Navigating to Buy pfSense +
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@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@HuskerDu said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
can no longer be trusted, and that is including the security point of view. If they lied on licences, they can lie on everything.
Netgate didn't lied...that's too extreme...had you read their official statement? Put yourself in their shoes...if you discovered a massive abuse, wouldn't you immediate pull the product?
Rest assured that Netgate is thing about home/lad users and will price Plus accordingly to meet the needs of the community while firewalling the abuse/abusers; however, your position on not trusting as a security point of view is too extreme...stay in the center.
No, what you do is act like a responsible security company and have license management in place to prevent the very thing you are defending them against - laziness. There's no other way to put it. Even their presence on Reddit, they are asking the USERS how to handle the situation.
Sophos has license management in place. As does every other responsible company out there licensing software. The fact that they are taking the lazy road and making everyone suffer for their misgivings says a lot about how they proceed. Do you really think that this action they are taking is going to fix their problem? No, it's going to cause them grief, all because they won't be proactive and continue to be lazy.
@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@HuskerDu said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
the mistake is in the original statement from 2021/2,
But, that statement was made in ignorance that others would abuse the kindness of open source...so, you should forgive Netgate...they never intended to misled anyone.
Just... my God. Your arms must be tired from all that armor shining.
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I wonder where are @netgate guys in this discussion???
Hiding behind githib :)
Say something, don't let people hang high and dry!
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I wish someone (FUTO?) would fork CE and set up a new community and forum to take it forward - fully open source for the future, supported by the users.
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@Amodin said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
No, what you do is act like a responsible security company and have license management in place to prevent the very thing you are defending them against - laziness.
I agree that it was shortsightedness in hindsight; yet give them a chance to make it right.
@Amodin said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Just... my God. Your arms must be tired from all that armor shining.
No, not at all; they messed up big time and I am sure they know this while hanging their heads in shame. However, in our relationship with Netgate, we should give them a hole to crawl out so we can hug again...after all, we all make mistakes and embracing our mistakes is how we grow.
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I wonder where are @netgate guys in this discussion???
They're busy reading out comments while drafting a strategy to permanently resolve...we'll soon forget all about this...
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I don't understand the silence from netgate.
Is there anything going on to sort this out?
Or is the decision as written an will not be changed? -
@HorstZimmermann said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I don't understand the silence from netgate.
They have issued an official statement already, beyond that, they're not obligated to share until a final strategy and new policy is in place...please be patient. We all need to be proactively patient...if someone needs a Plus, the instruction is to email them in the meanwhile.
pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud. -
Do I "really" need a Plus at home ? No, in any case. I am just restricting some access and playing with pFblocker.
Do I like to have a Plus at home to play with and find ideas for work ? Yeah that was a great idea, I am preferring messing with stuff with the highest pain being complaints from my teenagers than a formal training.
The idea was brillant, the execution could have been better. The actual conclusion deceiving.
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@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
They have issued an official statement already, beyond that, they're not obligated
We are not in the courtroom. It's an open-source project and it's odd Netgate is silent, that's all :)
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@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@HorstZimmermann said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
I don't understand the silence from netgate.
They have issued an official statement already, beyond that, they're not obligated to share until a final strategy and new policy is in place...please be patient. We all need to be proactively patient...if someone needs a Plus, the instruction is to email them in the meanwhile.
I'm not really sure what else you are reading, but what they posted on the blog IS their official statement and final strategy/new policy. What else are you expecting? They made it abundantly clear in another blog post that CE is all but ignored and they are focused on Plus. I don't expect that to change either. Why would it? They have ZERO incentive to do so, or this wouldn't have been an issue to begin with and been logical about license management. This is their own fault, but shifting the responsibility elsewhere is not an effective strategy.
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@Amodin There is an issue with what they've done. They very clearly need beta testers for even the 23.x releases, since there are documented faults and bugs. Even I could have helped out there, a bit of spare hardware, and I could have tested a beta issue, with my free home/lab license. Now they will only have beta testers who have spare Netgate hardware, or who can spash $400 for a spare license for testing. That is not going to work. I've been in this industry three decades, I've seen a lot of dumb company decisions, and in this area of testing this isn't unusual, they certainly weren't first, there will be many more decisions akin to shooting off your own foot by many companies. When it comes to testing you HAVE to provide free lab/home licenses to people willing to test buggy incomplete potentially unstable builds and help you refine the product. Probably any beta testers they had now won't do it any more. Besides all the bad blood this has created they have shot themselves in the foot in terms of free beta testers.
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@chudak said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
They have issued an official statement already, beyond that, they're not obligated
We are not in the courtroom. It's an open-source project and it's odd Netgate is silent, that's all :)
Okay, agree...
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I would have more respect for Netgate if they just came out and said, "Sorry we can no longer provide a free edition" but at this point, they don't seem to be interested in an "open-source" community or a community at all.
Which is just fine, it's their product and can move towards only providing it to businesses.
Maybe this is just a sign to move to OPNSense?
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was able to install 2.7.0 using my pfsense plus config, no problems at all. going to spin up an OpnSense VM to switch. Netgate, you guys are shady AF, it was a good run.
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Looks like they updated the product pages, Home+Lab is now gone from there, but TAC Lite with $0.00/yr ($129/yr in future) is still listed in the tables.
Only TAC Pro and Enterprise available from the order page though, maybe TAC Lite is now by email request only?Waiting to see some official clarification on this license mess.
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@mvikman said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Looks like they updated the product pages, Home+Lab is now gone from there, but TAC Lite with $0.00/yr ($129/yr in future) is still listed in the tables.
Only TAC Pro and Enterprise available from the order page though, maybe TAC Lite is now by email request only?Waiting to see some official clarification on this license mess.
The problem and this is just a guess on my part is that they made it too easy for users to obtain free licenses as it can be automated by abusers. Now with e-mail only requests this will cut it down to almost zero. If they refined the verification process to make use of CAPTCHA it should cut down most of the abuse.
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@gonace said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Maybe this is just a sign to move to OPNSense?
The thing about businesses is they like to compete and look to see what others are doing...so, prepare for another move when that one you quoted follows suit...that's most certainly coming.
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@Darkk said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Now with e-mail only requests this will cut it down to almost zero. If they refined the verification process to make use of CAPTCHA
Maybe a combination of a passkey, an email, and a credit card that must be in the name of the home/lab user or linking a digital payment method, such as PayPal, Google Pay, etc. There won't be a charge on the credit card as it only user for verification like how cloud services require for the initial free service.
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@NollipfSense said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
Maybe a combination of a passkey, an email, and a credit card that must be in the name of the home/lab user or linking a digital payment method, such as PayPal, Google Pay, etc. There won't be a charge on the credit card as it only user for verification like how cloud services require for the initial free service.
If they really want to cater to the home/lab crowd, the license should be flexible to function with hardware changes, not be bound to a single machine hash.
After all, who doesn't use different hardware to test on...
Otherwise, it's the same nonsense all over again. Remove a nic, add a nic, token is invalid. Another option is to disable functionality in a previous installation for a given token if used on new hardware. If the old hardware is reused, new hardware becomes none functional. Limit this to x many changes per day/week/month/etc.
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@GPz1100 said in Navigating to Buy pfSense +:
If they really want to cater to the home/lab crowd, the license should be flexible to function with hardware changes, not be bound to a single machine hash.
Yup, the ability to swap an old NDI to a new one via the admin interface is an absolute must.
