I just tested Portmaster on Windows and Reddit reply sums up my experience.
Stop calling things that are not true, Portmaster is NOT FOSS. Paywalling features goes against the spirit and philosophy of FOSS… Even GNOME has removed Portmaster as FOSS and put it under proprietary for that reason. I think they paywalled features because they are not funded anymore. The app looks good, but I’ve no confidence in this app, whatsoever. Lots of spaghetti code, bloated, uses tons of ram and cpu, 3 executables to run, one of which is just a tray icon that is bugged for years, needs kernel permission, but devs have no idea what to do against bsods. It’s very easy to bsod someone running portmaster, not going to tell you how, but I’ve tested this with another machine with an easy overflow attack. If developers do not master and can’t fix bugs in the realm of security, kernel space and the mechanics of firewall, then I’ve zero faith, period. This app should not run in the kernel space, AT ALL. It also uses WFP, so it’s totally dependent on Windows, yet it asks full system control, restricting user freedom. Also exaggerating itself vs other products on dedicated comparison websites (heaviliy biased). All of this, you still call it FOSS and best practice?
Can’t confirm the technical claims of BSOD etc.
It is indeed paywalled very hard. Most features require subscription even when you expect to see some basic data like the amount of traffic processes consumes, are paywalled.
When shutting down the app from in-app options, doesn’t terminate any processes it is using, it is still running in the background.
EDIT: if you guys knows a good firewall with a lot of capabilities and secure for windows let me know.