Wow, I never through I would write something like that. But it is happening, now.
As you probably know already,
CPUG is down.
Barry Stiefel shut down the site the last week. I do not want to discuss why he did that, it's pointless. It is done.
Forum that was arguably the best independent technical board around Check Point is off. Resource with (quoting Barry's sales pitch message)
"80,526 immediately useful technical posts.., 18,664 unique discussion threads, 26,208 currently active members..." has vanished out of existence.
We all know Barry for years, and I believe most of us appreciate his efforts for running that board and promoting it. We are also grateful to
Dameon Welch-Abernathy, who's
phoneboy knowledge base was the foundation for CPUG.
Barry has a right to get paid for his effort. But what about these 26208 active members? What about people contributing to this site? What about Dameon? He never asked for a dime from Barry when handing over the data.
There is twist here. Someone owning a public free resource wants to shut it down. He does it without warning, without any attempt to reach out to the community of his users and discuss his case. He just shuts it down,
willing to collect offers.
Offers for what? Public knowledge base he "
owns"? Engine? Trademarks?
After years of using, nurturing and developing this site, what can we do as a community? Wait till a new sugar daddy comes around and buys it off Barry's?
Is all this even real? I try to shake a feeling this is just a practical joke of some kind.
Can we do something? Can we start collecting donations to buy off the site or at least its content? Or should we look for a sponsor? Seriously, what can we do?
UPDATE. If you care about CPUG future and existence,
please sing this petition.