Navigating to Buy pfSense +
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How to encourage and reward beta testers?
Well, here is one example to consider @NetGate
I have been beta-testing Quicken for many years and several years ago they moved to a subscription model. Here is what they did.
They made the beta test program open to all (current users) and every year they waive an annual subscription cost based on a beta tester's participation.
Frankly, I don't know how they determine the level of good vs bad participation as I never was denied a waiver.
But this sounds like something that can be considered for pfSense as well.
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$129 is a bit steep for home use, maybe something like $50-60 with community support only would have been nice...
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@adam-lantos said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
now I won't get 23.09 full version and can't downgrade to CE either due to mismatched config versions.
I think 23.09 is the last they will give us. And then wait for CE 2.8
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Looks like they're offering a 23% discount for Tac Lite (you will see the discount code via the top banner) which brings it down to $99.33 for one year. If you pick two year the discount would also apply which would bring it to 198.66.
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@Darkk They are still out of the money for me.
Ted
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yup, me too. $0
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Definitely a disappointing turn of events, and for a home lab user $129 per year is just far too steep for me personally. A perpetual licence to 'help the cause' (with the ability for easy migration and VM use-cases) I would have done, but I'm not paying to also then beta test as well as supporting people via other channels.
Yes, I could run CE (though, need to look at the path back from 23.09 RC to CE), but part of the home lab interest for me is the strive for continual improvement (and tinkering - where the boot environments is useful).
Do I dig out an old board to run opnsense on to test/setup - maybe/probably. But, the thing is, I actually quite liked the pfsense+ experience (hence why I would have paid a perpetual licence). Damn.
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I think it should be $129 per release instead of per year...
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@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I think it should be $129 per release instead of per year...
I completely agree. I have 3 installations in different houses, I just canβt handle 129x3 per year. It's 3 times more expensive than my internet costs ;)
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@gisuck , Yeah.... great. Include "Boot Environments" in CE and I am good with that.
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Did anyone catch this on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/s/fmPjI06ouY
Hmmm..............
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Not really, or rather I didnβt understand at all how the subscription model works for users who already have purchased free licenses. Letβs say I have 13 purchased licenses that were used mainly for the same test equipment.
Itβs completely inconvenient to wait for a response on the forum asking for a replacement NDID when I just replaced the network card or changed them in a virtual or physical machine. I have absolutely no idea which license is active where, but of course I know my NDID, where it is currently used. It is clear that only two licenses are actively used; two or three virtual machines are rarely launched. That is, out of 13 licenses, only two are constantly used.Let's say I purchase an annual lite subscription. Does this subscription apply to all licenses I have purchased, or should I additionally write something to someone about NDID?
I'm going to add network cards soon, will this naturally cause a change in the NDID again and, accordingly, new problems?And also, could the opinion about the widespread distribution of illegal plus versions be partly due to such an inconvenience, when in order to change the NDID you need to contact someone from Netgate and people simply ignored this opportunity, because it was stupidly easier to purchase another free license ?
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@w0w On the ordering page it states that the license is applied to the installed instance only which is why it asks for your current Netgate ID.
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I was checking out amazon and a bit confused on why netgate listed their appliance on there with "1 year TAC lite". Are they going to charge for TAC lite on appliances now also or will it be optional?
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I have a 6100 and at the year point the TAC-Lite bit disappeared from the GUI and was replaced by a friendly 'Community Support Only' tag.
At the time this kinda made sense as only the 'full support' bit changed but the pfSense+ element continues. The only confusion (at that point) is that you still have to use 'TAC-Lite' (that you no longer have) for a new USB image.
With 'TAC-Lite' firmly attached to the new definitions there probably should be clarification on the terms for 'TAC-Lite' in the perpetual licence sense vs TAC-Lite for the additional support element.
Clearly nobody thought of any of the issues arising from the first statement and today's version is better but still lacks clarity and one of the key points has already been reversed since. Plus, it still dwells at the barking mad stage of management.
Cue Moses, tramping up the hill again for The Commandments, v3.0. He probably needs to sharpen his stone-chisel. Again.
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$129 for what? I'll pass thanks, CE will do fine for me, and I'm already trying out and getting used to OpnSense. There is a video on YT going through dozens of alternatives. As I said before, my experience is the registration process is pretty flaky, I had to request 3 licenses before my home Plus version would register.
The company has established its reputation and character, what it stands for, how it treats the community. I tried looking on Ali Express, I could certainly buy an entire unit for about the price of a 1 year TAC Lite+ license, and their claims are that it is tested with pfSense Plus, and in other cases with pfSense 2.7, I don't see devices which say they come with pfSense Plus, so I'm wondering if Netgate would like to present any evidence of widespread, company-ruining, mass license fraud, I mean we must be talking tens of thousands of licenses or something, home and lab licenses can't have accounted for more than a few hundred real people here. Any fraudulent use of licenses is something Netgate, or any company, should have considered, should have monitored, should have nipped in the bud immediately, punishing us fans of pfSense is quite inappropriate. As we should remember pfSense is a community-created open-source project, currently maintained by Netgate, and whilst pfSense is forever, maintainers can come and go. And in this case causing such bad blood between what seems like greedy corporate knee-jerk reactions and a loyal community is exceptionally poor business practice. I'd suggest having another think.
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OK, so now I can buy two years of TAC Lite for $200 after discount. That's a bit expensive but bordering on reasonable.
However, I run pfSense under Proxmox and my NDI has changed after certain Proxmox updates in the past. Is this license transferable between NDIs? Is there a web portal to deactivate NDIs and free up the license? Would I have to fight with Netgate support to transfer it?
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Thanks for the link to the 2-year support option which I used in conjunction with the discount code. Through the normal store link, I couldn't see a two-year option available so this saved me some money.
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Posted over on the other thread, but I think it bears saying again here...
Why do we need to saddle the homelab community with yet another tax on our hobbies? I'd be fine with a one-time cost. Hell, I'd even buy one of the foolish devices and keep it in the box if it meant I could enjoy the "one time" cost for continued access.
In my homelab setup, which I've been running for well over 15 years, I've never once contacted TAC support, save for the exception of when their new "licensing" model messed up my Plus upgrade and another when swapping NICs due to a failed one caused my Netgate ID to regenerate.
Why can't this just be a one-time fee?
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@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Thanks for the link to the 2-year support option which I used in conjunction with the discount code. Through the normal store link, I couldn't see a two-year option available so this saved me some money.
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
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I didn't need a key (I was already running PFSense+ on my own hardware). After ordering with my Device ID, my Netgate Services and Support widget displayed I was under a TAC Lite contract after about 20-30 mins.
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
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I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
Thatβs my case as well, thx
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
Thatβs my case as well, thx
Actually it looks like my instance just got updated showing the new effective start and end dates. If you add the Netgate Service and Support widget on your dashboard it will show you the current support info.
It would make sense that I never received the new token as my instance is already registered with Netgate.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
Are you sure this process involves a new token ?
I just did a bunch of TAC lite checkouts and I had to provide the NDI of the already running system there. I got an email receipt but no tokens. The new compliance status then showed in the support widget on the dashboard moments later.
These were commercial use systems I'd been waiting for TAC lite to be launched for.
Still on the fence for actual home and lab. My home and lab is legit home and lab, not commercial use and the very nature of lab, as 50+ people already pointed out above, means tbe NDI will surely not live as long as the TAC lite. And 129 a year is too much for lab
Legit lab use = helps me evangelize pfSense.
Legit lab use = helps me be useful in Redmine - no way I can reboot a production system or hack around try to break stuff in prod.Paying 129 a year for either of these things makes no sense. Paying 129 per release makes no sense. Paying x dollars lifetime with no way to reassign an NDI makes no sense. Some of my test NDI live a few days then are never seen again.
Maybe I overestimate how many of us are making good bug reports but I'm sure it's not zero.
You can't reproduce a pfsense plus bug seen in the wild on CE because they are divergent code bases.
TL;DR: I'm happy TAC lite was finally launched for commercial use white boxes but H&L use still needs to be addressed seeing as CE is different.
To weed out nonsense like an OEM cloning one license to 200000 NDI, they need to work on their licensing backend. Kicking us all out seems counter productive -
@mfld Well said. We need a proper home/lab license path.
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@mfld said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@joedan said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@Darkk
I went ahead and did the same thing too as wanted to support the project. I've been using pfsense far as back to early pfdns days which is 15+ years of continuous use for my home and home lab. Long as I can continue to use my own hardware with the plus version without limits I'm ok paying for Tac Lite.Were you able to update with the new key?
I haven't received the new token yet. I am assuming it's a two part process of the order so hopefully I will receive an e-mail soon.
Are you sure this process involves a new token ?
I had to add the Support widget on my dashboard to see the new support dates so it's all good for me now.
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As others have said, it would be great to implement a license for beta testers. I think the minimum number of licenses for testing should be 4, for correct testing on both real and virtual hardware. I think there are few people willing to pay for 4 annual licenses at once for the price over 100 or... you can forget about the effectiveness of the beta program for plus version.
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I wonder how long the 23% discount is going be? Before throwing in all that money, I would like to see how this all resolves and if this will be their final solution...
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@AMG-A35 said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I guess I'm going opnsense, its only replacing pfBlockeNG which is holding me back.
They have a community repo with AdGuard Home that can probably replace a chunk of that functionality for you.
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@w0w said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
As others have said, it would be great to implement a license for beta testers. I think the minimum number of licenses for testing should be 4, for correct testing on both real and virtual hardware. I think there are few people willing to pay for 4 annual licenses at once for the price over 100 or... you can forget about the effectiveness of the beta program for plus version.
I think the issue right now is that they don't have a way to distinguish a new NDI from an old one. Otherwise how can it be that some OEM can use one activation to activate one Home and Lab license, then image the entire disk to hundreds of devices and all these devices get to obtain a client certificate to access the update repo.
We have no portal for customers to see licences / NDI, expiry dates and revoke stuff.
The crux of the issue seems to be that at the back-end it isn't ready to handle this sort of stuff. Once they fix that they should be able to let us transfer a license to a new NDI and manage licenses.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Actually it looks like my instance just got updated showing the new effective start and end dates. If you add the Netgate Service and Support widget on your dashboard it will show you the current support info.
It would make sense that I never received the new token as my instance is already registered with Netgate.
Mine only shows me this (pfSense+ installed on bare metal earlier this month):
It looks correct on the Netgate webpage:
It shows as registered too:
At this point I am not sure what any of it will mean over the coming days or weeks. Nothing actually shows an expiry date either.
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@w0w said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
or... you can forget about the effectiveness of the beta program for plus version.
I have been active testing pfSense + on white box and NetGate devices from alpha through beta then RC to release over the last few years. I am hard pressed to rationalize paying for the ability to continue this testing activity. As it now stands, I will place the 4100 MAX in production service and move the white box devices into deep storage and if things don't change, they will be sent off to be recycled. I will not run anything other than release on the 4100 MAX.
Sometimes things just suck!
Ted Quade
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@mfld said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Otherwise how can it be that some OEM can use one activation to activate one Home and Lab license, then image the entire disk to hundreds of devices and all these devices get to obtain a client certificate to access the update repo.
As far as I can tell the NDI is generated from the NIC MAC addresses. It's certainly possible that some shady vendor changed the NDI generation code to reuse the exact same NDI on different boxes with different MAC addresses, but this is only speculation. Ideally the firewall instance should use an authenticated token with Netgate online ID instead of the two step registration token / NDI, but getting crypto/license management right when the code is readily available for inspection is not as simple as it may first seen.
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@RobbieTT Double check your Netgate hardware ID against the order. If it matches and still showing community support then I would put in a support ticket so they can look into it. Also on the widget there is a refresh button so give that a try.
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Bought a one-year subscription and will re-evaluate next year. Thanks to @Darkk for the discount code tip.
+1 to @Amodin's mention of Quicken's program to compensate beta testers. That may be a good path for Netgate, along with some scheme to address folks with multiple lab machines.
[Quicken] made the beta test program open to all (current users) and every year they waive an annual subscription cost based on a beta tester's participation.
My $0.02 and I don't work for Netgate nor am I an apologist for them. There's surely a group of folks on Home+Lab who provide value to Netgear as beta testers: detailed and actionable bug reports, collaborating with Netgear on debugging, etc. But it's probably well under half of the current Home+Lab userbase. Everyone else on the (formerly) free Home+Lab version is riding on the paid coattails of Netgate HW customers and TAC subscribers. Netgate has a business to run and developers to pay.
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@marcg said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Bought a one-year subscription and will re-evaluate next year. Thanks to @Darkk for the discount code tip.
+1 to the mention from @Amodin regarding Quicken's program to compensate beta testers. That may be a good path for Netgate, along with some scheme to address folks with multiple lab machines.
[Quicken] made the beta test program open to all (current users) and every year they waive an annual subscription cost based on a beta tester's participation.
My $0.02 and I don't work for Netgate nor am I an apologist for them. There's surely a group of folks on Home+Lab who provide value to Netgear as beta testers: detailed and actionable bug reports, collaborating with Netgear on debugging, etc. But it's probably well under half of the current Home+Lab userbase. Everyone else on the (formerly) free Home+Lab version is riding on the paid coattails of Netgate HW customers and TAC subscribers. Netgate has a business to run.
Now as home+Lab users are paying for TAC-Lite, Netgate will have to formalize its beta program and find a way to continue getting this feedback.
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Now as home+Lab users are paying for TAC-Lite, Netgate will have to formalize its beta program and find a way to continue getting this feedback.
I think for beta testing it should come with a beta testing license good for short period of time like 30 days which should be automatic by the software. After 30 days you'll need to update to the newest beta or revert back to CE or Plus if you have a current paid subscription. If there aren't any beta version to test then it shouldn't be an issue as everyone would be on CE or Plus.
With beta testing it shouldn't matter what Netgate Hardware ID would be as it's tied to the clock of the software. It would have to be verifiable by Netgate servers to prevent cheating.
It would be a good way to test various network cards without worrying about the hardware ID changing.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@RobbieTT Double check your Netgate hardware ID against the order. If it matches and still showing community support then I would put in a support ticket so they can look into it. Also on the widget there is a refresh button so give that a try.
There is no Netgate ID against my order on the invoice, just the order number and the SKU. I have raised a ticket on your suggestion.
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