Messages

Details do matter and I implicitly said the version for clarity. Say that is was a "dev" version would require the date as context. Also, I am not much of a marketing person, I am more of a tech person.  8)

The videos I make are based mostly on my use of the things I talk about not just in a lab or test setup, but more often in production environments that we manage for clients directly or consult on. Creating content based on the things we use in production environments is much easier than making content on something that I just test in the lab because I can discuss with my team on how projects went and incorporate that feedback and knowledge back into the videos.

This leads to lots of debate from people of "Why did you choose to use....." and for reasons I don't really understand people will treat my choice of a solution as an attack on the solution they prefer. This occurs with many things I talk about, and relevant to this post is of course firewall choices.

As a long time user of pfsense for business production system that is the platform both me and my team know very well. It has been part of thousands of network builds we have consulted on making it an easy topic for me to cover. As for OPNSense when asked I have had the same response for years: "Use what makes you happy." As for things in my videos I have said about OPNSense vs pfsense regarding updates, I frequently mention that the package updates are more frequent from OPNSense and therefore less ideal when you have to manage many clients firewalls due to the more frequent updates to the system. If I am wrong about this, let me know.

I find it weird that my tweet was perceived as "He's constantly had the need to defend them and push talking points on why the other software is better" as that is out of context of what I was discussing. I said in that tweet thread that I don't think OPNSense is bad and my mention that pfsense is on FreeBSD 14 and both projects are actively developed. This is just a reply to someone asking if OPNSense is it more modern. I don't see this as telling people not to use OPNSense and goes back to my statement that my choice on what I use is should not be perceived as an attack on the things I don't use.

In the video referenced that started this post I clearly do not agree with the changes they made and I discuss the challenges of open source in general with a focus on the FreeBSD and if we don't have strong contributors then the downstream ecosystems will suffer from that. 

We all benefit from good discussion on these topics and sharing knowledge so If there are things I am wrong about, let me know.