[OOTB-hive] CE looking bad?

Thu May 21 20:49:43 BST 2015

Perhaps the comparison page is not lying (even though it might not tell the entire truth)… I think the community should work on catching up with EE, instead of just creating (another) biased comparison page! Prioritize which features are most important and start working on them. If we work together, we could really make a difference!

And we should have a license which states, that community features are not allowed to be used with closed source software (I am not sure what such a license is called).

Another concern: Alfresco Inc. using the Open Source brand for something which is actually not Open Source. I guess that is why they need the CE.

Regards,
Torben

On 21/05/2015, at 21.29, Andreas Steffan <a.steffan at contentreich.de> wrote:

> 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
> 
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> 
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