Well heck, I'm glad I started this thread! Two new open-source pools with front-ends = mission accomplished!
I'd start a pool myself, but I don't have the guts to go up against the DDOSers that seem to run rampant across the pools.
I've been thinking about DDOS attacks myself, Once I get enough BTC I will be able to get a good server and try this idea out I have with firewall permissions. You know deny everyone from the pool accept those that have authenticated their IP address before connecting, That way the server just will not respond to those IP address unauthenticated.
This would probubly deffinalty slow down attackers as they'd have to authenticate every single netbot and if they have 1000000 netbots coming from 1 ip address it will shut them out. Simple as that .
This will be in a couple of months from now after my pooling software is perfect but still a dream i have for the future of pooling services

tell me what you guys think in terms of flaws, and maybe how annoying it might be to authenticate your ip address everytime