this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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pfsense is open washing (github.com)
submitted 1 month ago by artiman@piefed.social to c/opensource@programming.dev
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[–] troed@fedia.io 22 points 1 month ago (4 children)

This bugs me. I selected between pfSense and OpnSense a few years ago and got the impression pfSense's support and UI was better. I'm not looking forward to having reconfigure everything if switching :/

[–] genuineparts 8 points 1 month ago

There are some convertors that can wrangle a pfsense config into opnsense. I had the exact same issue and exact same thought about two years ago. But I do like Opnsense much, much more nowadays.

[–] Matty_r@programming.dev 4 points 1 month ago

I made the switch. It was a good excuse to clean up my config though.

I ended up installing it in a VM initially, just so I could configure it how I needed before going live. Then made a config backup, installed opnsense, then restored the config (after changing the interface names)

I'll never go back to pfsense.

[–] coronach@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 month ago

Been very happy with OPNsense since switching a few years ago.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Tried OpenSense twice, always fell back to pfSense.

Plus, work gave me a rackmount Netgate appliance, so I'm on it until that unit dies.

[–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn’t this why we have OpnSense?

[–] somewa@suppo.fi 35 points 1 month ago (2 children)

No, OPNsense doesn't exist because of pfsense false advertising and misleading people to think it's open source.

More like it exists because of pfsense not being open source. This has nothing to do with the advertising.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's proprietary about pfSense? Been using it for a decade and this is news to me.

[–] coronach@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 month ago

The article is a good start. For one, you cannot build it. They have some sort of proprietary blob in their toolchain so that only netgate can build it.

Between that, the massive security fuckups, and the absolutely horrid behavior from the maintainers I dumped that shit and haven't looked back.

[–] mcmodknower@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Btw that seems to be a fork/reupload of a DMCA'd repo.

[–] artiman@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i don't seem to see a dmca notice in the forked from project

[–] mcmodknower@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

If you click links in the readme (i only tried the last two ones) you get a dmca takedown message.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Netgate are shitbags. Fuck pfSense.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

just use OpenWRT, it has all the same shit

[–] artiman@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago

I'm not a networking expert but OpenWrt on my homelab is pretty fucking awesome

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Feel free to make additions here: https://consumerrights.wiki/Netgate

Clicking link leading to https://forum.netgate.com/#msg759561 and https://forum.netgate.com/#msg754001
Gave me [[error:blacklisted-ip]]

The user whose Bug was removed from the website, made a clone bug report. https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8215

Comparing the report on the site with the screenshot: