Thoughts on the new "Gold" menu in 2.1.5
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For what its worth, people that know me in here and whom I have had the privilige to talk to outside the forum, is not considering me negative at all.
Maybe I ask the wrong questions and maybe have the experience to see whats down the road when you treat people like this??
Better!
As I've stated elsewhere, the "Gold" menu is a placeholder. Other services (some free, some not) will eventually 'fill in' under same.
But, sure as heck, the minute anything changes, so many people run to the tops of buildings to shout, "pfSense isn't free!" when, in reality, nothing has changed.
Nothing.
You're not being charged for the software.
The software isn't crippled.
You are still free to fork. The license for same is really simple. (Cue: doktornotor and all of his negative bile.)I think pfSense is getting better. You don't. Everyone has an opinion.
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Knowing full well I'm probably in the minority, I'm going to speak up.
Aside from some theme/font formatting issues, the addition of the "Gold" menu doesn't bother me. It's not telling me to "Buy Gold," rather it's just "Gold" as a menu for where I might find paid features. pfSense has had a commercial support offering with some extra features for as long as I can remember, and this feels no worse.Quite the opposite. I love the $99/yr subscription, it brings project support and previously commercial-only features (AutoConfigBackup) within my budgetary reach. So in at least one instance, the "Gold" menu will pay off for pfSense, and I'm happy to do it.
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Knowing full well I'm probably in the minority, I'm going to speak up.
Aside from some theme/font formatting issues, the addition of the "Gold" menu doesn't bother me. It's not telling me to "Buy Gold," rather it's just "Gold" as a menu for where I might find paid features. pfSense has had a commercial support offering with some extra features for as long as I can remember, and this feels no worse.Quite the opposite. I love the $99/yr subscription, it brings project support and previously commercial-only features (AutoConfigBackup) within my budgetary reach. So in at least one instance, the "Gold" menu will pay off for pfSense, and I'm happy to do it.
I'm actually considering bundling ACB into pfSense. You would still need a (free or higher) portal account to use it (because that's how it works), but it would be free to use.
Thanks for your comment.
And yes, the formatting issues are … a bit tragic. We'll work out the issues, and the menu will get populated with services that people who run pfSense can take or not take.
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What is everyone else's opinion on these new promotional sections? Like them, hate them, don't care?
Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way.Personally I think it's fine. By analogy, if you compare pfSense's model to Redhat/Centos then exchanging a menu slot for the hassle of having to manually fork every single update is a small price indeed.
Donationware isn't anything new under the sun and IMHO far better than shareware or crippleware. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donationware
That said, I do understand your aesthetic objection. I've got a touch of OCD m'self. If it really bugs you so much, just PM me and I'll help walk you through the steps to take it out of your menu. ;)
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@gonzopancho:
[…] get populated with services that people who run pfSense can take or not take.
That's the point, you can but you don't must.
I like to donate to a project (like I does to pfsense) if I can and how much I can. -
What gets me is it broke the menu. Now the menu wraps and I have to play games with fonts to be able to get to the system menu.
It didn't break the menu per se, your browser is caching the older .css file… clear your cache and you should be good to go...
I don't think so, I have 1 notebook (opensuse, firefox 31)-> no way to get it work, a number of workstations/notebooks (Win7/openSUSE, firefox 31) -> doing fine
strange…
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@chemlud:
I don't think so, I have 1 notebook (opensuse, firefox 31)-> no way to get it work, a number of workstations/notebooks (Win7/openSUSE, firefox 31) -> doing fine
strange…https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=81073.15
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I tried the cache and font-thing without success. Not going to edit files for accessing my routers, not feasible under real-life conditions
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Cleared the cache on mine and it still hides the Help menu under the System menu rendering the System menu unusable just to add in the "Gold" menu. This is kinda bad guys, really.
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I'm glad its a placeholder for more things to come… I can live with that... If it was just going to be there with a link, then the footer or under Help would had made more sense IMHO.. One of these days I will will purchase a gold membership but stupid crap keeps popping up that takes my extras fund away... Damn you house and responsibilities... But for the most part, I myself have donated to pfsense over the years....
Stephen
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I'm glad its a placeholder for more things to come… I can live with that... If it was just going to be there with a link, then the footer or under Help would had made more sense IMHO.. One of these days I will will purchase a gold membership but stupid crap keeps popping up that takes my extras fund away... Damn you house and responsibilities... But for the most part, I myself have donated to pfsense over the years....
Stephen
If it was just a link, then, yes, it would have been stupid and obnoxious.
Money is nice, but it's not just about money. Giving back can happen in any number of ways; forum posts (especially solid answers), pull requests (patches), documentation, etc.
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I just want to add that it's specifically the broken UI that I have a major problem with. The Gold idea in general is kinda against what I took pfSense to be about where the software is free and on point with the commercial support being the paid for part. Please don't turn into a sonicwall.
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@gonzopancho:
Money is nice, but it's not just about money. Giving back can happen in any number of ways; forum posts (especially solid answers), pull requests (patches), documentation, etc.
I do try to assist other forum members as I can… I have helped a lot with testing of packages thru out the years to iron out bugs... I like to break things ::)
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It does. This is all about money making and the distribution and user base is now a size that some believe will carry the gold pot into the bank.
What they dont realize is that people are leaving and its not more than a fork away from beeing run over by people that wants to keep it OS andf transparent…
And I suppose you have quantifiable metrics to show "people are leaving" as opposed to anecdotal feelings that the world is coming to an end because a change was made that you don't agree with?
You're looking at the picture that's 6" in front of you. What you don't see is that in time, Gold will be more integrated with the product and become an extension of pfSense in ways that don't exist today. How are you contributing to the project?
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I'm running 2.2 alpha, I fired up a ESXI VM of 2.1.4, cleared all temporary downloads and caches. I then shut that down and fired up 2.2 again. Wallah, I reproduced your problem… Clear the catch again, delete temp files. It will fix the problem.
As to the <gold>menu. It is exactly what you said, $100 gets you better documentation in the updated books ie. lowest level of "commercial support".. Adding that <gold>menu to highlight the "Commercial Support" doesn't hurt a single thing.
I just paid my $100 to support the project and for the documentation. It costs lots of /gold>s for the servers and bandwidth, besides the time to manage the development. I get the same exact software you do. :)
Note to the development team, I hope you were kidding about the "Ask Toolbar"…. LMAO...
I just want to add that it's specifically the broken UI that I have a major problem with. The Gold idea in general is kinda against what I took pfSense to be about where the software is free and on point with the commercial support being the paid for part. Please don't turn into a sonicwall.</gold></gold>
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Note to the development team, I hope you were kidding about the "Ask Toolbar"…. LMAO...
Oh, it's coming… right after we re-write pfSense in Java.
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@gonzopancho:
Note to the development team, I hope you were kidding about the "Ask Toolbar"…. LMAO...
Oh, it's coming… right after we re-write pfSense in Java.
Really, that is not even funny, shudder ;)
I would like to find more ways to help, I am off to sign up for gold though, then I need to figure out where I can help out…
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Watchguard re-wrote their web interface for smaller boxes in Flash. You have to try hard to beat that. ;D
I have no problem with the 'Gold' menu heading as long as it's a place holder for future offerings. I did expect to find the auto-config-backup there but if that's being considered for general availability anyway I can see why it's not. It seems fairly unobtrusive to me.
Steve
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I really don't think pfsense is going to "end as a free product", and I don't see that anyone is going to fork and constantly patch pfsense "CentOS style" just to remove this "Gold Menu" from the UI. Nor do I believe ESF is going to turn it into crippleware, break stuff, etc just to drive sales/donations, at least there are no indications yet of that. All of these calls of doom and gloom are currently unfounded, in my opinion.
There is certainly the aesthetics concern, but just as important is the consistent functionality of the system as a whole. However with this, there is bit more to the story than "we're just adding a menu". If a good place was needed to just put some new features tied to the gold service, why not just add an item under "Services" called "Gold", and then add tabs for all the new features (both free and paid) as they were developed.
There have obviously been some further proposed changes from the GIT commit (which in fairness, were subsequently withdrawn) to further highlight, change the background colors of the images and themes and otherwise draw attention to this "Gold" menu in future releases. That to me doesn't sound so much like "we're adding features for our "members" to enjoy" as it looks like subtle, persistent advertising. Am I wrong in this view? I don't see anything wrong with promoting the service in pfsense in a non-intrusive manner (ala the initial wizard, as a link in the backup area/auto updater, or you know, Help->Paid Support) but by shoving it front and center as seems to be the goal, well you might as well wrap it in <blink>tags.
If I'm not able or don't want to use the perks of a Gold membership, either because I'm not interested or didn't pay for them (which is totally fair), why should everyone have a "Gold" main menu by default? Isn't that what the Packages system already addresses quite well? Install the "Gold Member" (lol) package, and let it do the modification to the GUI so that I can have the all the features that require a "Gold account" should I so desire, and let the unmodified "base" GUI run as a standalone system not requiring these account based features.</blink>
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I wrote "shareware" in the 90's. And, I will tell you, hiding the "donation" page in a help menu gets you 0 donations, and 5,000 support questions. That turns your hard work, that started out as fun, into a job. Put the donation information where they had to look at it? I still had the 5,000 support questions, but guess what? I got donations.
In my opinion nobody is going to see the pfSense web interface but those administering the network. Why are you worried about that? If you're running pfSense in a business, it's FREE! Nobody's going to see that <gold>but your administrators, might guilt you into contributing a minimum support contract, but you don't have too.
Either way, what does it matter? You have a group of guys/gals that are managing and pushing the development of this project and dealing with the support and want to charge for that support… Trust me the support is much harder then the development; believe it or not, it is. The Software is free for those that don't need the help. And what account based features? Auto Config Backup? that's a package you have to install.
I guess I just don't get the problem... ???
PS... I liked the <gold>menu item when it had the gold background.
If I'm not able or don't want to use the perks of a Gold membership, either because I'm not interested or didn't pay for them (which is totally fair), why should everyone have a "Gold" main menu by default? Isn't that what the Packages system already addresses quite well? Install the "Gold Member" (lol) package, and let it do the modification to the GUI so that I can have the all the features that require a "Gold account" should I so desire, and let the unmodified "base" GUI run as a standalone system not requiring these account based features.</gold></gold>
