[OOTB-hive] CE looking bad?

Fri May 22 15:46:44 BST 2015

Torben,

apart from major resentment (which I am not sure where it comes from), in yours and other comments I keep on seeing a fundamental issue: a basic lack of trust for the people that actually gave you all this software for free. Be aware, if there wasn’t that company paying my salary, there would not be Alfresco. Full stop. And btw differently from most others, we are not exploiting software / IP from non employees, like many companies do (e.g. in the big data space with Hortonworks/Hadoop, or Redhat, Acquia and Drupal).  

My comments in this forum reflect my personal position as a community member, contributor and someone who is working for the last 6 years to make “your” life easier. Including, giving you insights on roadmaps / directions so that your projects (e.g. the honeycomb) can be successful. And be reminded: I was a community member much earlier than working for Alfresco, and certainly I had criticism (see here <http://mindthegab.com/2008/05/06/alfresco-and-the-sustainable-open-source-aka-maven-is-your-friend/>) but always tried to be constructive, and I am the living proof that with the right spirit things can happen (think about the SDK being an unsupported community effort and now having a team dedicated, proper docs, etc). 

But again with no trust, we will never be able to build anything organic, thriving and a real cooperation, and, as said, I am quite tired of these comments like “damage control”, “the view of Alfresco Inc.”. Just for the record, we are people even in the “evil" Alfresco Inc. and we have different opinions, and each one tries to drive the company towards the direction he / she thinks is right. 

There is a direction but not a monolithic unchangeable view as what you refer as “the Alfresco Software Inc” view. And unluckily, with this attitude, you are not making a good name for yourself, nor you are helping the community. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are. 

And to your comment:

>>> either accept the way things are, or try to build something truly Open
>>> Source, which can compete with EE.

Apart from showing how little you understand of Alfresco business model (in fact EE and CE have wildly different target audiences and they compete only in a very small portion of the potential prospects), I really exhort you to go and build something “truly” Open Source, because, while in your mind it might not be “truly” that, we (in the nasty dividing sense I keep seen used in this thread) are the one who built an Open Source software, not you (and as said in a previous email, I’d actually love to extend this to a more collaborative community process).

Said that, since you want a "a real community discussion” and there is an implication that “we” cannot be truly ones, it seems I should just step out this thread and in general from these (toxic and unproductive IMHO) discussions. I also suggest then that you explicitly don’t allow Alfrescans to be members of the order then, so it’s clear you don’t want to collaborate. You can ping me in private if you feel you need my suggestions, recommendations, views are still useful.

Thanks,

Gab
-- 

Gabriele Columbro
Sr. Product Manager, Core Platform / API, Alfresco Software

> On May 22, 2015, at 2:10 AM, Torben Lauritzen <tl at magus.dk> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 22/05/2015, at 07.33, Richard Esplin <richard.esplin at alfresco.com <mailto:richard.esplin at alfresco.com>> wrote:
> 
>> I am not sure how you read what I said and got "to use Alfresco you have to 
>> buy Enterprise Edition". I think you should reread my email because I was 
>> saying the exact opposite. In fact I have spent the last four years working to 
>> increase the adoption of Alfresco Community Edition.
>> 
> 
> You wrote:
> "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."
> 
> But you forgot an important thing: Adding shareholder value!
> 
> 
>> But my answer was also intended to explain our product intentions so that you 
>> understand where we are focusing our investment. My proposal for where 
>> Community Edition is most valuable was partially based on my conversations 
>> with your employer about their business model. I want to verify that we do 
>> what we can do accommodate all members of the Order of the Bee and the wider 
>> Alfresco community.
>> 
> 
> Some of the things CE is missing compared to EE are actually limiting our business model...
> 
> 
>> Last year the Order of the Bee had a conversation about the role that Alfresco 
>> employees play in this community. We agreed that Alfresco employees are 
>> welcome here, though they do not have voting privileges. If that changes, I am 
>> willing to follow the decision of the group. Though I do find the conversations 
>> here very useful in educating me how Community Edition is used so that I can 
>> better adapt the product to your needs.
>> 
>> Likewise, if my specific attempts to answer questions in this thread are not 
>> considered valuable, then the wider group should let me know and I'll scale it 
>> back.
>> 
> 
> I do find most of your comments valuable, but sometimes they seem to me to be “damage control”, which is understandable considering who pays your salary. 
> 
> I must admit, that I find it increasingly difficult to regard the OOTB as a serious community striving to promote an Open Source ECM. Sadly EE is not an option for the company where I work...
> 
> Regards,
> Torben
> 
> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Richard
>> 
>> On Friday, May 22, 2015 06:42:00 Torben Lauritzen wrote:
>>> 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 <mailto: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
>> <snip>
> 
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