Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?

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

IJS

2.7.2-RELEASE (amd64)
built on Mon Mar 4 19:53:00 GMT 2024
FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT

Version 2.8.0.b.20250401 is available.
Version information updated at Tue Apr 1 20:07:41 BST 2025

michmoor

@stephenw10

cswroe

It's a lie. I heard it was abandoned.

michmoor

@cswroe its true...dont expect 2.8 snapshots at all today.....

Gertjan

Based on FreeBSD 15 !
That takes care of the last announcement.
edit : Based on Linux and all that ....

slu

@michmoor said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

its true...dont expect 2.8 snapshots at all today.....

It is my humour to announce this on 1 April.

reberhar

@nimrod said in Is pfSense Community Edition abandoned?:

subscription

Hi All,

I have been following this discussion with interest and some smiles. I know April 1st is long past. But the joking was really pretty funny.

I have been using pfSense for many years and even have some posts that got some likes. I depend of pfSense CE, not because the plus isn't good, but because I work for a non-profit. Yes, it is true that 129.00 US dollars a seat is really pretty cheap.

I have 9 pfSense boxes, with 4 sets with HA and one solo box. With our income over the past few years, getting a subscription is simply out of the question. I agree that getting Netgate boxes is the better investment, but still the initial outlay is a challenge for us. Last year I was given a budget of 200 US dollars that I have over spent. Hopefully things will improve and there will be more funds in the future.

Of course those of us that use CE got concerned when, very suddenly the upgrade frequency drastically changed. What were we to think?

I appreciate being able to check the postings and see what is happening on the programming front. I also understand that the folks at pfSense / Netgate must eat. Thus the subscription offering and the concentrating on the plus product.

There still remains with us that depend on CE a doubt as to what its future will be. I have cast about, looking at things like opnsense, and even Ubiquiti Dream machine. With nine machines, all the tunnels, (machine to machine and road warriors) things like DDNS, not to mention everything in DHCP, DNS, pfBlocker, and etc, to change from pfSense would be a staggering undertaking for me.

You can understand why I personally am paying close attention to what the future of CE might be.

I want to express my thanks to the very very good people at pfSense/Netgate for providing this exceptional software at no cost. Not only that, they provide an excellent forum with very helpful input in a very timely fashion, and in a friendly manner. And they have done it for many years.

Thank-you. I appreciate you all.

Roy

nimrod

You are forgetting one very important thing when it comes to paid version and thats licence abuse. I had personal experience with this. I ordered several mini pc`s from aliexpress and all of them came with pfsense plus version already installed. Its because of "vendors" like that, we cant have nice things.

tinfoilmatt

@reberhar The project 'roadmap' via the official Redmine is a much more reliable way to track version progress than through speculative internet posts made mostly by people that aren't even aware the roadmap exists. A shiny, new 2.9 has even already been opened with nine whole issues! ;)

Nice feedback. I too feel a deep gratitude toward Netgate for continuing to (professionally) maintain the CE.

reberhar

@nimrod Hi Nimrod,

I wish you well with your 3rd party boxes.

I watched a review of those from Lawerence systems. This posting is kind of dated, but still it is good to take notice of it. Those boxes tend to have a high failure rate. I have spent many hours struggling with remote dual core celeron boxes that eventually failed.

I guess I don't understand why Netgate selling licenses to aliexpress is license abuse. Of course, they cannot be held responsible for the quality of other people's hardware.

Of course if the Chinese are installing pirated versions, that is a different story. Having lived in Mexico, it was common to see pirated versions of most of the Microsoft products. I suppose that kind of treatment might be happening to Netgate as well by the Chinese.

Most of us remember the theft of Motorola products, right down to the copying of their manuals.

reberhar

@tinfoilmatt Thanks, I will look at the roadmap.

reberhar

@tinfoilmatt Wow 95 percent.

I was looking at the github posts.

https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commits/master/