[docs] Completed motivations & goals page #80

Closes #80

docs/source/general/goals.rst

@@ -2,15 +2,63 @@
 Motivations and Goals
 =====================
 
-
 In this page we explain the goals of this project and the motivations
 that led us on this path.
 
 Motivations
 -----------
 
+The old version of OpenWISP (which we call OpenWISP 1) had a freeradius module
+which provided several interesting features:
+
+- user registration
+- account verification with several methods
+- user management
+- password reset
+- basic general statistics
+- basic user account page with user's statistics
+
+But it also had important problems:
+
+- it was not written with automated testing in mind, so there was a lot of code which
+  the maintainers didn't want to touch because of fear of breaking existing features
+- it was not written with an international user-base in mind, it contained a great
+  deal of code which was specific to a single country (Italy)
+- it was hard to extend, even small changes required changing its core code
+- the user management code was implemented in a different way compared to
+  other openwisp1 modules, which added a lot of maintenance overhead
+- it used outdated dependencies which over time became vulnerable and were hard to replace
+- **it did not perform hashing of user passwords**
+- the documentation did not explain how to properly install and configure the software
+
+Similar problems were affecting other modules of OpenWISP 1, that's why
+over time we got convinced the best thing was to start fresh using best practices
+since the start.
+
 Project goals
 -------------
 
-* provide a web interface to manage a freeradius database.
-* provide abstract models and admin classes that can be imported, extended and reused in third party apps.
+The main aim of this project is to offer a web application and documentation
+that helps people from all over the world to implement a wifi network
+that can use freeradius to authenticate its users, either via captive portal
+authentication or WPA2 enterprise, **BUT** this doesn't mean we want to
+lock the software to this use case: we want to keep the software generic enough
+so it can be useful to implement other use cases that are related to
+networking connectivity and network management; **just keep in mind our main
+aim if you plan to contribute to django-freeradius please**.
+
+Other goals are listed below:
+
+* replace the user management system of OpenWISP 1 by providing a similar feature set
+* provide a web interface to manage a freeradius database
+* provide abstract models and admin classes that can be imported, extended and reused in third party apps
+* provide ways to extend the logic of django-freeradius without changing its core
+* ensure the code is written with an international audience in mind
+* maintain a very good automated test suite
+* reuse the django user management logic which is very robust and stable
+* ensure passwords are hashed with strong algorithms and freeradius can
+  authorize/authenticate using these hashes (that's why we recommend using the
+  ``rml_rest`` freeradius module with the REST API of django-freeradius)
+* integrate django-freeradius with the rest of the openwisp2 ecosystem
+* provide good documentation on how to install the project, configure it with
+  freeradius and use its most important features