_Still_ confused about licensing
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First, I searched for answers to these questions. I really did. :-)
I'm a home user running pfSense 2.6 on a Protectli Vault. It's just great. (I have an 1100 but haven't forgiven Netgate for promising to use the AES chip and then never actually delivering on that promise. Plus, the Vault screams compared to the slow SOC 1100.)
I took a look at the EULA at checkout for the free Plus licsense and wondered:
- Is the license for a commercial (paid) user the same as for a home (free) user? I didn't notice different license terms.
- Is the Plus license perpetual for home users? IOW, if Netgate decides to kill home users of Plus (that is, pull a "LogMeIn"), would I be able to run the version prior to such a change without updates?
- Suppose I migrate to Plus. If I exported my settings just prior to that, would there be any violations of licensing if I restored a CE version and imported my settings?
I just don't understand the case for CE for home unless there's some trap-door licensing term I don't see. What am I missing?
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I would really like to see some solid testing/stats of the Atom C3558 vs Core i5 7200U. Very seriously looking at an upgrade myself...i5 ~should~ run circles around an Atom...but the Atom does have a serious benefit on L2 cache which MAY make a serious difference in our workloads.
As far as Plus license ... Yeah I'd love to be able to send netgate some $$. I'm ok with paying for the license down the road. Just don't want it to be $$$$ for hardware I supply, or $$$ for the somewhat lacking hardware. A 20 year old P4 can route traffic...I want low electric bill and solid performance on IDS/IPS.
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The SafeXcel driver for the crypto hardware in the 1100/2100 has been included since 21.02.
Steve
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@stephenw10 said in _Still_ confused about licensing:
The SafeXcel driver for the crypto hardware in the 1100/2100 has been included since 21.02.
Steve
Which is years after the product was shipped.
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Literally just less that 2 years for full functionality. To me that’s a long way from your “never”.
The 1100 was announced in Jan 2019. We shipped an initial SafeXcel driver in 2.4.5; which was March 2020, although it only supported AES-CBC-128. Full support was released in Jan 2021.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter to you, but drivers take time and resources. We couldn’t copy the GPL driver from Linux. Marvell was not interested in even answering questions, though we did, eventually, manage to get them to give us the documentation on the SafeXcel cores by pointing out the volume of Marvell parts which we had purchased, so thank you for your part in that.
We upstreamed the resulting work (which we sponsored) so that the wider BSD community would also benefit.
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@jwt said in _Still_ confused about licensing:
Literally just less that 2 years for full functionality. To me that’s a long way from your “never”.
The 1100 was announced in Jan 2019. We shipped an initial SafeXcel driver in 2.4.5; which was March 2020, although it only supported AES-CBC-128. Full support was released in Jan 2021.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter to you, but drivers take time and resources. We couldn’t copy the GPL driver from Linux. Marvell was not interested in even answering questions. We upstreamed the resulting work (which we sponsored) so that the wider FreeBSD community would also benefit.
You advertised a feature and took years to deliver it completely during which time you were silent.
Do you think customers care that you picked a vendor who wouldn’t answer your questions? Did the 1100 data sheet say, “If we have problems because we picked a lousy vendor, full implementation of this feature may be delayed?” Maybe Marvel had an issue with you, too — maybe over promising and under delivering? It’s immature to tell a customer that your product was flawed because of a supplier. It’s your product.
It speaks to the issue with Netgate overall: nobody can rely on what you say. It’s why I started this thread: who knows when you’ll pull a LogMeIn and cancel home use Plus licenses?
You haven’t promised not to. In fact, I think your bifurcated product plan endangers both roadmaps. Plus, if it doesn’t generate enough revenue (which was the purpose of bifurcating it from CE), means Netgate won’t have the resources to continue either branch.
And let’s not talk about the bad blood over WireGuard which is still a mess or at least incomplete.
It’d have been more honest if you’d said, “We’re stopping dev on CE. We gotta eat and this open source thing is a failed go-to-market we need out of.”
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@yobyot Though yours is not the first assertion that we have stopped development on CE, I will answer you directly.
We have not stopped development on CE, and a simple look at GutHub will show same.
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@jwt said in _Still_ confused about licensing:
@yobyot Though yours is not the first assertion that we have stopped development on CE, I will answer you directly.
We have not stopped development on CE, and a simple look at GutHub will show same.
@jwt said in _Still_ confused about licensing:
@yobyot Though yours is not the first assertion that we have stopped development on CE, I will answer you directly.
We have not stopped development on CE, and a simple look at GutHub will show same.
And the price of a Coke at McDonalds was $1…until
It wasn’t.You just don’t have credibility on roadmap or product delivery questions. And my original question re: licensing remains unanswered.
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S stephenw10 locked this topic on
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S stephenw10 moved this topic from General pfSense Questions on
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And the price of a Coke at McDonalds was $1…until
It wasn’t."Enjoy a refreshing Coke
at McDonald’s in extra small, small, medium and large for $1 on the $1 $2 $3 Dollar Menu."