Jim, I have to say that I agree with everything that you wrote. I am no stranger to the problems and concerns that plague funding of open-source software, and to the one-sided expectation of many (perhaps even most) users.
My original concern was merely about implications of the particular message, and I'm glad to find that I was reading too much into those words. I look forward to continuing to support pfSense with my participation and, in the future, purchases when the opportunity presents itself for me to do so. Moshe -- Moshe Katz -- [email protected] -- +1(301)867-3732 On Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 7:50 AM, Jim Thompson <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Aug 3, 2016, at 9:18 PM, Moshe Katz <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Maybe I'm reading too much into points 1 (second paragraph) and 4 of > your message, but it sounds somewhat hostile to the old > use-your-own-hardware selling point that brought me into the pfSense > community ten years ago in the first place. > > Moshe, > > Thanks for your kind words. I appreciate your reaching out. I think that > perhaps you are over-reading my response. > > Use-your-own hardware (if you want) is still a key point of pfSense, and > it's not changing, even though I get challenged frequently on same both > inside and outside the company. > > I've literally had people (outside the company) challenge me during the > past 24 hours that there is "no barrier to entry" for people entering the > market to sell appliances based on pfSense software (typically on Amazon or > eBay). > > This is truth. > > We carry on anyway. > > Personally, I think pfSense has gotten a lot better during the past > several years as we've been able to bring dedicated professional staff to > bear on the process of keeping up to date with our upstream project(s), > rather than lagging by several years. All the changes to the toolchain to > support this remain open source. > > Case in point: 2.4 snapshots will begin shortly, based on FreeBSD 11, > which is not yet in release candidate form. MPD and captive portal don't > work, but these will be fixed before 2.4-release. The captive portal work > will serve to decrease our technical debt, due to the elimination of > several patches found in pfSense that will never be upstreamed, and are not > up to our standards of quality. 2.4 will also bring the ARM architecture > to pfSense. We've also moved to bsdinstall, which means that ZFS is an > option during install. Moving from PBI to pkg-ng as part of 2.3 enabled > this work. This move included a huge improvement in the build tools to be a > lot more like those found in FreeBSD. Work in this area continues. > > Past efforts to improve both FreeBSD and pfSense include bringing AES-GCM > to IPsec. Work continues on making the stack faster and better, see our > paper, Measurement and Improvement of a software based IPsec implementation > to be given at Eurobsdcon next month. > https://2016.eurobsdcon.org/speakers/ (this effort is a pre-requisite to > making QAT work at speed.) > > The entire FreeBSD community (including various forks of pfSense) benefits > from these efforts, just as the entire pfSense community benefits both from > these efforts as well as those of outside collaborators like BBCan117 > (pfblockerNG) or Denny Page (dpinger, bringing the NUT package back to > 2.3+) or Bill Meeks (Snort and Suricatta) or Phil Davis (space does not > allow me to begin to enumerate Phil's contributions) or even Kill > Bill/doktornotor. I hesitate mentioning these because I have left many > others out, and I do not mean to slight their efforts by not mentioning > them. > > All of it, every single piece, is under a liberal open source license. > > But it remains true that there would not be a project but for the core > developers and core contributors. We preferentially employ FreeBSD > committers to work on pfSense. This has always been true. Running the > project takes funds. > > - Donations don't work, and we ask that anyone who wants to donate to > pfSense instead donate to the FreeBSD Foundation. > - Support does not scale. > - Appliance sales do. > > I am not blocking BYOH, nor have I made any plans to do so. I'm not > hostile to it at all, Moshe. > > This said, people selling appliances based on pfSense *who do not > otherwise contribute to pfSense* (or worse, who work against pfSense), are > not part of the solution. > > Applianceshop/Deciso, and every one of their "opnsense" partners still > also offer pfSense on the same appliances. None of them contribute to > pfSense, all are willing to see it destroyed. I do not endorse or support > these companies and individuals. > > Any number of parties on eBay and Amazon (and elsewhere) sell pfSense > appliances, but none of them contribute to pfSense or FreeBSD. I don't > block these, though I do insist that they correctly use our trademarks. > That said, I do not endorse or support these parties, as they do not > participate in the project or upstream, while freely availing themselves of > our efforts. > > Companies as large as VMware, Cisco and Avaya have forks or components of > pfSense as part of their product set. None of them contribute to pfSense or > FreeBSD. We are approached several times per week by companies large and > small, almost always with a one-way deal. > > In every healthy relationship there is an exchange of value where each > party gets something out of the exchange, even if it is relatively small. > This can be a deliberate exchange, or it can be embedded in social > interaction and conversation. > > Value may be a perception of benefit, rather than something material. It > may or may not be quantifiable and it may be highly valued or of limited > value. It may also be unconsciously rather than consciously assessed. > > A critical aspect of value exchange is that each side is content with what > they are getting relative to what they are giving. The underlying principle > that makes this work is that of barter, where people have a surfeit of some > things (and thus value them less), and exchange them for things they want > or need (which they value more). > > A common social value exchange involves some combination of information, > affirming relationship and soothing of troubles. The classic retail and > business value exchange is money for goods and services. > > Open source is no different, there are sill value exchanges that must > exist. All sides must be content with the exchange. > > I look forward to your response. > > Jim > > > > _______________________________________________ > pfSense mailing list > https://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list > Support the project with Gold! https://pfsense.org/gold > _______________________________________________ pfSense mailing list https://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list Support the project with Gold! https://pfsense.org/gold
