Will pfSense free binaries eventually be discontinued?
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The official response to my wanting to put free pfSense on AWS was rather unexpected. I've never seen anyone else get yelled at for wanting to use the free pfSense on a physical server in their own business/organization. That is an explicitly defined use case that is frequently discussed here. Why is AWS being treated any differently?
But it appears to me that the free software has been usurped by a group of developers that wants to make a profit from it. If this continues then will NetGate physical appliances or a software product with a licensing lockdown functionality eventually become the only way to access pfSense on this website?
After all, installing free pfSense on your own organization's server, rather than buying a Netgate appliance with an annual license renewal fee that is jacked up based solely on your bandwidth/performance needs, is stealing from the mouth of the developer's babies.
How dare you think that a previously free software will continue to remain free when used in new environments or situations.
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I can see how it would work to kill off widespread use of the free version, and eventually force everyone to move over to the "commercially licensed" version.
This website will just stop providing the easy to use and install binary packages, and instead say: "It's free and open source software, but if you want to use it in the future, the source code repository is over there. You will need to know how to compile, set up a toolchain, and build for the architecture you want."
"Distribution of compiled binaries and making the source code easy to use and install outside of our officially licensed and annually billed commercial product is a dick move, and will not be supported or allowed to be discussed on our forum. How dare you provide compiled binaries to the general public. That is almost as bad as building your own free unlicensed AWS instance."
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This then kills off the easy non-commercial access, and pfSense will after that only be used for free by programmer/nerd geniuses who are already experts at using compilation tools and environments.
And this is how freedom is lost to a handful of developers that want to make some dough off of a popular but formerly free project.
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Yelled at?? Dude are you on crack??
You were told they would not support how to install from ISO onto AWS.. That is not getting yelled at ;)
Yes it cost money to run stuff on AWS, if you can not afford the cost of that run it somewhere else.
Where do you get that netgate is charging extra for the AWS??
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=049ff957-82ca-4326-b282-9bbf24daa64bYou can switch to Year cost for the instance, or pay per hour…
I think maybe you don't understand how AWS works?? What was stated was they would not help you install from the ISO on AWS... Google if you want to know how to do that - or has suggested find another host that is easy for you to install from image.
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Javik,
The official response to my wanting to put free pfSense on AWS was rather unexpected. I've never seen anyone else get yelled at for wanting to use the free pfSense on a physical server in their own business/organization. That is an explicitly defined use case that is frequently discussed here. Why is AWS being treated any differently?
Where were you "yelled at"? I don't see any yelling or negativity here. https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=146901.msg797960#msg797960
But it appears to me that the free software has been usurped by a group of developers that wants to make a profit from it. If this continues then will NetGate physical appliances or a software product with a licensing lockdown functionality eventually become the only way to access pfSense on this website?
It appears that you don't understand that even free software like pfSense has to be paid and developed by someone. That includes the AWS instance we develop and maintain. But you must think pfSense development costs us nothing, right?
After all, installing free pfSense on your own organization's server, rather than buying a Netgate appliance with an annual license renewal fee that is jacked up based solely on your bandwidth/performance needs, is stealing from the mouth of the developer's babies.
How dare you think that a previously free software will continue to remain free when used in new environments or situations.
I have to admit I've read plenty of dumb stuff on this forum and around it, but this one takes the cake. Perhaps show some appreciation and gratitude precisely because you can install pfSense on your own organization's server without having to pay for it or be locked in vendor hardware? Maybe you should have thought about that before venting?
Let's see if I can phrase as you have, but from our point of view:
"How dare we try to get compensated for thousands and thousands of development hours and several million USD invested in software we open source and give away for free??"
pfSense project is directly funded by:
- appliance sales
- support and professional services
- AWS and Azure instances.
As you can see, since pfSense is free, profits are limited to the areas listed above. So when someone like you comes to our forum asking how to bypass even that limited areas of profit, we're don't intend to help. I'm not even saying you can't install CE on AWS, just don't expect help from us to achieve your goal. You can however, very easily, install pfSense on almost all VPS providers that support ISO mounting, and I've suggested that right away at your first topic.
I can see how it would work to kill off widespread use of the free version, and eventually force everyone to move over to the "commercially licensed" version.
This website will just stop providing the easy to use and install binary packages, and instead say: "It's free and open source software, but if you want to use it in the future, the source code repository is over there. You will need to know how to compile, set up a toolchain, and build for the architecture you want."
Yet another prediction of pfSense doom. No, we never heard that one. Nope. (I'm being ironic).
However, I strongly agree with you on the source code point, if you don't like the way pfSense works or think you can do better… source code is available and you can build your own, better or worse version. But something tells me you don't appreciate that. Perhaps we should run our business as you want instead.
"Distribution of compiled binaries and making the source code easy to use and install outside of our officially licensed and annually billed commercial product is a dick move, and will not be supported or allowed to be discussed on our forum. How dare you provide compiled binaries to the general public. That is almost as bad as building your own free unlicensed AWS instance."
This then kills off the easy non-commercial access, and pfSense will after that only be used for free by programmer/nerd geniuses who are already experts at using compilation tools and environments.
And this is how freedom is lost to a handful of developers that want to make some dough off of a popular but formerly free project.
I think you're giving a great example of the type of gratitude we have to deal with occasionally. All of this because you can't get something you want the way you want it and because you feel entitled to it.
Lastly, I really suggest you find a hobby in your life, this might be hard for you to understand but we're not here for you to vent and write stupid crap just because you feel entitled to something.
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Google if you want to know how to do that - or has suggested find another host that is easy for you to install from image.
Google something? That's preposterous!
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You are not denying that the precompiled, unlocked and unlimited, free use "community edition" binaries will stop being distributed at some point, so apparently, the answer to my original question, is therefore "yes".
Regardless of however else you are responding.
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Amazing how you gathered that from my response. You didn't really ask a question, you wrote a monologue about what you think will happen. I suggest you read my response at least several more times to find answer to your "question".
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You are not denying that the precompiled, unlocked and unlimited, free use "community edition" binaries will stop being distributed at some point, so apparently, the answer to my original question, is therefore "yes".
Regardless of however else you are responding.
I am, and have previously. Feel free to stop your disinformation campaign anytime.
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It's their software, they can do what they want with it.
Free != Entitled
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Looks like Javik deleted this topic so I'm restoring it. Sorry Javik, you don't get to delete this topic after the attitude you displayed. Topic restored and locked.
