The BOFH replies are at least one reason to follow this mailing list. The general interest for this nice project is second :).

Nice to hear your vision on this. I really feel companies will be very glad to pay for support. For the company where I work goes the same: We don't need free stuff. We need tooling to rely on, with support. Free is evil, it doesn't help the professional environment we have to rely on.

Thank you!

2013/4/16 Tom Laermans <tom.laermans@powersource.cx>

Steph,

I'm very much a home tinkerer myself, and am running a variety of
Observia (ehh, is that a word?) for different purposes etc. Including my
home network.

Keeping a free version is certainly the main goal, going commercial only
would be definitely the least favoured option.

Hence the community dialogue - we'd hate to lose you all ;-)

With regards to "paying members get extra rights and decent support",
this is certainly the goal. BOFH-replies on the mailing list will stay
for the community support though ;>

Tom

On Tue, 2013-04-16 at 09:46 +0200, Steph Janssen wrote:
> I would very much like if home installations (to toy around) would
> remain free or donation based. I wouldn't have any problems with
> licensing or buying in a commercial environment, but I would like to
> continue using this at home without being a pirate (especially since I
> donated). I don't think it's fair to link this to calling this a
> homelab (linking it to a commercial license), since not everyone can
> influence what is used at work. In my case I can't, I do promote it
> heavily though..
>
>
> Just my two cents!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2013/4/16 Nikolay Shopik <shopik@inblock.ru>
> I'd go with annually payment or half-annually. So up to 100$
> per year seems fair.
>
> We already paying per quarterly when possible ;)
>
>
> On 4/16/13 1:45 AM, Adam Armstrong wrote:
> For the port-based model we would likely exclude
> virtual ports. It would likely only exist to catch
> users with 8 vss and 10k ports :-)
>
> In terms of support and development, we would likely
> push all new feature development to the commercial
> version. Support and feature requests from licensees
> would be prioritised too.
>
> This is already the case for our existing commercial
> sponsor. Roughly 50% of development work is directly
> requested features from them.
>
> We certainly want to keep the free version usable, and
> we don't want to separate the code bases, as that
> would slow progress a lot.
>
> I think the balance between keeping everything usable
> and maintaining a carrot to encourage people to
> license will be difficult.
>
> Pricing is also difficult to decide on. If the
> majority of users won't pay, it will be higher than if
> we have more licensees.
>
> If every user paid $10, we would probably be fine. I
> suspect not even 5% will be willing to pay, though.
>
> Adam.
>
> "Hibler, Florian" <florian.hibler@kaiaglobal.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Adam,
> thanks for telling the list about your
> thoughts on commercializing
> Observium and giving us the opportunity to
> talk about the licensing
> scheme before you actually decide which way to
> go.
>
> I need to agree with Nikolay, that
> "port-based" shouldn't be the way to
> go, as many devices just add tons of virtual
> ports. For me "host-based"
> sounds pretty fair.
>
> Also I would prefer to use the "honor system"
> route as well. Keepeing
> the source code open makes it still easy for
> people to contribute to
> certain features or customize Observium for
> their own needs. Once a
> product is commercialized you will have
> piracy, thats what I am pretty
> sure of. Although I am pretty sure that this
> community will honor your
> work and what you have done. Observium is a
> great product and it helps
> me with my daily work.
>
> Can you already outline some pricing you have
> in mind and/or the
> differences between free/pro/enterprise
> editions? Once there is money
> behind that whole thing, what would actually
> change? How would you deal
> with the support, feature requests, etc.?
>
> Just my 2 cent and hope it was a bit helpful!
>
> Best regards,
> Florian
>
> --
> Florian Hibler
> Chief Technical Officer
> eMail: florian.hibler@kaiaglobal.com
>
> Kaia Global Networks Limited
> Internet: http://www.kaiaglobal.com
> Company No. 08257877
> Registered Office: High Wycombe, UK
>
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> On 4/15/13 24:58, Adam Armstrong wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> At some point in the future it's
> likely that I'm going to split
> Observium
> into free and enterprise/pro variants.
>
> Observium has historically been
> developed as a fairly ad hoc project,
> with
> work being done as time permits
> between work projects. We've often had
> gaps
> of 6 months where there has been
> little work done due to other
> commitments.
>
> As the user-base expands this is going
> to become less and less viable a
> way of maintaining the project, and we
> need to be able to devote more time
> to keeping on top of bug reports and
> feature development. To be able to
> devote more time to the project we
> need to establish a revenue stream to
> be
> able to support it.
>
> We'd like comments from you guys about
> how we should go about splitting,
> what should be in each version, and
> what we should charge.
>
> We're considering:
>
> A hosts/ports-based licensing scheme,
> where you get a certain number free,
> and any more than that requires a
> license.
> A feature-based licensing scheme,
> where higher-value features such as
> load
> balancers, netapp, mac accounting, vpn
> tracking, etc require a license.
> Licensing for customer-access, where
> allowing customers access to the web
> interface requires a license.
>
> What pricing models do you think would
> work?
>
> Options for the ent/pro version
> include using the honour system,
> maintaining a separate
> password-protected SVN repository or
> distributing an
> ioncube-protected version.
>
> I would prefer to go the honour system
> route, but I'm not sure how well
> that would work.
>
> Thanks,
> adam.
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