Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?

jpv9

@AndyRH
As of Sept 2024, I am still getting questioned about this post from clients. Netgate needs to put a postscript on the original post in stating this was an April Fool's Joke if it really is one.

AndyRH

@jpv9 Two things will always be true:

Not everyone is gifted with communication.
Not everyone can tell a joke.

Netgate could use improvement in these areas.

jwt

@jpv9 what if it wasn’t a joke?

johnpoz

@jwt you are a rascal Jim.. Lets just go along with the gag, and it wasn't a joke.. Then April 1 was a horrible choice for making it public ;)

Looking forward to next April fools - this one is going to be hard to top - heheh

nimrod

@johnpoz said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

@jwt you are a rascal Jim.. Lets just go along with the gag, and it wasn't a joke.. Then April 1 was a horrible choice for making it public ;)

Looking forward to next April fools - this one is going to be hard to top - heheh

What do you mean its hard? Just say that CE version is getting canceled.

johnpoz

@nimrod said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

Just say that CE version is getting canceled

Hahah - that would be good one, but we already get so many people thinking that is true anyway..

nimrod

@johnpoz

Yeah. But just imagine the amount of "i told you so" comments.

jwt

@nimrod said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

@johnpoz

Yeah. But just imagine the amount of "i told you so" comments.

Right?

So why give them what they want?

Netgate is the #3 contributor of sponsored commits to freebsd over the past 3 years.

bash-3.2$ git remote -v
origin	https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd.git (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd.git (push)
bash-3.2$ git branch
  list
* main
  master
bash-3.2$ git log --first-parent --since=3year | sed  -E 's/\^.\*Sponsored.\[Bb\]y:\[\[:space:\]\]\*//p' | grep -i Sponsored  | sed s/.*[Ss]ponsored\ [Bb]y://| awk '{$1=$1};1' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
3344 The FreeBSD Foundation
1569 Netflix
 807 Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")
 616 Klara, Inc.
 448 Beckhoff Automation GmbH & Co. KG
 358 Chelsio Communications
 357 Arm Ltd
 314 Juniper Networks, Inc.
 266 NVIDIA Networking
 152 Netflix, Inc.
 130 NetApp, Inc.
 130 Innovate UK
 122 DARPA
 103 Stormshield
  91 Axcient
  71 Dell EMC Isilon
  64 https://www.patreon.com/cperciva
  64 Serenity Cyber Security, LLC
  59 Intel Corporation
  51 NVidia networking
bash-3.2$

and note that this misses 7 commits that are

Rubicon Communications, LLC (Netgate)

instead of

Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")

which uniq sees as a different string.

If you back off to 5 years (just prior to the pandemic) it's even more dramatic

bash-3.2$ git log --first-parent --since=5year | sed  -E 's/\^.\*Sponsored.\[Bb\]y:\[\[:space:\]\]\*//p' | grep -i Sponsored  | sed s/.*[Ss]ponsored\ [Bb]y://| awk '{$1=$1};1' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
5437 The FreeBSD Foundation
2079 Netflix
1079 Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")
 729 Klara, Inc.
 664 Chelsio Communications
 448 Beckhoff Automation GmbH & Co. KG
 357 DARPA
 357 Arm Ltd
 330 Juniper Networks, Inc.
 306 NetApp, Inc.
bash-3.2$

and

bash-3.2$ git log --first-parent --since=5year | sed  -E 's/\^.\*Sponsored.\[Bb\]y:\[\[:space:\]\]\*//p' | grep -i Sponsored  | sed s/.*[Ss]ponsored\ [Bb]y://| awk '{$1=$1};1' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | grep -i netgate
1079 Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")
  50 Rubicon Communications, LLC (Netgate)
  31 Rubicon Communications, LLC (netgate.com)
  20 Rubicon Communications, LLC (d/b/a "Netgate")
   6 Sponsored-by: Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")
   3 Rubicon Communications, LLC (“Netgate”’)
   2 Netgate, Inc.
   1 Rubicon LLC, (Netgate)
   1 Netgate

We have a lot of changes to pf coming in that are still in review. This is just some of them.

https://reviews.freebsd.org/p/kp/

So the question I wish people would ask: "Why would Netgate still be investing heavily in FreeBSD if they were just going to abandon it like people say?"

jwt

@jwt said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

https://reviews.freebsd.org/p/kp/

Coincidentally, we're also a big contributor to VPP

https://www.stackalytics.io/unaffiliated?module=github.com/fdio/vpp

JonathanLee

April fools joke

Patch

@jwt said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

we're also a big contributor to VPP

For those (like me) not familiar with VPP https://github.com/FDio/vpp

Vector Packet Processing
The VPP platform is an extensible framework that provides out-of-the-box production quality switch/router functionality. It is the open source version of Cisco's Vector Packet Processing (VPP) technology

Which runs on Linux https://wiki.fd.io/view/VPP/What_is_VPP%3F

The VPP platform supports package installation on the following operating systems:
Debian
Ubuntu 16.04
Centos 7.3

So likely the underlying engine for TNSR

SteveITS

@Patch said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

So likely the underlying engine for TNSR

Bit more than likely:)
https://www.netgate.com/tnsr

jwt

@johnpoz said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

@nimrod said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

Just say that CE version is getting canceled

Hahah - that would be good one, but we already get so many people thinking that is true anyway..

... so what we announce is that the CE version is not being canceled, on April 1, 2025.

jwt

@SteveITS said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

@Patch said in Will Netgate keep developing pfSense on FreeBSD or is the switch to Linux going to be for all Netgate platforms?:

So likely the underlying engine for TNSR

Bit more than likely:)
https://www.netgate.com/tnsr

Quite.

We've been working with, advancing and fixing VPP since April / May 2016. We know a lot about it.

Most recently we've ported NetBSD's 'npf' to VPP, enabled (and fixed) the Snort plugin (so we have IDS/IPS via Snort) and written a (OpenVPN) DCO driver for VPP.

These all show up in TNSR 24.10.

So maybe we're putting VPP in as a very high-performance dataplane for this joke-that-might-not-be-a-joke pfSense on linux?

"Wait!", I hear you say, "VPP runs on FreeBSD now!"

Dude(s), have you looked at the performance? There are issues beyond that, too.

If we wanted VPP on FreeBSD it would have occurred years ago.

Anyway, that is is today's secret decoder ring. (Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!)