What Are You Doing Right Now
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@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@olivier I agree here with @scottalanmiller, sticking to the freemium approach is a horrid idea.
Moving to, you mean. THey are not doing freemium right now, just not making it obvious enough that they are not. I don't think @olivier realizes how many companies walk away the moment that they see freemium "looking" products like @Texkonc's company did this morning. The free product should be a loss leader to do the marketing for them, that's how RH makes it work. Their free stuff makes them a household name, then larger companies pay for support. That's how the model works. Freemium just makes people look elsewhere before even getting started. That's why everyone in this community ignored XO until we found out it was fully open sourced.
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@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@thwr On the US scale, yes
We have a "big" XOA user in your town (DESY)No need to put big in quotes. DESY is a well known name
Not around here. Who are they?
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@thwr Not for non-science people ^^
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@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@thwr On the US scale, yes
We have a "big" XOA user in your town (DESY)No need to put big in quotes. DESY is a well known name
It is? What's DESY?
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@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@thwr Not for non-science people ^^
...With a broken Google.
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@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@thwr On the US scale, yes
We have a "big" XOA user in your town (DESY)No need to put big in quotes. DESY is a well known name
It is? What's DESY?
In short, a "smaller" LHC, but with a LOT of machines doing heavy CPUs task, running a LOT of XS hosts.
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@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
That's my opinion/experience after 2y on the Open Source business (as a primary thing for my company I mean). Feel free to not share this point of view, but it cames from the field
How many of each company have you run?
My experience comes from the field as well. From a customer side, this is what I see businesses using to choose software. Freemium is almost an instant "ignore" when it comes to products. It means that it isn't worth deploying to test. Pure open means that I can safely deploy and then decide if I want to keep it, pay for support, etc.
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Come on, as a customer/software consumer, you always want cheaper software, and that makes sense
(I don't have any problem with that).Open Source is at best a side product of the price choice, but not the thing that would make your decision.
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@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Come on, as a customer/software consumer, you always want cheaper software, and that makes sense
(I don't have any problem with that).Open Source is at best a side product of the price choice, but not the thing that would make your decision.
Actually, as a software consumer it would make the decision. It means I weigh the risks of having great software, but no support, and great software with support.
Of course I may chose to be cheap, but that doesn't mean a business would chose to be cheap.
@olivier have you ever heard of KickStarter?
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@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Come on, as a customer/software consumer, you always want cheaper software, and that makes sense
(I don't have any problem with that).Nope, not true at all. I often don't want cheaper. But things that I DO want...
- Open Souce (it's a safety thing)
- Non-freemium entry point so that I can test with comfort or use in less than critical modes
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I don't think you are representing most of how companies deal with IT ^^ Otherwise, VMWare shares won't be that high.
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@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Open Source is at best a side product of the price choice, but not the thing that would make your decision.
It's not the only factor but it is ALWAYS a factor. That code is open sourced is a very important factor always for anything critical for a business because it means we have more options and protection than with closed source. I would never rule out software because it is closed source. But it is always a mark against a product.
And most important to you as a vendor, open source software always gets tested and deployed first because it is the low hanging fruit. If open source meets the needs, it will easily be chosen before the closed source alternative even gets looked at.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Open Source is at best a side product of the price choice, but not the thing that would make your decision.
It's not the only factor but it is ALWAYS a factor. That code is open sourced is a very important factor always for anything critical for a business because it means we have more options and protection than with closed source. I would never rule out software because it is closed source. But it is always a mark against a product.
And most important to you as a vendor, open source software always gets tested and deployed first because it is the low hanging fruit. If open source meets the needs, it will easily be chosen before the closed source alternative even gets looked at.
Stop saying exactly in what I believe
That's good, but that's not reflecting the real market.
edit: again, my experience, I don't say I got the truth, but didn't see any proof of the opposite so far...
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Texkonc said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Texkonc said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Texkonc said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@coliver said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Texkonc said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Just thinking on how the documentation here at Mangolassi.it is better than XenServer's official documentation, and heading to lunch.
There is Xen here at my new job. It looks simple. I havent spent much time in it and already feel comfortable.
What are they using to manage it?
XenCenter
Get XenOrchestra. Free and So much better.
They say this and dont like it, they want all the features. https://xen-orchestra.com/#!/pricing
That's XOA pricing, the appliance, we are talking about XO. All the features of the appliance, 100% free.
I didnt tell them to pull up the site. They did while I was standing there telling them it was free.
I believe they just finished a SAM audit and had to buy a crap load of stuff. They are now MSDN and Partner licensed.
Since I am new to Xen I am clueless on the difference.It's not a Xen thing, it's just a standard open source thing. XO is software, it is licensed in such a way that they never need to look at the pricing. That's the miracle of open source licensing, it's standard industry knowledge and stops them from ever needing to do what they did. If they read the site carefully, they would notice a free download that is unrelated to what they looked at (yes it says for personal use but never says not for commercial use and the license is for commercial so they are obviously clear and the owner states this as well) and that what they were looking at what an appliance based on XO, not XO itself. So they weren't even looking at the pricing for what we were suggesting.
This is a standard problem though - RHEL has this same issue. Well a bit different because I don't think you can download the software from their site without a purchased license - but, if you get the software you can install and use it completely free, just with no support, of course.
These Sites clearly steer you in the direction of a paid product - and of course, why wouldn't they? They want to be paid. It's not obvious that there is a free solution that does what you need, of course with no vendor support.
I'm guessing you're going to say, well that's your own fault for not reading carefully enough, digging into the EULA, etc to find what you need. Yeah most don't.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@BRRABill said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
In anyone's defense, it DOES say personal, which is most other licenses means no business use.
It does, but it also has an open source license to ensure that there can be no confusion in the end.
Most people have no idea what that means.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
The biggest, most successful open source investors do so by embracing it, though. Look at Red Hat, Ubuntu and Suse. They make their "free and open" message as loud and clear as possible.
I so completely disagree with this. RHEL does not make that message loud and clear! Until recently I could have sworn that RHEL was a paid only product.
Sure I assumed Ubuntu and Suse were "free and open", but not RHEL. Granted it's not my space of knowledge, but if it's that well known.. it shouldn't need to be my space for me to fully know and understand that RHEL is completely free, and you only have to pay for support.
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And in the case of XOA, Support isn't the only thing you get as part of the fee. You get an appliance. One that has update features, etc included in it.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
And in the case of XOA, Support isn't the only thing you get as part of the fee. You get an appliance. One that has update features, etc included in it.
Yes, that is nice. And tested version control.
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@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Come on, as a customer/software consumer, you always want cheaper software, and that makes sense
(I don't have any problem with that).Open Source is at best a side product of the price choice, but not the thing that would make your decision.
Well that depends, do I feel I need support for your Open Source product/project?
I'm having a hard time not agreeing with you @olivier - an Open Source product like XO - why should I pay for support when I can come to someplace like ML and get 90% of the support I need? How is this not the situation for most open source software?
I also believe there is a HUGE disconnect between people's understanding/beliefs that you can even get paid support for Open Source software. I personally feel that if you told someone that they could get support for, say XS, they wouldn't believe that support is coming from the developers, instead they would think they are just paying some company like NTG who just happen (they hope) to have a lot of experience supporting it. Why do they believe that? Well, because the situation is so messy and NOT understood.
I'm guessing that larger companies who have people like Scott who have dug in and understand this stuff better are more likely to understand this, and assuming they have good management behind them, then they take full advantage of this situation, but for the likes of most SMBs, they have no clue. And short of their MSP pushing them this way, assuming they have, which most don't, they will instead suffer from their lack of understanding.
Some of those people I would say would go so far as to say, What? I have to pay for support? that's your freemium model right there - you gave me the product free, but when I'm in dire straights because something doesn't work, you're going to hold me over a barrel for support. I'm not saying they are right, I'm just saying it's how some of them think.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@olivier said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Open Source is at best a side product of the price choice, but not the thing that would make your decision.
It's not the only factor but it is ALWAYS a factor. That code is open sourced is a very important factor always for anything critical for a business because it means we have more options and protection than with closed source. I would never rule out software because it is closed source. But it is always a mark against a product.
And most important to you as a vendor, open source software always gets tested and deployed first because it is the low hanging fruit. If open source meets the needs, it will easily be chosen before the closed source alternative even gets looked at.
How many companies are just horribly run though? Tons, maybe even most - those are the ones that keep the VMWare's of the world running. Otherwise why wouldn't Xen or KVM be the top dog? Small and big companies alike are not doing things as you suggest they should be done (and frankly I tend to agree that they should do them as you suggest, but clearly they aren't). If most companies where doing as you suggest, then companies would give their software aware all over the place and pay for support, and those support contacts would allow those companies to hvae huge staffs to write new code and keep things moving.. but again companies don't do it right.
