Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?

Patch

@nimrod said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

They want updates for the sake of updates.

Not sure whose mind you assume you can read as I have seen no indication on this forum which suggest that.

What I have seen is a desire for ongoing OPEN source development of pfsense.

Yes I agree critical errors which can be patch by user text file update have occurred, but that is not ongoing development and excludes all binary updates
Yes I see v2.8 has listed development on redmine over the last 18 months but all daily snapshots have also been blocked over a similar time and I believe compiling requires access to closed source code, which has effectively made v2.8 closed source over that time. A year & a half intentionally blocking daily snapshots for CE is "a long time" as is a year & a half of no release plans imo.
Netgate's have changed their development model to remove all benefit of open source product testing to aid in the reliability of their commercial product releases. This leaves only of financial burden to develop CE and makes CE only a competitor to their commercial product.

Taken together Netgate's actions clearly demonstrate CE is end of life and leaves only Netgate's attempt to migrate as many users they can to their commercial paid product.

From a CE user perspective, the desire to plan for an eol product is very reasonable imo. As is a desire for clarification prior to starting any new CE project.

I agree it is sad to see Netgate abandon their open source product and just use open source software to leverage their commercial software. But I see no reason to not call it for what it is.

nimrod

@Patch said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

Taken together Netgate's actions clearly demonstrate CE is end of life and leaves only Netgate's attempt to migrate as many users they can to their commercial paid product.

Thats it then. Game over. Lets all move to opsense.

whytf

@jdeloach said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

Just search the forum, there are numerous posts about using the patches package. If you are a new user, you need to search and learn what/when to use and not to use the various packages that are available.

I use forum only when there's a issue, otherwise no reason to go here, at this point how large of a project pfsense is, i am pretty sure it's not impossible to install system patches package by default which i would notice while exploring pfsense ui or make any kind of information pop up in dashboard or during wizard informing users about "recommended updates between releases", nothing more & nothing less than oversight or incompetence from netgate.

Pretty obvious that you would let users know about a workaround for a problem they complain on forum most of the time.

stephenw10

Yup the patches package could be better advertised if nothing else. IMO there is a strong argument for having it installed by default. We shall see.....

Diggy

I'm starting to think Netgate has abandoned pfSense CE. Maybe it is time to switch to OPNsense.?!

michmoor

@stephenw10 Curious. What about the package that prevents it from being part of the base install? What is the thinking to make patches a separate package and no given notification about updates?

stephenw10

The expected use/function of the package has changed significantly since it was introduced. Initially it was for developers and testing.

Also: https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/1jbpix7/pppoe_new_stack_in_ce_28/

Angrymeal

@coxhaus said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

Negate will figure out what they need to do to stop the Copyright pirates and then I will go with it. You just need to wait.

I would suspect "5 Eyes" harassment. When they can't commandeer something they throw a tantrum.

netblues

@Diggy What is this fuss all about?
Isn't opnsense doing about the same while being a copycat?
A business paid version versus a free version too?

What is wrong with having a paid version? Are you aware of the costs developing this kind of software?

Who is contributing code upstream at the end of the day?

Not knowing the patches app isn't something to complaint too. How about not knowing the existence of pfblocker ? How rules work? How nat works?

And all of this just because there aren't upgrades being pushed out "regularly".

Maybe maintaining iptables rules instead of pfsense is a better option. Won't allow for much time to whine.

nimrod

@netblues said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

@Diggy What is this fuss all about?
Isn't opnsense doing about the same while being a copycat?
A business paid version versus a free version too?

What is wrong with having a paid version? Are you aware of the costs developing this kind of software?

Who is contributing code upstream at the end of the day?

Not knowing the patches app isn't something to complaint too. How about not knowing the existence of pfblocker ? How rules work? How nat works?

And all of this just because there aren't upgrades being pushed out "regularly".

Maybe maintaining iptables rules instead of pfsense is a better option. Won't allow for much time to whine.

Finally someone that understands.

Patch

@netblues said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

What is this fuss all about?

No fuss I can see.

A reasonable question was asking for anyone interested in forward planning and wanting to manage possible future disruption
A reasonable description of risk discussed here and elsewhere https://forum.netgate.com/topic/196917/pfsense-community-edition-eol-2-7-2-release-amd64 https://forum.netgate.com/topic/182270/when-will-2-8-dev-snapshot-be-available
But I suppose it is true some object to others thinking ahead, assessing risks and contemplating options.

@netblues said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

Isn't opnsense doing about the same while being a copycat?
A business paid version versus a free version too?

Err
It appears you have missed the core issue. Opnsense and pfsense in the past did have the same open source development model where their commercial product uses the free open source product to develop and debug, which is then used to achieve a commercial product with sufficient features and reliability to compete with the big closed source products.

Opnsense still uses this open source model. However Netgate has changed their development model so the open source free product is
no longer used to develop the propriety product and is instead only a second competing product. Access has been curtailed consistent with the financial implications of this change.

Time will tell if Netgate can have their cake and eat it too

@nimrod said in When will 2.8 dev snapshot be available:

I hope you are aware that the era of open source firewalls is comming to and end.

It appears to be for pfsense but I'm not sure the generalisation is accurate.

fireodo

@Patch

As I can see here: Closed tickets
the latest fix was added on 29.03.2025 so I think its not abandoned ...

Patch

@fireodo See https://forum.netgate.com/post/1210405

Netgate's behaviour in

development approach,
accesses to snap shots (and it's dramatic change over time), and
deliberately vague much slower release schedule

Indicates Netgate has choosen to make the open source free version eol as rapidly as possible consistent with

transitioning as many developers as they can to their proprietary paid version
transitioning as many users as they can to their proprietary paid version
minimise alienation of their customer base
try out using paid customers as beta tester

To achieve the above, not overtly acknowledging / denying the transition is being used by Netgate.

Which makes reasonable sense from Netgates perspective. However as a user managing product obsolescent, having some appreciation of the future usefulness of software I use is helpful. Other may prefer to be blind to it, and those using the paid version may not want to talk about it as that risk discouraging developers and users who value open source software.

Finger79

@Patch said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

Access has been curtailed consistent with the financial implications of this change.

Is this the official repo? https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense

I'm asking because I'd like to get started with pfSense development but don't know how/where to get started. I keep hearing mentions of it no longer being open source, but the GitHub repo still gets daily action.

kprovost

@Finger79 said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

@Patch said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

Access has been curtailed consistent with the financial implications of this change.

Is this the official repo? https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense

Yes, that's the official repo of the CE PHP bits of pfSense.
The FreeBSD OS bits live here: https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src and the ports bits live here: https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-ports

I keep hearing mentions of it no longer being open source, but the GitHub repo still gets daily action.

Lots of stuff goes into the upstream FreeBSD src repo as well. The most recent of those was yesterday: https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/?id=1bf46184cdc35779849d909b3a483183245a0aba

stephenw10

fireodo

@stephenw10 said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

michmoor

@stephenw10 dont you start.

stephenw10

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michmoor

@stephenw10