[OOTB-hive] CE looking bad?

[Torben Lauritzen]

Good morning.

So everything boils down to:

"If you really want to use Alfresco (the product), you have to buy Alfresco EE."

That is exactly why I think the Open Source brand is being misused!

I very much appreciate the huge amount of work that Alfresco Inc. puts into developing the product, but I think we should stop fooling ourselves, and either accept the way things are, or try to build something truly Open Source, which can compete with EE.

@Alfresco employees: Even though I welcome your participation in the discussions, it would also be nice to have a real community discussion about these topics, where we discuss what the community would like, and not what view Alfresco Inc. has on it.

Regards,
Torben


On 21/05/2015, at 22.15, Richard Esplin <richard.esplin at alfresco.com> wrote:

> Community Edition is released under the LGPL, and is governed by the terms of 
> that license.
> 
> Alfresco is proud to be an open source company, and we are upfront that we 
> follow an open core model. We open source functionality that is part of the 
> "open core" use case of core enterprise content management. Our Enterprise 
> Edition customers benefit from the existence of the open source product.
> 
> Sometimes I hear employees refer to our Enterprise Edition product as "open 
> source". I always correct them. New employees now are recommended to take a 
> one hour open source literacy training that I prepared. It has been some time 
> since I last found our marketing team misusing the label "open source". If you 
> are aware of that mistake in our current materials, please let me know.
> 
> Our goal is to invest in a Community Edition product that meets the use case 
> of SME organizations that run in a single server environment. We want 
> Community Edition and Enterprise Edition to share as much code as possible, so 
> that our large scale customers get the benefits of open source contributions.
> 
> The Community Edition source code is available in Subversion and on GitHub. 
> You are welcome to spend your time developing features to reduce the 
> distinction between the two products. As you enhance Community Edition, we 
> recommend you also maintain as similar a code base as possible so as to benefit 
> from the broader community.
> 
> I am working on better defining what Alfresco means by "core ECM use cases" and 
> "SME organizations". Once I feel like we have definitions that support the 
> business models of our contributors, I'll publish them so that there are clear 
> expectations around how best to collaborate with us on the product (should you 
> choose to do so).
> 
> We want Community Edition to lead the industry and provide enough value that 
> you choose it for the organizations you support. But if Alfresco is an 
> important system for a profitable company, we hope you see the value in 
> purchasing Enterprise Edition for that client. Those purchases fund our 
> continued development of the open source product.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 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 21:49:43 Torben Lauritzen wrote:
>> 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-edit
>>>> ion-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
>