Neon Server Control Panel For Websites & Administrators

BlueVM

Neon is a primarily PHP based control panel for website and server management. It has been built for Debian (Linux) and is designed from the ground up to be fast and easy to use. Neon, unlike any other control panel on the market will officially support nginx which means websites using it will load faster and be more stable.

Neon is seeking funding via Kick Starter to continue and speed up development. Neon will be released via git hub and will be open source and backed and built by BlueVM Communications.

URL To Kick Starter: http://goo.gl/ifFFJ

HalfEatenPie

Yay!

erhwegesrgsr

We have the combined experience of over 25 years in programming and Linux based server administration.

Lol'd

Well, I have seen PHP snippets from @BlueVM and they were horrible... And no, you're not the only one to support nginx, there's even a plugin for cPanel.
Saw that @joepie91 was in, so I guess I can trust the final product as in quality but especially security :-)

BlueVM

@BronzeByte - I'll admit I throw out some "fast & dirty" php from time to time, but joepie91 will keep me in line or he'll behead me, finish the project himself and release everything open source XD

Also it's "officially support nginx", the cpanel plugin is created by a third party with no backing from cpanel.

HalfEatenPie

I've been looking at the project and have been following it since its been going on. Personally I find the team quite capable of getting this done and I do see them getting a ton accomplished with it.

erhwegesrgsr

Looking at the video it seems like some progress has already been made :-)
If you want a lot of donations, advertise it on WHT as "Free open-source alternative to cPanel".

@bluevm

All the cool stuff is made by third parties :P

XFS_Brian

It looks very promising. I will have to keep my eye on this thread.

haphan

Why not going with well-known, fully audited framework like Symfony2 or Zend instead of CPHP?

HalfEatenPie

CPHP is a framework that is Easy to Learn and focuses on Security.

http://git.cryto.net/cgit/cphp/

Also @joepie91 developed it (so he obviously knows his way around it).

Also I personally hate Zend framework with a passion.

BlueVM

@haphan - HalfEatenPie pretty much summed it up... None of the frameworks we used before were "all-in-ones" they missed some feature that could be "hacked into place" but wasn't in the default build. Build it all yourself and you end up with a framework that is best suited for your programming style.

CPHP comes with a built in template engine (something IIRC zend does not have) as well as pretty dump, it's own mysql classing and hundreds of other features.

MrObvious

@BlueVM I like how you had to search for screen recorder :P

rolz14

Just pledged $30, Goodluck with it:)

BlueVM

@MrObvious - I rarely use a screen recorder, but when I do I use screen-o-matic.

@rolz14 - Thank you we appreciate your support.

GIANT_CRAB

@BlueVM said: Neon will be released via git hub and will be open source and backed and built by BlueVM Communications.

You want $10,000.

Seriously, why the hell would you need $10,000?

jan

@GIANT_CRAB said: Seriously, why the hell would you need $10,000?

The answer is in the introductory video at Kickstarter at 01m:33s: "we're requesting funding to speed up the pace for our development by allowing us to spend more of our personal time in developing neon".

Just made a small pledge as a thumbs up. Good luck!

kamalnasser

Use Laravel, then you actually can "speed up the pace for our development"

GIANT_CRAB

@jan said: The answer is in the introductory video at Kickstarter at 01m:33s: "we're requesting funding to speed up the pace for our development by allowing us to spend more of our personal time in developing neon".

They are using another person's framework (cphp) and demanding the money to all go to them.

JIDF detected.

Also, only supporting other OS at $40,000 donations!

This kickstarter is a pretty good scam!
Next zPanel?

erhwegesrgsr

@GIANT_CRAB

@joepie91 made CPHP and he is in the pledge too

@bluevm

You don't need money to replace your time with what you would normally do like go to a bar. You could maybe hire somebody to run your business while you work. But I don't see why you would need $10k, I doubt you're going to hire anybody and if you need money to make some time then you perhaps shouldn't be in that project but somebody with more motivation...

ElliotJ

@BronzeByte said: But I don't see why you would need $10k

They're spending time on Neon, where they could be spending more time on their jobs, basically.
When you factor in that they're splitting the budget three ways, it's not a huge amount when you consider they don't want to starve and/or be homeless.

Best of luck guys, bookmarked!

Patrick

To be honest you'll be lucky to reach $1k, $10k for such project is ambitious.

Good luck nevertheless.

gubbyte

PHP

sigh

erhwegesrgsr

@ElliotJ

That is enough money to hire somebody. But if you want a free open source project then don't see it as a job to make a quick buck. Also, if they promoted their git more I'm sure people will help developing parts. @bluevm has a business where he can get money from @joepie91 doesn't, he is the only person who could possible NEED the money to live

GIANT_CRAB

@gubbyte said: sigh

Count the number of PHP exploits and you will sigh even louder.

Ishaq

@GIANT_CRAB said: Count the number of PHP exploits and you will sigh even louder.

We didn't ask you to be here in the first place.

AnthonySmith

Its great, I like to see developments like this.

Some people just HATE the idea of people not working for free or even cost as seen by the kiddie fit above and probably have no idea what time is worth.

I hope CVM merges with it at some stage an AIO would be great.

Ishaq

@AnthonySmith said: I hope CVM merges with it at some stage an AIO would be great.

Same developers, testers, designers, and hosting. We could do that.

AnthonySmith

@Ishaq I was involved with CVM at its inception and still provide one of the servers for it

ElliotJ

@BronzeByte said: That is enough money to hire somebody. But if you want a free open source project then don't see it as a job to make a quick buck. Also, if they promoted their git more I'm sure people will help developing parts. @bluevm has a business where he can get money from @joepie91 doesn't, he is the only person who could possible NEED the money to live

A one off contribution of $3.3K per developer is pretty damn cheap for a project of this size, and the time it'll take to release.
Taking the average wage in the USA ($42,979.61 - Source) it's evident that the amount they're asking is, in all honestly, quite low.

The issue is that they're promoting this on LET - Famous for the $7 or less mentality. $10,000 is a quite a few $7s.
Hopefully this will gain traction on WHT and elsewhere, where there's a higher number of people who will be willing to pledge, and a higher number of people who will be willing to pledge larger amounts.

As it'll be open source, I agree, people will hopefully help develop Neon, however there needs to be a base to start on.

erhwegesrgsr

@ElliotJ

The idea of open source is that everybody can contribute. And homestly, I think @joepie91 will be doing most of the work...

gubbyte

Sorry, but how does employment work in conjunction with developing open source software? lol...

eastonch

I still don't understand why it needs 10K? What, you're going to PAY devs to make this? Why not just make it yourself in a group? Then sell it on on licenses at $10/pop? 100 sales? there's 1K. 1000 Sales? There's your 10K.

Only adding OS support and stuff for 50K? Rediculous.

twain

This sounds great. Not sure why there is all this negativity in this thread from some people, when we finally might get a decent open source cp that might actually rival cpanel. And @Patrick i think you meant ambitious, not ambiguous. However, completely agree w/ @ElliotJ - the project certainly warrants 10k if not more, and I wouldn't be surprised if it achieves it. And @GIANT-CRAB - you are predicting php exploits for without any evidence? Seems like @joepie's mission in life is to maintain secure and exploit-free code, so why the hell would you say such a ridiculous thing?

GIANT_CRAB

@Ishaq said: We didn't ask you to be here in the first place.

I like to be where I want to be.

@twain said: This sounds great.

All kick starter projects sounds great.

@twain said: decent open source cp that might actually rival cpanel.

So you think a clone of zPanel can rival cPanel?

@twain said: And @GIANT-CRAB - you are predicting php exploits for without any evidence?

Are there no exploits in PHP, ever?

@twain said: so why the hell would you say such a ridiculous thing?

Because shit happens, even companies like vB, IPB, their products get exploited, and how many PHP developers do they have? Those PHP developers are legitimate ones who actually have legit training from professionals.

I'm merely stating facts and people are already butt angry.

@eastonch is another sane guy here.

ElliotJ

@gubbyte said: Sorry, but how does employment work in conjunction with developing open source software? lol...

Opportunity cost.

They're spending time on open source software, when they could be doing something else (i.e. making money)

Wintereise

The amount of idiocy in this thread is over the roof, derp.

Ishaq

@GIANT_CRAB said: I like to be where I want to be.

To be honest, if you're "outta here" why are you still posting?

GIANT_CRAB

@Ishaq said: To be honest, if you're "outta here" why are you still posting?

I can always come back.

@Zen said: they're demanding XX donations for a completed project that will be open source, then they're expecting even more for basic modifications (alt OS support) on an open source product

And that makes this a scam.

erhwegesrgsr

http://github.com/bluevm/neon

I think it should have been in control of @joepie91 though, he never goes for the money or something, he will always stay loyal to his projects and promises.

joepie91

I have absolutely no desire to end up in the middle of a flamewar here, so I'm not going to respond to any of the posts here directly, and will just state a few things:

• @BlueVM has been working on Neon for quite a while now, and so far has a record of sticking to his promises (in general, not just for Neon). I have no reason to assume that Neon will be abandoned halfway through.
• There's a typo in the Kickstarter: I do Python, not Perl.
• I have always been a pain in the ass about the security for pretty much anything, and will continue to do so here.
• In case anyone is wondering what's happened to CVM, a first release of CVM is very close, and that first release gets priority for now. I haven't abandoned it
• Neon is not a "clone of zPanel" - it does not share any of the codebase as far as I am aware.
• Writing a panel and then selling licenses would defeat the point of free/open-source. Not sure how such a suggestion is even relevant here.
• The quality/cleanliness of the code that @BlueVM posted here in the past (like the uptime script) is not representative for the Neon code. @BlueVM has gotten much better at this lately. I recommend having a look at the actual GitHub repository to get a more accurate idea. And yes, I'll probably obsessively run through the code and make sure everything is neat and organized before release.
• I have had no involvement in setting the "funding bonuses", and I'll discuss these with @BlueVM to get a bit more clarity as well - but realize that something like "supporting a different distro" isn't just a matter of changing a filename. There are a lot of differences across distributions, differences that you will encounter especially when writing a panel that is going to control multiple third-party services (HTTPd, MySQLd, etc.).

curtisg

Before I consider help funding, why do you need the funding? If its going to be free/open source, then you shouldn't require any funding.

Amitz

I just wrote on #frantech:

  I do not think the $10k is too much for 3 people trying to focus on a project.
  Food doesn't come by itself to the fridge.
  $10k would only cover my personal needs for 2-3 months.
  Just saying. No pun intended.

But maybe LET is the wrong place for anything above USD $7...

gubbyte

@Amitz said: I just wrote on #frantech:

This is an open source project. The developer(s) aren't expected to be committed to the project full-time.

gameon

@curtisg said: Before I consider help funding, why do you need the funding? If its going to be free/open source, then you shouldn't require any funding.

@curtisg here's your answer >

@jan said: "we're requesting funding to speed up the pace for our development by allowing us to spend more of our personal time in developing neon".

AND if you haven;t noticed yet , they are not Robots to live without food/water/social life and contribute 24/7 to developing opensource soft

joepie91

@curtisg said: If its going to be free/open source, then you shouldn't require any funding.

Mind explaining that logic?

@gameon said: they are not Robots to live without food/water/social life and contribute 24/7 to developing opensource soft

Well... >.>

Raymii

@AnthonySmith said: Its great, I like to see developments like this.

Some people just HATE the idea of people not working for free or even cost as seen by the kiddie fit above and probably have no idea what time is worth.

Agreed with this. FLOSS code is good, but it doesn't pay very well. Guess why I develop in my free time, and have a full time job ass a nurse...

joepie91

@Raymii said: ass a nurse

You're making some interesting typos lately

BlueVM

@curtisg - We're asking for the funding to speed up our development. Instead of working on it part time we want to be able to focus on it and that's what this kickstarter is about. We're asking the community to chip in $5 towards building something faster. If the kickstarter fails we will continue to work on it, just at a much slower pace.

In engineering there's a phrase: better, faster, cheaper -- you only get two. It applies really well in the case of neon. We can build it better and cheaper, but it will take a while (Estimated: 1.5 years at current pace). We're against building it faster and cheaper because that just creates a crappy control panel. The only option left is to build it better and faster, but to do that we need some money, not a whole lot, but some. Sure we could pay wall it and sell it that way, heck even direct admin sells and it's not exactly "good", but we wanted to do something good for the community.

Most of the funds are going to be going into joepie91's payroll which helps pay his bills and keep him fed. I won't be making anything on this project at least not from the kickstarter. If there was demand for it I would put up an expense log as we go along.

@gubbyte - See my above comment.

Finally the bonuses you see listed there were suggested by kickstarter. They stated that putting forth bonuses to the community was a good show of faith in the project. The bonuses listed there are intended for launch day if the goals are met. So as opposed to waiting for us to code them up later they would be part of the final product.

Raymii

@joepie91 said: You're making some interesting typos lately

What do you mean?

curtisg

@BlueVM you'd be smarter hiring freelance developers for the job with the money.

fly

@curtisg said: @BlueVM you'd be smarter hiring freelance developers for the job with the money.

how is that any different from giving the money to joepie? wouldn't giving money to joepie make more sense as we /know/ him over some random indian/russian dude?

curtisg

@fly said: how is that any different from giving the money to joepie? wouldn't giving money to joepie make more sense as we /know/ him over some random indian/russian dude?

More then 1 person developing makes it go faster.