Navigating to Buy pfSense +
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@HorstZimmermann said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Here are some news
Excellent..
This is in line with what was originally promised for commerical use but it is still a rug pull for home and lab.
But it's good to see that cooler heads prevailed. No doubt they did a lot of soul searching over the weekend.
My only criticism is
"*Supply chain attacks. Be wary, be safe."
Sneaking that in at the bottom when there was no evidence of any supply chain attack ever makes it look like "ok home and lab pfsense enthusiasts, for your safety you now need to pay 129 a month because some third party did something."
Not ideal and there be tons of hate here re: that angle this afternoon for sure.
At least this was done at a time where CE and plus have compatible config.xml revisions. Switching back to CE is relatively simple as evidenced by Lawrence Technology's video.
I will place 6 orders for TAC lites where there's a commerical angle to the deployment and (annoyingly) downgrade a few instances to CE.
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For home use, $129/yr seems high. I'd consider it for a perpetual license, but for annual, some thing cheaper should be available, ie, $30/yr.
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@GPz1100 I agree. Just shy of $11 a month seems a bit steep, but we have an option to either spend $129/ year or invest in a appliance and have it pay for itself in a few years.
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@HorstZimmermann excellent news. I didn't do the downgrade to CE so the transition should be super smooth for me.
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ya, i already did the downgrade back to CE. not paying $129/year to them, especially how this all unfolded.
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@chigh09 said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@GPz1100 I agree. Just shy of $11 a month seems a bit steep, but we have an option to either spend $129/ year or invest in a appliance and have it pay for itself in a few years.
If they'd publish pppoe throughput I would have purchased more netgate hardware.
I deal with ISP that do 2000/1000 fiber but it involves PPPOE. On paper a 3100 can handle wireguard etc well enough for my needs but as we know, freebsd has issues with pppoe. Needs thicc single core performance. They don't publish what the devices will achieve here. I think a 3100 might crap out well below 1000 Mbit pppoe and it's unclear if a 6100 will handle 2000 Mbit pppoe.
So people go build their own thing. We were promised commercial TAC Lite for 129. We got that now. But legit home and lab... Dad's hunting cottage Starlink ain't paying 129 a year. It's still a rug pull.
Going to have to re-flash these to CE and pray that CE will keep being maintained.
Hopefully the TAC lite sales will bring fresh motivation to do the right thing by the community.
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I think $129 deal is ok, but I prefer it like done by proxmox -optional.
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Does anyone understand what netgate is on about when they talk about supply chain attacks...?
"We did not set out to make a commercial fork of the pfSense project that would be weaponized against us and the community. Recent discoveries have caused us to question who is benefiting from the work we do: pfSense Plus has been illegally copied, modified *, installed, and resold on third-party hardware and in the cloud in direct violation of our terms of use." *Supply chain attacks. Be wary, be safe.
Have they discovered some kind of chinese back door or what?
And how is it fixed by paying $129 or $399..
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@dopeytree said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Does anyone understand what netgate is on about when they talk about supply chain attacks...?
"We did not set out to make a commercial fork of the pfSense project that would be weaponized against us and the community. Recent discoveries have caused us to question who is benefiting from the work we do: pfSense Plus has been illegally copied, modified *, installed, and resold on third-party hardware and in the cloud in direct violation of our terms of use." *Supply chain attacks. Be wary, be safe.
Have they discovered some kind of chinese back door or what?
And how is it fixed by paying $129 or $399..
Do you like a good story? It's like "something bad happened to us, give us 129$ for medical expenses, and after we get better you can still pay us, because why not. "
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I think $129 deal is ok, but I prefer it like done by proxmox -optional.
ProxMox user here myself. I don't mind the $129 per year which is fine for home use. But as a home lab where I constantly rebuild servers and testing them how is it that going to work? I would need more licenses to test. Guess I'll stick with CE for that scenario.
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Please note that existing Home+Lab users who choose not to purchase a TAC Lite subscription will not receive updates when they are released.
So the new approach is set in stone. Those of us using an existing Home or Lab instance to help with the dev/beta testing will receive no further updates. Please smile while we kick you in the teeth.
Or we have the option of:
If you're already using pfSense CE or pfSense Plus Home+Lab and wish to upgrade to a TAC Lite subscription, you can make the purchase through the Netgate Store. [$129 per annum]
Yep, they would like to bill us for dev/beta testing of their product for $129, every single year from now.
Along the way we also got 'trust me bro' future-casting whilst ignoring that they have deliberately voided the licence conditions on my latest (ie about 2 weeks ago, for the price of $0.00) active pfSense+ subscription.
Netgate terms and conditions that apply to this sale can be found here and cannot be superseded by any other terms.
So about those terms and conditions that cannot be superseded by any other terms?
It is a heck of a way to treat a paying customer - cancelling the terms of their current subscription that they use solely to support the product and ask them to pay an additional $129.00 for a subscription they thought they already had.
Madness. We now know the answer to this:
They are crazy enough to do it.
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@RobbieTT Nothing is set in stone, and only NG knows the true motives behind all of this.
As @Darkk indicated above, a lab environment involves constant rebuilding. What happens to the install instance when the hardware (physical or virtual) changes...
License no longer valid?
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What happens about beta testing?
Do you still pay $129 a year to join a beta tester club?
Usually beta testers get some kind of reward in exchange for bug reporting. -
For me personally i am ok with $129 per year.
I am a home user and have a Sophos UTM425 appliance that i have pfsense installed, i do not change or test any hardware, just use it to secure my home.
For a lab and test environment i can understand the frustration
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@GPz1100 said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@RobbieTT Nothing is set in stone, and only NG knows the true motives behind all of this.
I held an optimistic view too but this latest statement is post-weekend and any remorseful thinking time.
Yep, I fell for it.
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@HorstZimmermann said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
For a lab and test environment i can understand the frustration
It is, (IMHO) also for a modest Home-User by far to much (129$/y) ...
(Maybe a special offer to Forum/Community/Redmine - User would be a walk able way ... I think) -
@RobbieTT We all fall for it
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Something like Mikrotik licensing will fly better with the community.
License Levels
After installation RouterOS runs in trial mode. You have 24 hours to register for Level1 (Free demo) or purchase a Level 4,5 or 6 license and paste a valid key.
Level 3 is a wireless station (client or CPE) only license. For x86 PCs, Level3 is not available for purchase individually.
Level 2 was a transitional license from old legacy (pre 2.8) license format. These licenses are not available any more, if you have this kind of license, it will work, but to upgrade it - you will have to purchase a new license.
The difference between license levels is shown in the table below.
Price no key registration required not for sale $45 $95 $250
Wireless AP mode (PtMP) 24h trial - no yes yes yes
PPPoE tunnels 24h trial 1 200 200 500 unlimited
PPTP tunnels 24h trial 1 200 200 500 unlimited
L2TP tunnels 24h trial 1 200 200 500 unlimited
OVPN tunnels 24h trial 1 200 200 unlimited unlimited
EoIP tunnels 24h trial 1 unlimited unlimited unlimited unlimited
VLAN interfaces 24h trial 1 unlimited unlimited unlimited unlimited
Queue rules 24h trial 1 unlimited unlimited unlimited unlimited
HotSpot active users 24h trial 1 1 200 500 unlimited
User manager active sessions 24h trial 1 10 20 50 Unlimited
Bonding interfaces 24h trial 1 unlimited unlimited unlimited unlimitedAll Licenses:
never expire (a running and licensed router can be used indefinitely)
can use unlimited number of interfaces
are for one installation each
offer unlimited software upgrades (exception - demo license does not allow ROS version upgrade (started from 7.8)) -
So really, nothing has changed except the price of how much it would cost.
CE will only be updated for users this go round, and it will gradually be put into the ground.
I think @RobbieTT said it best above.
"Madness."
Good luck everyone, I hope you are satisfied with this decision. I am off to find a new solution.
o7
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Hah, shame on me for test driving 23.09 beta, now I won't get 23.09 full version and can't downgrade to CE either due to mismatched config versions.
I guess I'll either need to revert to an old config, or rebuild everything from scratch in opnsense.
