6 ms·

Netgate is weirdly hostile to a lot of opensource stuff, which should be strange given what all their tech is built on top of. This has been going on for years

by seany 6y ago

Netgate is weirdly hostile to a lot of opensource stuff, which should be strange given what all their tech is built on top of. This has been going on for years. (see opnsense etc)

cperciva 6y ago
Netgate funds a lot of FreeBSD work, and employs FreeBSD committers. I certainly wouldn't describe them as hostile to open source.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  I didn't know that. That's kind of awesome.
- droopyEyelids 6y ago
  It seems clear to me this is a case of passionate coders with different personalities struggling with the difficult work of human communication in a world with limited resources and time. No one has to be the bad guy here or end up hostile to open source.
- tomxor 6y ago
  Perhaps entitled is the right word then.
  - cperciva 6y ago
    Maybe. It's not necessarily without reason -- if you make a lot of contributions and they are generally very well received, it's quite sensible to anticipate that further contributions will be equally well received and to be surprised if they're not. This was made worse by the unfortunate timing -- the final release candidate is just 3 days away. Any other time, we would have gone slower, had more discussion, et cetera; unfortunately this turned into an emergency.
- tedunangst 6y ago
  They can be a touch snotty towards developers who aren't freebsd committees.
  - cperciva 6y ago
    I think every project has people like that. I can think of some open source projects which are led by people with attitude problems.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Real subtle, Colin.
      - cperciva 6y ago
        I mean, Linus has openly acknowledged that he has behaved unprofessionally in the emails he sends to people who are trying to contribute. There isn't anything secret here.
        Crontab 6y ago
        LOL, my first thought was that you were talking about Theo.
        tptacek 6y ago
        I think he was. :)
        kaliszad 6y ago
        Btw. great gathering of people with a *BSD background or friends :-) I think, we all should be way more cool headed. Email doesn't contain the tone and it is very easy to formulate something in a bad way when exhausted or upset. Some people use very strong words that considering their usual style aren't nearly as strong in reality. In this case, the great question is, how did such a bad code (according to Jason) land in the code base at all? Don't other people look at it? Do the FreeBSD developers ignore concerns of other fellow developers until it blows up to beyond community communication circles?
colordrops 6y ago
They've recently forked their open and closed source products, so a lot of people have been migrating to OPNSense. I've been using it for a couple months now and recommend it.
- Arnavion 6y ago
  Same. I didn't really care for open-source-ness or for the anti-OPNsense smear campaigns as much, but when they announced they were EOLing the product I used I jumped ship to OPNsense too. It does everything my pfSense install did and then some. Eg DNS blocking and IP blocking are built-in instead of needing a pfblockerng-style plugin. The only thing I've found worth complaining about is the accordion sidebar UI thing makes it hard to middle-click-open new browser tabs, because it's not obvious which entries in the sidebar are actual pages and which are fake hyperlinks that just expand the accordion submenu.
m463 6y ago
I was about to buy a netgate router when I read the background of everything here on HN. Basically, all the opensource claims don't amount to a hill of beans, because you cannot compile pfsense yourself, even for their hardware. (I'm sure someone could come up with the link) The firewall should be the ONE place where this would be critical. You have to run their binary. I also think it phones home.

by seany 6y ago

Netgate is weirdly hostile to a lot of opensource stuff, which should be strange given what all their tech is built on top of. This has been going on for years. (see opnsense etc)

cperciva 6y ago

Netgate funds a lot of FreeBSD work, and employs FreeBSD committers. I certainly wouldn't describe them as hostile to open source.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
I didn't know that. That's kind of awesome.
droopyEyelids 6y ago
It seems clear to me this is a case of passionate coders with different personalities struggling with the difficult work of human communication in a world with limited resources and time. No one has to be the bad guy here or end up hostile to open source.
tomxor 6y ago
Perhaps entitled is the right word then.
- cperciva 6y ago
  Maybe. It's not necessarily without reason -- if you make a lot of contributions and they are generally very well received, it's quite sensible to anticipate that further contributions will be equally well received and to be surprised if they're not. This was made worse by the unfortunate timing -- the final release candidate is just 3 days away. Any other time, we would have gone slower, had more discussion, et cetera; unfortunately this turned into an emergency.
tedunangst 6y ago
They can be a touch snotty towards developers who aren't freebsd committees.
- cperciva 6y ago
  I think every project has people like that. I can think of some open source projects which are led by people with attitude problems.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Real subtle, Colin.
    - cperciva 6y ago
      I mean, Linus has openly acknowledged that he has behaved unprofessionally in the emails he sends to people who are trying to contribute. There isn't anything secret here.
      - Crontab 6y ago
        LOL, my first thought was that you were talking about Theo.
        tptacek 6y ago
        I think he was. :)
        kaliszad 6y ago
        Btw. great gathering of people with a *BSD background or friends :-) I think, we all should be way more cool headed. Email doesn't contain the tone and it is very easy to formulate something in a bad way when exhausted or upset. Some people use very strong words that considering their usual style aren't nearly as strong in reality. In this case, the great question is, how did such a bad code (according to Jason) land in the code base at all? Don't other people look at it? Do the FreeBSD developers ignore concerns of other fellow developers until it blows up to beyond community communication circles?

colordrops 6y ago

They've recently forked their open and closed source products, so a lot of people have been migrating to OPNSense. I've been using it for a couple months now and recommend it.

Arnavion 6y ago
Same. I didn't really care for open-source-ness or for the anti-OPNsense smear campaigns as much, but when they announced they were EOLing the product I used I jumped ship to OPNsense too. It does everything my pfSense install did and then some. Eg DNS blocking and IP blocking are built-in instead of needing a pfblockerng-style plugin. The only thing I've found worth complaining about is the accordion sidebar UI thing makes it hard to middle-click-open new browser tabs, because it's not obvious which entries in the sidebar are actual pages and which are fake hyperlinks that just expand the accordion submenu.

m463 6y ago

I was about to buy a netgate router when I read the background of everything here on HN. Basically, all the opensource claims don't amount to a hill of beans, because you cannot compile pfsense yourself, even for their hardware. (I'm sure someone could come up with the link) The firewall should be the ONE place where this would be critical. You have to run their binary. I also think it phones home.