[OOTB-hive] CE looking bad?

[Richard Esplin]

There are lots of related points in this thread. I will try to reply to them 
all in a single post.

* Marketing page

I can influence the marketing strategy, but I don't own it. Product Marketing 
is responsible for those pages, and only sometimes consults with me (and will 
probably interact similarly with the Community Marketer). However, I was a big 
part of the chart that you are complaining about.

I don't understand the concerns over this page. Every vendor has a comparison 
page between different products where they try to show the value for paying 
more money. Alfresco has always had a comparison page like this, except for a 
brief period when it was ignoring Community Edition completely. Last year I 
edited it to accentuate what Community Edition provides: a robust content 
repository with a productive collaboration interface, an ecosystem of add-ons, 
and access to the mobile clients. We now emphasize that Community Edition gets 
a lot of the same testing as Enterprise Edition, and is appropriate in 
situations that the customer is committed to self-support.

If you want to propose another bullet, I can suggest adding it to the page. 
You will find that it is hard to communicate briefly, understandably, and 
accurately. Regardless, the nature of the page is that there will be more red 
x's then green checks.

I worked with Product Marketing on the product datasheets that are the 
foundation of how we communicate our strategy. I felt good with how they 
turned out. It looks like the only one currently online is the comparison data 
sheet:

http://pages.alfresco.com/rs/alfresco/images/en-enterprise-community-edition-comparison.pdf

You can complain about what Alfresco is doing, or you can recognize that over 
the past year the company has become more accommodating to your concerns 
regarding the product messaging. I prefer to accentuate the progress we have 
made.

* Order of the Bee page about Community Edition features

I think this is a great idea and I encourage you to do it.

I recently proposed adding something to the official Community Edition page at 
Alfresco.com to show that there are Community alternatives to some Enterprise 
Add-ons. The team was open to it, but there were concerns about us naming 
specific add-ons. There is a potential legal risk if there are problems with an 
add-on we recommend, and it gets awkward to figure out the right amount of 
publicity to give competition to our own paid features. Order of the Bee 
doesn't have to worry about those concerns.

When possible, I think you should suggest a few add-ons for each feature. 
Specifically, both AAAR and Alfresco Business Reporting are worth calling out. 
I specifically want to highlight CmisSync as solving a common need and making 
Alfresco much more useful.

* Overall Strategy for Community Edition

Our officially agreed upon strategy is laid out in last Summer's blog post:

http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/strong-open-source-product/

Over a six month period we went into more detail on the strategy during our 
Office Hours discussions with Doug, Thomas, and Brian.

The datasheet linked above puts the strategy into practical terms. I am 
working on being able to go into more detail in a blog post, but it is the 
specific details that get messy.

I hear a lot of complaints about Alfresco's strategy for the Community Edition 
product. Some of the complaints imply that Alfresco is planning some secrete 
strategy away from the group. I am in charge of the strategy, and I have been 
sharing my proposals both here and on the IRC channel. As a company, we want 
to partner with the Order of the Bee, and it is my responsibility to 
incorporate your input into our strategy.

I am trying to be upfront about everything, but I have to balance my 
communication with you with actually trying to build the product you depend 
on. Emails, blog posts, and IRC discussions take significant time .My openness 
is probably adding to the confusion as I test different proposals with you, but 
the overall strategy is what was previously communicated.

* New Features in Community Edition

It is true that as our Engineering Team has grown, a higher ratio of the team 
is working on Enterprise-only features. But we have also increased the 
investment in Community Edition. CE receives more QA then ever before, and 
more total development effort from our engineering team. 

It is unfortunate that all of the recent announcements were for features that 
are only in Enterprise Edition. That was the result of a few things:

* Reporting and Analytics drove a bunch of changes in Community Edition 5.0, 
but we didn't make a big announcement because the Enterprise-only piece wasn't 
done.

* I was too busy to take a detailed look at what parts of Media Manager should 
go into Community Edition. The business feels like features specific to the DAM 
vertical should be Enteprise-only, so I need to collect data on what features 
are important for general use cases. I hope to do that over the summer.

* The other new features we have been working on for Community Edition are 
taking longer than expected. I am finally ready to announce, but haven't had 
time to write the blog post. Peter Löfrgen: I haven't forgotten your request 
about updating the roadmap on the Wiki now that I have some information about 
what gets included where.

* I have been using AOS in Community Edition as a test case for how we make 
decisions about product differentiation. I have a proposal as an Epic in the 
ALF project, but it hasn't been approved for development. The result is that I 
have been preparing a presentation for the larger team about the strategy and 
verifying that we are in alignment. It has been a slow process, but it should 
help us to be more consistent in how we communicate about Community Edition.

I appreciate the conversation and I am glad that the Order of the Bee is 
willingness to help solve the problems that are raised.

I'm going to close by looking at the concerns from a different perspective. 
Open source is not about complaining that other people aren't giving you 
enough of their efforts for free; instead open source is about recognizing the 
motivations of all members of our community and contributing back in ways that 
make sense for you. The people on this list are all here because we want a 
successful Alfresco Community Edition product, but most members of this list 
have not yet put in the minimal effort necessary to vote in the next elections. 
I encourage everyone who hasn't earned voting membership to get active.

Best wishes,

Richard

-- 
Richard Esplin
Product Manager, Alfresco Community Edition
Tel: +1 801 855 0866
Mobile: +1 801 735 4220
Skype: esplinr

On Thursday, May 21, 2015 09:59:04 Andreas Steffan wrote:
> Hallo everybody,
> 
> I can't help myself, but the CE looks pretty bad at
> https://www.alfresco.com/products/community-vs-alfresco-one to me (red
> all over the place).
> 
> Seriously: Imagine you are a somewhat clueless prospect on that page
> which reads " Ready to get started? Download the edition that is right
> for you.".
> 
> Would you want to give the CE a try?
> 
> regards
> Andreas