Netgate Announces pfSense Plus With Greater Divergence From pfSense

[aht0]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need the GPL license.

Like GPL would change a thing.

Show me the sources for Mikrotik router's firmware..
Its based on Linux.

You CAN find sources for RouterOS GPL bits but without the rest of it, they might as well not be.

[Space Heater]

Like GPL would change a thing.

Show me the sources for Mikrotik router's firmware..
Its based on Linux.

You CAN find sources for RouterOS GPL bits but without the rest of it, they might as well not be.

Yeah the GPL is so so useless that they only provide source code for the things covered under the GPL aka the "GPL bits", so really it's better to not use the GPL at all and let everything become proprietary!

Really impressive mental gymnastics.

[torsionbar28]

So if it's the open source license holding them back (not sure this is credible), how can they then donate those features back to CE? If it's not the license, the open source version is limited only by the amount of work they willing to put into it. This makes no sense to me.

Honestly I don't see the big deal here. They are not taking anything away from the open source pfSense product that is available today. All they're doing is focusing future development efforts on a closed "plus" edition. The community is free to continue developing the free version, and they will add some of the "plus" features over time. Seems quite reasonable to me. Feels similar to the FreeNAS/TrueNAS changes. The business has to make a profit, and right now ebay is flooded with old junk peecee's that have pfSense installed on them. Developing a more premium product for better market differentiation is not unusual, nor is it bad.

If you want an example of how NOT to differentiate your free vs. paid product, just look at the Red Hat / CentOS debacle. That's such a poorly planned and executed maneuver, it's sure to become a textbook case study some day.

[caligula]

Is pfSense a lot better than OpenWRT? Some say the driver support is worse on low end wireless hardware, but then again the BSD kernel has better efficiency and BSD is a better license.

[JanW]

Honestly I don't see the big deal here. They are not taking anything away from the open source pfSense product that is available today.
...
The business has to make a profit

Of course they are free to make that choice, and it may make sense for them from an economic point of view (we'll see if that works out). I was talking about the way they present that choice, announcing "to move beyond the limitations of pfSense open source software". They try to make it sound like a legal/technical barrier inherent in OSS was holding them back, when in reality its about making more profit.

[aht0]

Yeah the GPL is so so useless that they only provide source code for the things covered under the GPL aka the "GPL bits", so really it's better to not use the GPL at all and let everything become proprietary!

Really impressive mental gymnastics.

He implied that GPL would automagically make anything "open". Another GPL-fanboy/ideologue.
I showed him his error with a practical example. If you get triggered by it, stay on Linux threads.

[aht0]

Is pfSense a lot better than OpenWRT? Some say the driver support is worse on low end wireless hardware, but then again the BSD kernel has better efficiency and BSD is a better license.

More capable for sure. Up to and including enterprise level options. WebUI layout/design has actually been thought through. Many things you can't do from OpenWRT at all or comes down to digging deep into console.

WiFi? Why do you even care? Closed closet in the cellar where you'd put your network firewall is suboptimal for creating wireless AP anyway. Get normal WiFi AP - connect it to pfSense by ethernet cable and set the fucking AP where it's signal actually would spready anywhere you need.

[torsionbar28]

WiFi? Why do you even care? Closed closet in the cellar where you'd put your network firewall is suboptimal for creating wireless AP anyway. Get normal WiFi AP - connect it to pfSense by ethernet cable and set the fucking AP where it's signal actually would spready anywhere you need.

^ This 100%. I never understood people who buy those large hideous alien spacecraft looking WiFi routers and place them prominently in their living space. So ugly, yuck. Wired Firewall/router hidden in a closet, out of sight. And wifi AP's wherever you need signal. I like the ones from Ubiquiti that look like small white discs, totally unobtrusive, mount on your ceilings and nobody even notices them.

[waxhead]

In subsequent releases, pfSense Plus will increasingly diverge from pfSense CE - leveraging a newer and more robust secure networking software stack, which allows for feature, performance, and manageability expansion well beyond the limitations of the current stack. With that being said, there will be a no-charge version of pfSense Plus available for home and lab users with all the functionality.

The latter is interesting. I don't use pfSense anymore and prefer OPNSense. There has been a lot of jackass behaviour between the projects and for me the way my netgate behaved was the main reason that made me switch. Either *sense is perfect and none of them are saints, but "winning" users (which again at some point wins enterprise) due to technical excellence is the way forward for sure. But why do you even need a CE edition if your pro version is free for personal use?

[Dennis-Netgate]

The latter is interesting. I don't use pfSense anymore and prefer OPNSense. There has been a lot of jackass behaviour between the projects and for me the way my netgate behaved was the main reason that made me switch. Either *sense is perfect and none of them are saints, but "winning" users (which again at some point wins enterprise) due to technical excellence is the way forward for sure. But why do you even need a CE edition if your pro version is free for personal use?

I'm aware of what happened in the past, but I've been here 2 years working in the community and what happened then is not my style . To your main point of why have a CE version. Some users will prefer an open-source version of pfSense and we want to keep this as an option for them.