dispassionate about FireWall-1.
I could have just folded up shop and done something else at any point. On the other hand, I still truly care about the community that I, in some small way, helped to build. That's one reason the content on phoneboy.com has remained online with the FireWall-1 content. That's also the reason I tried switching content management systems so that others could help me maintain the site. But it's clear the number of people that have the passion that I once had for the product coupled with the ability to write about it is very small.
In the summer of 2004, I first became aware of Barry Stiefel and The Check Point Users Group. Being around Santa Clara during the time of the first meeting, I decided to see what it was about. After seeing what Barry is trying to do, seeing that is passion for FireWall-1 is probably more ambitious than mine once was, and a little conjoling from Warren, I approached Barry about essentially taking over what I had done on phoneboy.com.
After much soul searching and discussion, I decided that I wanted phoneboy.com to be what it was originally about: me and what I'm doing. It's most certainly not Check Point anymore and hasn't been for quite some time. It's time for me to move on with my post-FireWall-1 career. This meant that the FireWall-1 content had to have a new home, and Barry has graciously accepted the responsibility of preserving, maintaining and improving this content.
I have no doubt that Barry and cpug.org will be as good of a resource as I was. Please support him in his new role as steward of the premier independent resource on all things FireWall-1, VPN-1, or whatever Check Point decides to call the product now or in the future.
-- PhoneBoy  | 
Why did the FireWall-1 FAQs on phoneboy.com move to cpug.org? 
2005-08-13 
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