Windows Firewall Control (WFC) by BiniSoft.org

Here comes the bloat.

 

Indeed, highly unlikely, since Emsisoft gave up on firewall business completely and made it very clear.

We can exclude companies, which have a firewall integrated and also big names, they would not consider WFC as a notable player. I was thinking, maybe Avira? Its "firewall" is a joke.

 

Indeed, it is said WFC was bought the 21 march 2018, my last day at Emsisoft was the 16th and i didn't heard anything about adding a firewall control to EAM, so i guess it is some other companies.

 

Updates will no longer be.

Analyze the Сonnection Logs for outbound and inbound connections that have been blocked, and create relevant enabling rules for them.

 

I'm thinking Avira too.

 

Time to think about alternatives to WFC ... ... ...

 

Question is where do you begin and is it so necessary for most users.

Seems it's been quite ok with how far it's came in spite of occasional ins and outs that go along with any software.

This is been a pretty feature-rich front end with Developer support for however long. And IMHO completely within reason.

The mystery quiz of the day is, who or what vendor

 

Personally I can't see any reason to change, WFC it's fine as it is. It will certainly be interesting to see who bought it though.

 

Because eventually, WFC will be integrated in a different security product in the near future... so unless you want a new AV.

 

Yep, that's why I'm interested in alternatives to WFC. Personally, I couldn't care less who has acquired Binisoft. All I'm interested in is WFC, and this app has ceased to exist with Binisoft's acquisition.

 

Is this new or not?

https://www.avira.com/en/support-for-home-knowledgebase-detail/kbid/1623

 

Last updated: Thursday, May 18, 2017

 

The point is well taken, however WFC in it's current/even previous versions seem it's still going to be quite an act to follow and/or replace.

I personally didn't realize how far back this program went until checking early thread timestamps on topic titles.

It's been educational to follow these discussions over the past many months and especially recent weeks.

 

Does anyone know a reasonable method to backup this WFC thread?
It contains a substantial body of knowledge that I would not want to lose.

 

Sad to hear that WFC will be integrated in another product but great to hear that you will have a job in integrating it. Best wishes for your future.

Would be great to open source WFC v5.x so that another developer could take over development.

 

Ceased to exist?

 

Terrible news. Integrated into another security product means a bloated mess more than likely. This is a sad day indeed. I’ve been using this from day dot, it’s one of the first things I put on a fresh install and one of even sometimes only software running real-time in the tray. It has been invaluable to me. Thanks for such a lightweight and quality software and by far the best one of its kind by a big margin. I hope it continues to work for a long time to come because I for one will miss it. First thing I do is delete all Windows firewall rules let WFC add its minimum ruleset (Windows Update, Time service etc.) set to medium filtering then add WFC to right-click context menu for easy creation of rules. Saved me a lot of time. I guess I’ll be back to doing this manually when the time comes. All the best for the future alexandrud and I hope to still see you around and thanks again for the quality software.


No need to rush for a replacement guys as it still works for now. It’s a front end for the Windows Firewall so you’ll still get updates from Microsoft lol

 

It's not going anywhere, even if Alexandrud decides to not frequent here anymore in favor of their new company's own forums, why would this thread get deleted? The binaries though, you might want to backup the latest of those with the hashes, I can see those poofing over night.

 

The current version is available for download and does work with Windows 7 and more recent versions of Windows. It is a front-end for Windows Firewall, not a firewall by itself. So, it does not need security patches or other updates. If I take a look back in time, in the past years, only few minor features were added to WFC, while the most functionality (handling the firewall rules, connections log, notifications, lock mode, etc) is there since the very first years of development. Basically, WFC had the same features over the past 6 years. So, WFC can be still used for another 6 years, unless Microsoft does not remove the support for Windows Firewall API.

If WFC would have been open source, the donations would have been even less and WFC would have been way beyond of the current state. Big companies, which have revenues from other sources can afford to invest in open source projects. As a single developer you can't continue to support an open source project indefinitely, so it eventually gets abandoned because you can't make a living just by writing code for free. This really takes a lot of time. You have to pay the rent, the bills, you need a vacation from time to time, etc, things which you can't do without financial resources. Also, nobody is interested to acquire an open source project.

 

Is there any planned expiry of existing users been able to continue to activate the product?

Not sure what the obsession is with companies wanting one big bloated product instead of separate packages for each specific task. The integration doesnt excite me.

 

Why tho? there is no technical need for updates for this program to work, it doesnt rely on signatures, and is a front end for the underlying windows firewall.

The only issue I see is if in future the activation function stops working, then of course the program will no longer be useable on new windows installations.

 

It may be integrated, but why would that stop you using the existing binaries as standalone?

 

Hello

I was thinking that now that the original project has ended, is it possible to release a free-for-all(all features enabled, read notifications) installer/setup?
Sort of a parting gift?

Thank you

 

Why would the new owner allow that?

 

The existing registered users will be able to activate WFC. The website will not disappear. However, in the future, when the new product will be ready, the new owner may decide to offer only that version.

I can't decide this. Currently, this is an unanswered question.