[OOTB-hive] CE looking bad?

[Andreas Steffan]

thanks Richard for taking the time explaining what you guys are working on.

Everybody appreciates what you are doing!

But that comparison page is toxic.

I volunteer to write (yet another) comparison page. I'll try hard to be
really fair. Maybe that will get me that bumblebee badge. ;)

regards
Andreas


On 05/21/2015 08:49 PM, Richard Esplin wrote:
> 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
>


-- 
Andreas Steffan

Achter Billing 14
22399 Hamburg
Germany

skype: contentreich
M: +49 1793903615
T: +49 40 23943542
F: +49 40 23943542

http://www.contentreich.de

Contentreich : Alfresco ECM, Clojure, Groovy und WordPress - aus Spaß und für Geld