Navigating to Buy pfSense +
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Definitely a disappointing turn of events, and for a home lab user $129 per year is just far too steep for me personally. A perpetual licence to 'help the cause' (with the ability for easy migration and VM use-cases) I would have done, but I'm not paying to also then beta test as well as supporting people via other channels.
Yes, I could run CE (though, need to look at the path back from 23.09 RC to CE), but part of the home lab interest for me is the strive for continual improvement (and tinkering - where the boot environments is useful).
Do I dig out an old board to run opnsense on to test/setup - maybe/probably. But, the thing is, I actually quite liked the pfsense+ experience (hence why I would have paid a perpetual licence). Damn.
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I think it should be $129 per release instead of per year...
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@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I think it should be $129 per release instead of per year...
I completely agree. I have 3 installations in different houses, I just can’t handle 129x3 per year. It's 3 times more expensive than my internet costs ;)
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@gisuck , Yeah.... great. Include "Boot Environments" in CE and I am good with that.
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Did anyone catch this on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/s/fmPjI06ouY
Hmmm..............
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Not really, or rather I didn’t understand at all how the subscription model works for users who already have purchased free licenses. Let’s say I have 13 purchased licenses that were used mainly for the same test equipment.
It’s completely inconvenient to wait for a response on the forum asking for a replacement NDID when I just replaced the network card or changed them in a virtual or physical machine. I have absolutely no idea which license is active where, but of course I know my NDID, where it is currently used. It is clear that only two licenses are actively used; two or three virtual machines are rarely launched. That is, out of 13 licenses, only two are constantly used.Let's say I purchase an annual lite subscription. Does this subscription apply to all licenses I have purchased, or should I additionally write something to someone about NDID?
I'm going to add network cards soon, will this naturally cause a change in the NDID again and, accordingly, new problems?And also, could the opinion about the widespread distribution of illegal plus versions be partly due to such an inconvenience, when in order to change the NDID you need to contact someone from Netgate and people simply ignored this opportunity, because it was stupidly easier to purchase another free license ?
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@w0w On the ordering page it states that the license is applied to the installed instance only which is why it asks for your current Netgate ID.
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I was checking out amazon and a bit confused on why netgate listed their appliance on there with "1 year TAC lite". Are they going to charge for TAC lite on appliances now also or will it be optional?
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I have a 6100 and at the year point the TAC-Lite bit disappeared from the GUI and was replaced by a friendly 'Community Support Only' tag.
At the time this kinda made sense as only the 'full support' bit changed but the pfSense+ element continues. The only confusion (at that point) is that you still have to use 'TAC-Lite' (that you no longer have) for a new USB image.
With 'TAC-Lite' firmly attached to the new definitions there probably should be clarification on the terms for 'TAC-Lite' in the perpetual licence sense vs TAC-Lite for the additional support element.
Clearly nobody thought of any of the issues arising from the first statement and today's version is better but still lacks clarity and one of the key points has already been reversed since. Plus, it still dwells at the barking mad stage of management.
Cue Moses, tramping up the hill again for The Commandments, v3.0. He probably needs to sharpen his stone-chisel. Again.
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$129 for what? I'll pass thanks, CE will do fine for me, and I'm already trying out and getting used to OpnSense. There is a video on YT going through dozens of alternatives. As I said before, my experience is the registration process is pretty flaky, I had to request 3 licenses before my home Plus version would register.
The company has established its reputation and character, what it stands for, how it treats the community. I tried looking on Ali Express, I could certainly buy an entire unit for about the price of a 1 year TAC Lite+ license, and their claims are that it is tested with pfSense Plus, and in other cases with pfSense 2.7, I don't see devices which say they come with pfSense Plus, so I'm wondering if Netgate would like to present any evidence of widespread, company-ruining, mass license fraud, I mean we must be talking tens of thousands of licenses or something, home and lab licenses can't have accounted for more than a few hundred real people here. Any fraudulent use of licenses is something Netgate, or any company, should have considered, should have monitored, should have nipped in the bud immediately, punishing us fans of pfSense is quite inappropriate. As we should remember pfSense is a community-created open-source project, currently maintained by Netgate, and whilst pfSense is forever, maintainers can come and go. And in this case causing such bad blood between what seems like greedy corporate knee-jerk reactions and a loyal community is exceptionally poor business practice. I'd suggest having another think.
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OK, so now I can buy two years of TAC Lite for $200 after discount. That's a bit expensive but bordering on reasonable.
However, I run pfSense under Proxmox and my NDI has changed after certain Proxmox updates in the past. Is this license transferable between NDIs? Is there a web portal to deactivate NDIs and free up the license? Would I have to fight with Netgate support to transfer it?
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Thanks for the link to the 2-year support option which I used in conjunction with the discount code. Through the normal store link, I couldn't see a two-year option available so this saved me some money.
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Posted over on the other thread, but I think it bears saying again here...
Why do we need to saddle the homelab community with yet another tax on our hobbies? I'd be fine with a one-time cost. Hell, I'd even buy one of the foolish devices and keep it in the box if it meant I could enjoy the "one time" cost for continued access.
In my homelab setup, which I've been running for well over 15 years, I've never once contacted TAC support, save for the exception of when their new "licensing" model messed up my Plus upgrade and another when swapping NICs due to a failed one caused my Netgate ID to regenerate.
Why can't this just be a one-time fee?
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@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Thanks for the link to the 2-year support option which I used in conjunction with the discount code. Through the normal store link, I couldn't see a two-year option available so this saved me some money.
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
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I didn't need a key (I was already running PFSense+ on my own hardware). After ordering with my Device ID, my Netgate Services and Support widget displayed I was under a TAC Lite contract after about 20-30 mins.
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
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I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
That’s my case as well, thx
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
That’s my case as well, thx
Actually it looks like my instance just got updated showing the new effective start and end dates. If you add the Netgate Service and Support widget on your dashboard it will show you the current support info.
It would make sense that I never received the new token as my instance is already registered with Netgate.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
Are you sure this process involves a new token ?
I just did a bunch of TAC lite checkouts and I had to provide the NDI of the already running system there. I got an email receipt but no tokens. The new compliance status then showed in the support widget on the dashboard moments later.
These were commercial use systems I'd been waiting for TAC lite to be launched for.
Still on the fence for actual home and lab. My home and lab is legit home and lab, not commercial use and the very nature of lab, as 50+ people already pointed out above, means tbe NDI will surely not live as long as the TAC lite. And 129 a year is too much for lab
Legit lab use = helps me evangelize pfSense.
Legit lab use = helps me be useful in Redmine - no way I can reboot a production system or hack around try to break stuff in prod.Paying 129 a year for either of these things makes no sense. Paying 129 per release makes no sense. Paying x dollars lifetime with no way to reassign an NDI makes no sense. Some of my test NDI live a few days then are never seen again.
Maybe I overestimate how many of us are making good bug reports but I'm sure it's not zero.
You can't reproduce a pfsense plus bug seen in the wild on CE because they are divergent code bases.
TL;DR: I'm happy TAC lite was finally launched for commercial use white boxes but H&L use still needs to be addressed seeing as CE is different.
To weed out nonsense like an OEM cloning one license to 200000 NDI, they need to work on their licensing backend. Kicking us all out seems counter productive
