Addressing Licence Changes to pfSense Plus Home and Lab

25 thoughts on “Addressing Licence Changes to pfSense Plus Home and Lab”

• OpenWRT is the absolute best solutions for what it is built for and that is it provides a platform for creating custom soluionts but for those of us who are in the MSP industry don't have the time to build custom soluitons with OpenWRT that why we use pfSense and OpenSense and …..

• At 1:34 I'm going with iptables.

• I had run PF sense on other than Netgate hardware for a few years and it ran just fine for me. But considering the quality of the hardware they supply and their support, I decided to upgrade to their 6100. They deserve the community support considering the quality of the product. Am I happy that there is apparently going to no longer be a perpetual license for the software, not really. But I do realize that the threat is a perpetual moving target and requires that they continue to develop and monitor and update to maintain the security of the product. Spending near $900.00 for their appliance also got me a perpetual license. But I could afford that, allot of others out there can't. I started using Smoothwall in the early 2000s but migrated away to PFsense when smoothwall was no longer supported. They need to deal with the Chinese IP theft and this is clearly a move to deal with this.

• Hmm…. 30K views after 1 day = $3M a year in revenue. Personally, I will never pay a subscription for software as I only support perpetual software and hardware licensing models but I am fortunately in a financial position to purchase a perpetual license, should one be offered. I purchased the 4100, for example. Subscriptions only make since to me for web hosted solutions.

• It's very similar to the IBM/RedHat vs CentOS -> Rocky/Alma Linux scenario. But with the poor communication of the Unity game engine SNAFU. Inflation is increasing costs across the board for everyone. Everyone is raising their licensing costs. No doubt there will be many more controversies involving commercial entities who built upon open source. A business exists to turn a profit. I expect whatever open source community that exists around pfSense to jump ship and join their only competitor. Sadly, these shenanigans hurt everyone in the end. I see both sides of it from a commercial perspective and from the community perspective. It's a royal mess.

• The problem i have had for years with pfsense was the dns dropping with pfblocker. It got to the point where i had to write a custom fix that ran via cron to make sure that the dns service was up since service watchdog is bad for pfblocker apparently. This bug has been in for years with no fix after being reported so. I have been considering opnsense if i can find a pfblocker substitute.

• For a long time I have been considering switching to OPNSense, but never devoted time to do it. This is the nail in the coffin for pfSense! Please start doing videos on OPNSense instead from now on. Maybe initially a video on how to migrate from pfSense to OPNSense.

• "China won't respect our copyright and illegally sells products with our software. You know what will totally stop them? License changes that only our loyal hobbyist users abide by. Screwing them over instead of the problem people totally won't have any negative effect on our brand…"

• 0:11: 📢 The video discusses changes made to pfSense and the lack of communication about them.
  3:41: 🔑 The video discusses the issue of companies preloading pfSense on appliances and selling them on various marketplaces, potentially violating copyright laws and endangering the value relationship with stakeholders.
  7:14: 🤔 The speaker is confused about the switch back to CE and the disappearance of the $129 deal for Home users.
  10:53: 🔑 Contributing code back to the open source ecosystem is crucial for the success of firewalls.
  14:33: 💡 The speaker discusses the process of reloading pfSense on a negate Appliance and obtaining CE versions for arm devices.
  18:00: 📺 Netflix contributes code to improve streaming service, benefiting all users.
  21:47: 🔧 OpenWrt is a tinkering toy that lacks polish and documentation.
  25:53: 📝 The video discusses the switch from PF Sense to CE and the importance of documentation.
  29:48: 💰 The speaker suggests that charging a fee of $100 per year for a home lab license of pfSense would be reasonable and could help support the project.
  Recap by Tammy AI

• It would be a shame if pfsense ever goes full commercial

  I agree they should of had a home user cost, as pfsense essentially was built on its fan base on home users. They must have an enormous home user base, and to throw that away with business licensing is madness for them.

  Pfsense(netgate) should learn from microsoft, that when you have a massive home user base, you keep it, even if you sell rights to use your software at lower prices.

  It would be an absurd business model for me, for netgate to close down there massive home user base.

  Like you say, many would be ok with a resonable home license cost every year, and for me, €1-2 a week cost, meaning €50-100 a year would be a fair price for a home user license.

  It would be madness for netgate to throw away there massive home user base.

  Or maybe they could fork off and make a home user fork off pfsense, not just opensense, and keep a division for home users.

  Surely there is a massive massive market for home use of pfsense, and i think it would be madness on the part of netgate just to throw away what is there home user base, which must be massive.

  Your channel probably has most of your subs because of pfsense, and your knowledge on pfsense.

  It would be a shame if they ever were to close down home use of pfsense, and it would be a massive turn for the worse for netgate, as for me, it would be madness to turn away millions of users, as they must have millions of users world wide. To throw away that user base would not be a good idea for any company.

  I agree they should reconsider a home user license of there product if they are planning on going full commercial, as pfsense has such a big fan base it would be wrong, to just throw away all that effort they put into getting such a base of users.

  Personally i think €1-€2, $1-$2, £1-£2 in each currency a week would be a viable pricing for a firewall subscription. They could offer different amount of hours a month or year support into those prices, and most home users would not use there support, but it would be handy for those that needed support of niche issues.

  I would would use pfsense if i was able to get support on how to use it where i lived, as its not easy to set up when isps do weird things to try and deny you the ability to use your own router.

  As a home user i think that would be fair sub price that want to use pfsense as a home user license. The user base they have and the importance of a firewall on home networks means it would be a good deal for netgate and there home user base.

• 399 a year just put it up there with options like fortinet. A 40f utm license is about that. I trust fortinet for support and updates more than pfsense. 🤷‍♂️

• I am in the process of buying the gear to build my own homelab and was looking at using pfSense. I was ok with the $129/year for TAC Lite. It sucks that they just removed that option completely. I feel like $129/year is a reasonable price for home use. Obviously I would prefer it to be free for home use but if I have to pay then $129/year then I'm ok with that. I'll have to load pfSense CE into a VM and see what's features are available there. If it has what I need then I'll go that route because the experience of knowing how to use pfSense is definitely worth it for a career in IT.

• Thanks for this informative video Tom. I bought a Netgate 1100 appliance for home use nearly 2 years ago, currently with pfSense Plus 23.05.1-RELEASE. I've been quite happy with it and have learnt a lot about networking and firewall setup in the process. My question is (for anyone who might know), does this change affect current users of Netgate appliances (meaning I would need to pay licence fees for future upgrades)? Like many here who are thinking of jumping ship to OPNsense, would that be possible with a Netgate appliance?

• The power of influencers. Netgate has been very shady for years now. Since influencers use this product, people would use it and promote it.

• Easy enough. All these companies want to move to a recurring environment. Easy money.
  Reason why TNSR moved from $500 to now call sales. 😞

• I'm so glad I chose to install CE. Now, I just wonder how long CE will be supported.

• bait and switch – decade edition

• Et tu, Brute. Bugger it, im buying a Mikrotik.

• You’re negates #1 fanboi

• i wouldn't mind paying a fixed priced 129$ lifetime for one pfsense plus without any support, but if i wanted support, i think paying 129$ a year would be good

• From Netgate

  Thanks for the feedback. We appreciate it. As you have probably read our blog post on the matter, you will have seen that we had a problem that needed immediate attention. We made some decisions to protect the business in haste that we knew would result in some less-than-favorable feedback. We are hearing that feedback and much of it has been constructive.

  We are currently discussing the matter internally and are considering some changes that we believe will help to regain everyone’s trust. We're working on the details now and hope to have an announcement in the coming days. We believe people will be happy with the outcome.

  Now we just ask for a little patience so we can put the pieces together and make an announcement.

  Let me know if you have any other questions.

  Thanks again for the feedback.

• Cisco won't even sell you a subscription without a subscription.

• Can anyone clue me in on what I will now be missing out on so I can lament with you? 😂
  I got the plus upgrade code but never applied it.
  Now it seems I can forget it. Lol
  But what was so cool about plus?

• SUCKS THE END IS HERE!!!

• The death of a company. RIP.

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