Hi Robert On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 16:05 +0100, Robert Neuschul wrote: > Mukund > > I think you're making several big mistakes: one of which appears to be in > assuming that I'm being 'confrontational'. >
I'm quite terse and feeling-less most of the times when I participate on anything Internet based. This's due to conditioning :) I hope there's no harm done. > Thanks, as a developer [and vendor] of some 35 years standing with several > CSS and OSS projects under my belt [and at various points several million > seats] I think I just learned something: never make assumptions about who > you're talking to. > I didn't and explained what free software meant :-) > > The point I'm trying to make is that the choice must be yours and you > > alone are responsible for any issues that crop up due to your use of > > this software such as loss of data, loss of people's lives, etc. > > The risk management must certainly rest with the user; that doesn't mean > that developers of OSS don't have obligations. Some are simply obligations > to themselves to do the best they can. Others are much less well expressed > and incohate. That responsibility on the part of developers towards "the > public" is often not well understood or well expressed within or from the > OSS community - it's still an emergent property of OSS and will almost > certainly remain so for several years to come. > Perhaps the /best/ expression of those responsibilities that /I/ know of can > be found in Eben Moglen's DotCommunist Manifesto. If you don't know it then > I strongly recommend that you take the trouble to become familiar with it. > I don't want to go off topic, but I'll just say that we are not supported by a source of income. Xinit Systems supported us thus far, but now that the product is ready and used by many, it needs to stand on its own feet. We have helped users as much as we could as developers on the lists. Our bugs are fixed as soon as possible and we test and provide updates quickly. I know that you mean well. You must put yourself in our shoes to see how we look at it: this is a point where the project needs to survive by itself, or in the future, *this project* will die (the software itself will be free). > > What a support contract provides you from any vendor including Red Hat, > > IBM, Novell, etc. is timely help for problems that are fixable by them. > > If the problems are beyond their control, then they'll do everything > > they can to get it resolved by those who can fix them, but that's where > > the help ends. > > I can only repeat what I said before: it was /an/ /example/ of the ways in > which the smaller businesses approach "purchases" of tools such as OF. On > the one hand it's all about accessability, open-handedness, and > responsiveness on the part of the development team, and on the other hand > it's about encouraging potential new users to share the voyage with the > community of developers and other users. > Look very carefully at why Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird work for the general > public, and why Kapor's OSSF Chandler project is still stuck in the mud > after several years and much "expensive" thinking and development. > This issue is not about the software, but about the organization behind it. From my experience, we have done everything we can to help users. You can look at the mailing list archives and search for my name to see how many posts I have answered personally. Same with Rafiu, Karan, etc. If you take the example of Mozilla for example, it was always supported. It was developed firstly at Netscape, then they almost re-wrote the released code base with a lot of help from AOL, Red Hat, etc. Developers were a part of some company or the other and the project itself got enormous funding. Even when AOL laid off the Mozilla team, the team was left with a large fund. Today Mozilla.com is a commercial company making millions of dollars from Google search referrals. Unfortunately, being a niche product, Openfiler doesn't have the same number of developers or vendors supporting it. Because we cannot go ahead and force vendors to support us, we are thinking of alternatives which can bring in revenue which'll continue seeding the development of this project. Commercial support has to start somewhere, even if it is small and even if we do not play with 100% of the market. Even if we can satisfy the needs of 70% of the market and forget about the super-enterprise "cream" class of products, we still have a large satisfactory market. The key here is to bring in revenue, some revenue, any revenue. > The product is good enough to support that standing! [That's a positive > compliment - take it as applause!]. > I am very happy to hear that. Some other users have also wrote in good things and this is what makes us more confident in moving forward. > However from where I sit the *business* practice isn't as good as the > product. That's what I've been commenting on: the business development. > We do not have a business practise yet unfortunately. Xinit Systems (our sponsor) does.. it has been selling Openfiler to customers. Some other vendors on this list are also selling Openfiler. We sometimes hear from their customers directly and have been offering even free telephone support to many of them who ignore our instructions not to call :) We wish to develop the business like you said. We are not setting out to war with EMC, NetApp, etc. like one other list poster is assuming. We are working on the 70% of the market which can be satisfied by Openfiler. Your comments have been valuable. [You can send more if you choose to :)] Mukund _______________________________________________ Openfiler-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openfiler.com/mailman/listinfo/openfiler-users
