[OOTB-hive] List of questions for Office hours - next Firday

[Ole Hejlskov]

Gentle-bees,

On 08 Aug 2014, at 16:40, Boriss Mejias <tchorix at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear fellow bees,
> 
> Following Ole's initiative, I'll try to sum up a list of questions we have for Doug next office hours. The idea is that we give them priority due to the time constraint. From our discussions, I see four main topics ordered by priority. I'll name them so that we can discuss about them by its name:
> 
> PROMISE:
> Peter Löfgren (Loftux) promise request on community edition:
> "I'm therefore looking for a Community promise from Alfresco Software Inc.
> - Any features/functionality available today will remain available
> - Any features/functionality available today will remain on par with Enterprise
> - Any new features/functionality added to Community will be bound by the Community Edition promise”

Yes! We need some commitment from Alfresco. There was a rumor floating around that the new Solr upgrade would be enterprise only, because it was not present in 5.0.a. HOWEVER, this was a MISUNDERSTANDING, but just think about it for a second. If people really speculate about this, then something is seriously wrong!


> 
> COMMUNITY TEAM:
> What happens with the Alfresco Software Inc.'s Community team? Will they hire someone else? Why has the Chief Community Officer role disappeared?
> Richard does a great job but it is obviously too much work for only one person. Some concrete examples: much less TTLs, this is the first office hours since May.

Really +1 for this. This needs to be the first question.

Alfresco is entering a critical stage. It’s gaining traction, we see more and more people asking questions, getting started etc. For me personally we feel this at work. We have way too much to do later this fall.
We need a *strong* community presence to help guide these new people. Again, Richard is doing a great job, but he is just one guy.

ALSO WE NEED MORE ALFRESO SWAG! Seriously, I was so happy when I recieved my Alfresco t-shirt. This really helps motivate people who are going the extra mile for the community.


> 
> LOCAL COMMUNITIES:
> What will happen with the support to the local communities? When we organised meetups. Can we invite Alfresco engineers to give talks, with their participation being sponsored by Alfresco Inc?
> 
> OOTB:
> The idea is to present the Order of the Bee to Doug, and sum it up with two objectives:
> - Be a driving force to organize and promote the Alfresco Community, where members are people working and using Alfresco regardless the software edition.
> - Guarantee the existence of Alfresco Community edition as a free/libre open source solution for document management
> Given that, what is his opinion of Alfresco engineers willing to be part of the order? what is his opinion about Alfresco partners willing to be part of the order
> 
> Feedback is welcome regarding the questions, adding new questions, changing the priority, and also regarding the two objectives I put for the order.


I’d like to add this:
 - What is your overall impression of the community as a hole? Do you think it is useful? We’ve heard rumors that the “management” does not seem to think that the community contribute………………
    - Someone said it on IRC, don’t want to mention any names, you know who you are if you want to tell more about it

 - What did you know about Open Source before you joined Alfresco? - What have you learned since then?

 - It seems all engineers we talk to support the open source strategy the live and breathe for open source. However, when hearing from sales and management I get the feeling that “open source” is just a thing that looks good on paper, but they really don’t care, and they would *never* even talk to the community users and they really don’t know what that “open sauce” is all about. Seriously, this is the vibe you get and I have a scary story to tell, that I told Jeff and Richard about at Summit last year. The question being: Does open source matter to you personally? And how do you think that opinion propagates down the ladder in the company?

 - Downloading the community edition. What is up with that? Are the sales team really THAT scared of those open source hippies? If users and potential new customers want to try out your product, you do not need to stalk them by requiring their contact info. Fine, if they want the enterprise trail, go a head. But for community….? Come on.


I could go on, but I will stop and give room for anyone else and get back to hacking the Alfresco SDK 2.0 so we can get that beta released ;)

/Ole