So long and thanks for all the fish

[sharrisonUK]

I was more saying you seem to hung up on one feature of a depreciated app and ignoring all of what is still a great free to use product... Sorry to have irked you so much, it was honestly meant light-heartedly,:-)

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[TirsoJRP]

Enterprise quality web categorization is not something you could get for free. Also, web filter lite was getting closer to useless as https is free right now.

$200 for five years for an full enterprise product with support? That's a joke.

[Martin@]

Only to help you to understand why they leaf that unit that can’t support HTTPS inspection
See buy yourself in my home traffic result for 1 week (3 child)

HTTPS vs HTTP.JPG
In the upper report is HTTPS total traffic
In lower report is HTTP total traffic

As you see most of the traffic is HTTPS and in that case you need SSL inspector or any try to control traffic is useless
They made the right decision.

My 2 cent

Martin

[Sam Graf]

…resorting to dismissing other projects out of hand, or trying to justify the payment model is not the way to go. Open source software development is a key driver in technology innovation, and I don't like to see the erosion of this, however small the perception.

Try not to loose sight of these principals, continue to develop the community, support other open projects, even pay for Untangle if you like...

Without openness, progress will wither on the vine.

Regrettably there is no real possibility of taking a position on this without dismissing something out of the hand, whether it's a view of open source software or a view of paying a modest fee for given functionality.

I like the idea of choice, the central premise of open source software and consistent with the values I had back when typing free BASIC software into my Atari computers, before the "evil" of paid, copy protected software. Some will find Untangle's decisions acceptable, some won't. The mere fact that disagreement exits proves nothing. So "for shame, Untangle" is really about your choice, not about Untangle.

[sky-knight]

I'm a hardware vendor, and a network security specialist that supports small businesses.

I've used every single Open Source firewall you can imagine, I've also used all the closed source closed box options you can imagine.

Yet, I'm here trying to sell Untangle, which is getting harder because honestly... it's too expensive. At least relative to the likes of Sonicwall.

Now, you can sit here and make the rather weak claims that PFSense, or OPNSense are actually UTMs, which they are NOT I might add, but you'd just be fooling yourself and everyone else. These products are firewalls, not UTMs. And, just like Sonicwall, have serious limitations you have to be willing to gloss over to make a half comparison.

The issue at hand here is Untangle's decision to remove Web Filter Lite, a decision that has angered many. But the fact of life is that module could not process HTTPs and because of that it was and is demonstrably useless. Indeed, it's worse than useless it gives admins the idea that something is working when it is in fact, not. A false sense of security is far worse than no security. To make matters worse, https filtration while possible required a ton of work, much of that work maintaining the database the module used, that the community NEVER DID! The OP claims he volunteered time, well... not according to the quality of that database. Crowd sourced content control has simply not worked up to this point. I wish it did, because some competition would be great!

Now, Web Monitor is free, and it doesn't allow you to do anything with the information WITHIN ITSELF. But there is absolutely nothing preventing you from taking a report from Web Monitor and setting up some firewall rules based on IP addresses. The protection provided is better than Web Filter Lite, because it actually works, and you get to see what's really going on. All free...

Now, Web Filter is a paid upgrade, based on the zVelo filtration technology which is the best way to answer this question. It's the industry standard. But, it's also REALLY EXPENSIVE. Which why Dell abandoned it and went in house with what they use on Sonicwall. Now Untangle could do that, but that's not what Untangle does. The Untangle project aims to provide a platform that allows Untangle to purchase access to the best modules, and make them easy for us all to use. I know they've tested other Web Filters in the past, because Untangle knows zVelo is bloody expensive. But, it is the best.

So $50 / year for home users to have access to the best web filter on the market is a steal. If you look into what these modules are, who makes them, and what they actually cost... Untangle is a HUGE value. The problem is there are other "UTMs" out there, with bullet points on a marketing sheet, that do half what Untangle does or less, but are stupidly cheap. I'm looking at you Sonicwall...

And all of this is ignoring the elephant in the room... On premise security systems are dying.

Finally, if your contention is that free Untangle is useless, I'd also have to argue. I have many free Untangles in the field. Some of which I really cringe at every time I see them, because after years of faithful operation I cannot justify the expense to subing them.

[dmor]

This morning when I logged in to untangle over the VPN on my phone I noticed three things.

1) Version upgrade to 13.0, great I thought
2) Redesign of the web front end, initially good until I found that on mobile (Chrome) it's totally unusable as I'm no longer able to scroll around the screen when the frame doesn't fit within the browser window.
3) Web filter light has been removed.

I've been using Untangle due many years now, with one of the key functions being the ability to block certain categories of web content fron my kids. This is no longer possible, with $25/month for Web Filter being IMHO extortionate for a small home install.

I'll be moving on to another UTM distro, and I'll be advising all those whom I've advised to use untangle over the years to do the same.

I think its a real shame that you had a great community offering here that helped the commercial side of your business develop it's products, which you have now let down.

I'm sure there will be many others in this same position, and however you want to spin the reasons for your decision, it's just a way to attempt to rinse money from those trying to protect their families on a budget.

Very disappointed...., For Shame Untangle...

Dude. You realize it's $50/yr. NOT $25/mo, right? I appreciate your sentiment and am in the middle of being pissed at one of my vendors for price gouging with recent management changes and forcing all their customers to switch to a different product and force our hand by making the service we've been using for 8 years suddenly cost 2-3x as much as it has all along.

So I feel your pain when it comes to vendors forcing you out of what you've been using for so long, in order to monetize you in a way that you don't want. When it feels one-sided or self-serving, that makes me feel like the vendor doesn't value their customers or community.

With that said, for many years I've felt discouraged by the fact that Untangle had no subscriptions for home users that were at all reasonably priced. So I was actually very excited when they restructured their pricing and are giving home users the full enterprise security services for only ~$4/mo ($50/yr).

I really haven't used the free Untangle web filter for many years because there's just no comparison to the paid version. Then when you add SSP Inspection and he Policy Manager with the full subscription, it becomes extremely powerful, rivaling most any enterprise web filter in terms of completeness of security and features.

So to me the retirement of the legacy web filter really was a non-issue. In my opinion it really kind of offered a false sense of security anyway. And I know there's another thread in the forums with a much longer discussion on this, in which Untangle employees also mentioned that the free web filter often resulted in prospective customers abandoning Untangle prematurely, because they thought the Web Filter sucked (because they were comparing it to other enterprise web filters and expected the free version was supposed to somehow give a glimpse of the licensed version. This obviously is far from true). So I don't fault them for that reason either.

Still I feel your pain and don't blame you for being upset if it's something you were using that now has been stolen away from you without notice.

If you hung out in these forums more, you'd know that this change actually came along several months ago. But anyway, I get it.

I do use other commercial firewalls among my customer environments besides Untangle. But I really do appreciate the Untangle product and community and wish them success. I plan to continue to use their product for years to come both on my home network, as well as in many commercial environments.

I would encourage you to consider this post and whether Untangle meant you no harm, even though it has inconvenienced you. If so, then give them $4/mo for a major upgrade to your home security.


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[agit8or]

TL;DR - OP is butthurt because UT wants is now charging for the home license and came to cry.

[dmor]

TL;DR - OP is butthurt because UT wants is now charging for the home license and came to cry.

If you cared about promoting Untangle, I would recommend being nice to him, even if you feel his agitation is unwarranted. I'm not saying kiss up or don't be forthright. But we need to promote a positive and inviting community here. My $0.02.


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[anschmid]

I've been using Untangle due many years now, with one of the key functions being the ability to block certain categories of web content fron my kids. This is no longer possible, with $25/month for Web Filter being IMHO extortionate for a small home install.

Maybe this has gone a bit off track very quickly. As I read this the original OP was concerned he'll have to pay $25 a MONTH for Web Filter ONLY for a small home install.

Maybe he didn't realise there is a Home Edition (Community Version) of Untangle where you can get ALL the modules for $50 a YEAR?

[sky-knight]

Given post number 2, I think it's pretty clear the OP knew about the home sub. He all but demanded the home license be free. Some people are just not happy unless you're giving things away. I guess the Untangle team, and all the upstream vendors that provide technology for Untangle don't need to eat or anything.

I've had this conversation too many times in the last short while. It's 100% people that felt Web Filter Lite actually had some sort of functionality. It just didn't, so Untangle removes a broken module and replaces it with something that actually works and everyone loses their minds. My customers call me upset, and leave thinking about how to proceed. This is an evolution, not an extermination. There is no force to a paid product. The only loss is an http URL filter. Which is so situational in the current market to have almost no value, it's like trying to specify a filter rule based on source port. Sure it's useful, but most of the time it just generates support tickets because people use it wrong. Untangle took that functionality away too, for equally good reasons.