Admin password changed itself. Twice. Yes it did.

jwt

@Knyte:

@jwt:

I shouldn't have to tell you which one is faster. Hint: it's not the B-Pi router.

Nope, you sure don't. I only brought that up in the sense that it looked GREAT and interesting at the time, woohoo, lets get TWO!

I also have two sitting in a cardboard box, somewhere.

@Knyte:

I'd much rather look more closely at what Netgate has to offer, and look for ways I can support them/you.

I'm curious. What would you pay for pfSense that could be loaded on espresso.bin?

strigona

@jwt:

I'm curious. What would you pay for pfSense that could be loaded on espresso.bin?

That is a tough one to answer… being in Canada the price increases quite quickly with duties and international shipping. (Canadian Partners have not helped reduce these 2 costs - it's always been cheaper to buy direct from Netgate).

When I saw your post about Espresso.Bin on reddit, I got really excited to replace my power hungry ESXi box. I priced out the board being about $107 USD shipped or ~$140CAD (that was the 2GB model with a power brick direct from GlobalScale).

Personally for my use case (at home), I could justify spending up to $200 CAD shipped. Anything above that I would start evaluating other options (mostly a lower power/cost ESXi box).

jwt

I’m not asking what you would pay for the hardware.
You’ve shown what it costs to get a board into Canada.

The 2GB espresso.bin is $79
A power supply is ~$8.00
Total $87

You’re shipped with duties at $107.

So $30 in shipping and Canada duties.

But I’m not asking what you’d pay for your router.
I’m asking what you would pay for pfSense on espresso.bin.

jahonix

@jwt:

I’m asking what you would pay for pfSense on espresso.bin.

..which leads to the questions:

one-time purchase or subscription modell
buy-in for one install or multiple in my kingdom

Since I have absolutely no idea about espresso.bin's capabilities what would you compare it to - APU1/2, Atom device, … ? Comparisons to SG-1000 or Lord Vader wouldn't help (me) much either...

But, maybe, this has come quite far from "Admin password changed itself. Twice. Yes it did.", hasn't it? ;)

strigona

@jwt:

I’m asking what you would pay for pfSense on espresso.bin.

Doh… Of course, I misread your question as I was rushing to get out of the office.

Umm that's a good question. I can afford another $50 on top of my gold subscription.

jwt

@strigona:

@jwt:

I’m asking what you would pay for pfSense on espresso.bin.

Doh… Of course, I misread your question as I was rushing to get out of the office.

Umm that's a good question. I can afford another $50 on top of my gold subscription.

i

One answer is that it would be included in gold.

Blade Runner

@jwt:

Ignore the problem, and continue to put the trademark at risk

Close down 'free" pfSense. Forever.

Invest the time and resources in making sure that nobody can load pfSense without authorization from Netgate

We have, I think, played more than fair to this point, but this type of thing puts the business at risk in may ways.

I'm curious what the community thinks.

A subscription model would preferable to closing down 'free' pfSense.

mer

@jwt, you may want to pull out some of this discussion (the what can/should we do) into a separate topic for wider community input.

My couple of cents:
Licensing: most/all of pfSense is it BSD or BSD-ish License? If so, that gives you one set of options. Other licenses (GPL, et al) mean other things.

Defend the trademark as vigorously as possible, don't just give up on it.
Make it clear on the front page of the website that the only official systems preinstalled are from NetGate. Anything else is "buyer beware".

"free" pfSense: this is a similar situation to ixSystems and FreeNAS, no? There is value to providing a user downloadable version for use on their own hardware. What you need to do is differentiate it enough from the officially installed on Netgate hardware so folks will try the free version and then buy the preinstalled. I know, hard to do. You can't cripple the free version, you need to make the preinstalled version have useful bells and whistles. The free version also lets people that have the ability and desire generate patches for you.

Activation keys: I understand the reason and logic, but have never liked them. Too much like a "you paid money for this but we're going to control your ability to run it". Is it a "one and done" so I can reinstall on different hardware as much as I want? Is it tied to a specific version of pfSense on a specific hardware platform meaning I can't move it to different hardware if something dies? Do different features require different activation keys? Are the keys going to expire (yearly subscription)?

I don't know what's right for the project, I've always been fine with paying a resonable price for something I need and for my home use the SG2440 was more than I needed but it was a reasonable price.

johnpoz

This thread been mentioned on the reddit pfsense section.. One of the comments pointed out the seller of that box also sells a pc.. And states this on the specs.. If you want the link find it on the reddit thread..

"System: Free Operating System: Default installed our activated OEM cracked version(not genuine, works good)Windows English for free,
other languages can be selected among: "

WTF?? This is starting to turn into a get some popcorn sort of thread ;)

image.png_thumb

NogBadTheBad

WTF indeed.

mer

I'll add in another WTF. @johnpoz, I don't spend much/any time on reddit, so did not realize the exposure. Thanks

n3by

Grab the popcorn and enjoy… Mr Robot started early. :-[

johnpoz

@mer:

I don't spend much/any time on reddit

Not missing much there - at least not in the pfsense sub ;) Its better than the facebook pfsense stuff, but lots of WTF threads there all the time - hehehe

edit: There was a comment to the OP competence that gave me a nice chuckle..

DigitalJer

@johnpoz:

"System: Free Operating System: Default installed our activated OEM cracked version(not genuine, works good)Windows English for free,
other languages can be selected among: "

Ah one of those. I bought a Cube i10 a while back for my fiance, only to find both Android and Windows had been hacked up so bad as to be unusable. Completely untrustworthy.

DigitalJer

@jwt:

I’m not asking what you would pay for the hardware.
<snip>I’m asking what you would pay for pfSense on espresso.bin.</snip>

To echo strigona, somewhere around $100/150-ish; for what I'd need it for…home lab. If I were looking to procure something for my job, I'd entertain the idea of a scaled model, perhaps based on number of users or some such.

mhvmhv

@johnpoz:

Not missing much there - at least not in the pfsense sub ;) Its better than the facebook pfsense stuff, but lots of WTF threads there all the time - hehehe

edit: There was a comment to the OP competence that gave me a nice chuckle..

I'm the OP.
I'm glad you had a chuckle at my expense. We all need to feel that "Thank God it wasn't me this time" feeling once in a while. I made a fool of myself in this instance, and yes I was under pressure to find an inexpensive solution, quickly, for a customer without the budget for an enterprise-class Cisco firewall. I'm pretty comfortable with my competence, as specialized in the Cisco realm as it may be. I guess I just got used to dealing with a reputable vendor.

I'm totally comfortable with the idea that my mistake has spawned an important and wide-ranging discussion of the issue, of this particular vendor, and of the direction the discussion has gone.

As I said, I have a well-developed sense of humility. If my very public faceplant serves as a lesson to others, well, teaching is what I do best.

DigitalJer

@mhvmhv:

I'm the OP.

Hey, live and learn. There are a tremendous number of variables in this industry. Stuff happens. As mentioned, you are not the only one to have blown $ on crap gear!

I hope you get some answers about that firewall and what traffic it might be generating.

johnpoz

@mhvmhv

Don't take my comment about the comments on reddit thread the wrong way.. I was just commenting on the flavor of the comments over there.. They were not my comments..

In the big picture this thread and reddits thread might draw some much needed attention to the crap that is out there, etc. And hopefully people that were not aware of how some not so nice people try and profit off of pfsense good name, etc.

realtec

Any merit in locking an email address to a MAC address of a box or a box ID? Even for CE users. Obviously, those email addresses would be verified. Until verified and tied to an account of some sort the firewall can't be configured etc. 3rd party suppliers would soon get sick of having to register an email, sending a verification, registering the ID or MAC Address. Users such ourselves wouldn't mind - we could use an admin email of the company we are installing PFSense for - tied to the MAC or ID of the box. If the box gets changed then we would need to re-verify. Probs wouldn't take too long to sort.

n3by

If this is the topic with justification to stop the "open-source pfSense" then just do it, it fit like a glove, maybe other projects will fill the gap.

One new user with "20 years certified experience IT" registered in the same day it is opening this tread about his 0 experience configuring his first pfSense firewall from a shady source, in the same time he is very keen to buy another few pfsense this time from certified source… :-[

Some people smoke to much and look where this topic it is going... next you can't configure on site an open source firewall without subscriptions, valid license, emails registered... wtf ?

In the time put a damn banner on the site & forum with warning for all IT experts and then hire another marketing director for business.

john..., doc... god help us please !