3 ms·

I don't think this is completely accurate, nor is it recent. Their "community edition" is open source and free: https://www.pfsense.org/download/ https://www.

by mig39 6y ago

I don't think this is completely accurate, nor is it recent. Their "community edition" is open source and free: https://www.pfsense.org/download/ https://www.pfsense.org/download/ Also, they have https://github.com/pfsense/ https://github.com/pfsense/

freedom42 6y ago
Then idk what this comment [1] means. Maybe someone could clarify? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915295
k_roy 6y ago
Except it's not. The source that is provided doesn't actually build pfSense as shipped. Plus there are binaries that no source is provided for that "you don't need to worry about"
tw04 6y ago
Community Edition will diverge from Pfsense+ with the 2.6 release. They have also made no commitments there will be any releases after that - "it's up to the community". They will, however, gatekeep what features the community is allowed to add. Community Edition is more or less a dead man walking at this point, they just refuse to come right out and say that. Someone asked if they'd allow one of the REST API projects to be put into upstream and they gave some ridiculous answer about how they'd review any commit but alluded to the fact they won't actually accept it. Because what would they do if the maintainer left? Their suggestion was to fork it. Which, ironically, is exactly what OPNsense did and then Jim Thompson acted like a misbehaving 6 year old and created a website trying to bash them and didn't even have the spine to own up to it until there was a court order. https://opnsense.org/opnsense-com/ https://opnsense.org/opnsense-com/ I'm not sure why ANYONE would waste any effort on adding anything to pfsense at this point when they won't actually commit to accepting features upstream that competes with PFsense+.
- k_roy 6y ago
  I've been on the wrong end of the Netgate brigade/shills/apologists before due to a few blog entries, and it's not fun. I'm just glad others are seeing the darker side of them.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  In my case, I don't readily find hostility toward a group that has busted tail to provide me tremendous value while I have contributed very little in return. My interactions over the years have been - perhaps not exclusively positive but overwhelmingly so. History says one day pfSense will no longer fill my needs. Okay. I'll raise an imaginary glass move on with gratitude.
  - frankharv 6y ago
    Well instead of pfSense no longer fulfilling your needs than maybe its time to beam up to the mothership. FreeBSD can do everything pfSense does without a web interface.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      pfSense provided a real easy of use, at least back in the day. Given that the whole config synced over to a backup/HA failover system and updates to one could easily be confirmed synced to the other, there was a real ease of use in using pfSense (at least I thought so about a decade ago when I was using it). Spend enough time configuring HA firewalls and you start wishing you had something to take care of alerting about config differences and syncing changes automatically, and that's one of the things pfSense offered that was good. This wasn't a case of us not knowing how to configure stuff in the OS, we moved from configuring OpenBSD firewalls with pf+pfsync, ipsec+sasync and carp to pfSense because it just made it easier to deploy and configure, given we had about ten or more of these we maintained for customers. Even recently at a new job we were talking about upgrading or replacing some HA FreeBSD firewall pairs, and I was suggesting pfSense because it's simple to use, and just BSD underneath. Given what I've learned in this thread about the state of the project and company behind them now, I don't think I would recommend it anymore, but I still think a similar project with similar features has something to offer over vanilla BSD.
      - croutonwagon 6y ago
        I moved over to opnsense yesterday. Just built my config in a vm. Exported. Installed the firewall and imported and setup the interfaces. It should do all of that and seems to have a few nice features to boot. As well as a much steadier release cycle. And a security audit feature built in to tell you if the updates available will patch vulns. Which I found neat Example, the version i built is on 21.1: https://imgur.com/a/2X2UBJQ https://imgur.com/a/2X2UBJQ

by mig39 6y ago

freedom42 6y ago

Then idk what this comment [1] means. Maybe someone could clarify? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915295

k_roy 6y ago

Except it's not. The source that is provided doesn't actually build pfSense as shipped. Plus there are binaries that no source is provided for that "you don't need to worry about"

tw04 6y ago

Community Edition will diverge from Pfsense+ with the 2.6 release. They have also made no commitments there will be any releases after that - "it's up to the community". They will, however, gatekeep what features the community is allowed to add. Community Edition is more or less a dead man walking at this point, they just refuse to come right out and say that. Someone asked if they'd allow one of the REST API projects to be put into upstream and they gave some ridiculous answer about how they'd review any commit but alluded to the fact they won't actually accept it. Because what would they do if the maintainer left? Their suggestion was to fork it. Which, ironically, is exactly what OPNsense did and then Jim Thompson acted like a misbehaving 6 year old and created a website trying to bash them and didn't even have the spine to own up to it until there was a court order. https://opnsense.org/opnsense-com/ https://opnsense.org/opnsense-com/ I'm not sure why ANYONE would waste any effort on adding anything to pfsense at this point when they won't actually commit to accepting features upstream that competes with PFsense+.

k_roy 6y ago
I've been on the wrong end of the Netgate brigade/shills/apologists before due to a few blog entries, and it's not fun. I'm just glad others are seeing the darker side of them.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
In my case, I don't readily find hostility toward a group that has busted tail to provide me tremendous value while I have contributed very little in return. My interactions over the years have been - perhaps not exclusively positive but overwhelmingly so. History says one day pfSense will no longer fill my needs. Okay. I'll raise an imaginary glass move on with gratitude.
- frankharv 6y ago
  Well instead of pfSense no longer fulfilling your needs than maybe its time to beam up to the mothership. FreeBSD can do everything pfSense does without a web interface.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    pfSense provided a real easy of use, at least back in the day. Given that the whole config synced over to a backup/HA failover system and updates to one could easily be confirmed synced to the other, there was a real ease of use in using pfSense (at least I thought so about a decade ago when I was using it). Spend enough time configuring HA firewalls and you start wishing you had something to take care of alerting about config differences and syncing changes automatically, and that's one of the things pfSense offered that was good. This wasn't a case of us not knowing how to configure stuff in the OS, we moved from configuring OpenBSD firewalls with pf+pfsync, ipsec+sasync and carp to pfSense because it just made it easier to deploy and configure, given we had about ten or more of these we maintained for customers. Even recently at a new job we were talking about upgrading or replacing some HA FreeBSD firewall pairs, and I was suggesting pfSense because it's simple to use, and just BSD underneath. Given what I've learned in this thread about the state of the project and company behind them now, I don't think I would recommend it anymore, but I still think a similar project with similar features has something to offer over vanilla BSD.
    - croutonwagon 6y ago
      I moved over to opnsense yesterday. Just built my config in a vm. Exported. Installed the firewall and imported and setup the interfaces. It should do all of that and seems to have a few nice features to boot. As well as a much steadier release cycle. And a security audit feature built in to tell you if the updates available will patch vulns. Which I found neat Example, the version i built is on 21.1: https://imgur.com/a/2X2UBJQ https://imgur.com/a/2X2UBJQ