So I was waiting for my flight out of Las Vega s, after presenting a 4-hour seminar of SQL Server 2005 Best Practices. I do not know if anyone has ever spoken for 4-hours but man, it is tough. Now my Mom is Italian so for me talking for four hours nonstop should be easy. However, it is very different when you have a room full of people and no one is talking back. Yep, they are all there to hear what you have to say so they are silent and it is all you. Well, back to the airport in Vegas, I got the chance to check on some comments to my 20 tools blog. Of course, I loved the ones saying I was the greatest thing to happen since open source. Or the comment about how ruggedly handsome I look in my picture (ok that wasn't a written comment it was my wife's comment). I actually am not that fond of that shot of me, but I digress.
But one comment in particular caught my attention it went a little something like this:
"netstumbler is closed source and should not be in the list. Kismet, which you ignored, is not only far more versatile and runs on more platforms but is also released under the GPL which makes it free software"
My bad, it was pointed out by one of my readers that Netstumbler is not open sourced. I looked into it myself and it is correct. Netstumbler is closed source software. Now it is a free tool and a good one at that. Nevertheless, the list was meant to be "Open Source" tools.
To the reader who commented I say thank you! It is important to Network World and myself that the content of my posts be concise and useful. I will be updating the 20 tools to reflect that. However, that being said I do not know that I will be replacing Netstumbler with readers suggested "Kismet".
I will look, try a few, and see which product will be the replacement. Perhaps Kismet or perhaps something else, either way I will make the correction and edit the 20 tools posting this week.
Again, thanks to all who offer their praise, suggestions and corrections? I appreciate it greatly. All the feedback is a great help. Moreover, I hope my posts will help you to have - A Better Windows World!
Like this and want more? Check out the other tools I've written about in A Better Windows World.
Plus, check out the Microsoft Subnet home page for more bloggers, news, humour, security alerts and more.
Ron Barrett is president of RARE-TECH, an IT Training and consulting company. He has been a technology professional for over a decade, working for several major financial firms and dotcoms. Barrett is a specialist in network infrastructure, security and IT management.
He is a co-author of The Administrator's Guide to Microsoft Office 2007 Servers, How to Cheat at Administering Office Communications Server 2007, and the Real MCTS/MCITP Exam 620 Preparation Kit and has been a contributor to Windows 2000 Enterprise Storage Solutions and Exam Cram 70-244-Supporting & Maintaining NT Server 4.
He has also contributed to several industry magazines and was featured in the book Tricks of the Windows Vista Masters. He has worked for Microsoft writing research and analysis documents for Windows Server 2008, Windows HPC, and PerformancePoint Server 2007. He has also created screencasts on Windows Server 2008 Administration for Linux Admins.
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The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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Just to clarify, the orignal post noted that about Netstumbler
FYI: The original post did say: "Although NetStumbler is free (though its authors jokingly calls it beggarware -- as they do ask that you make a donation if you use it), it is technically not open source. A similar tool called Inssider is open source and its creators claim that they've taken up where NetStumbler left off."
So those of you that were counting, 20 open source tools were in listed in the post, without NetStumbler. But even if you can't pour over the code, NetStumbler might be a tool you want to check out.
Julie Bort
Microsoft Subnet editor
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