On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 16:39 +0100, Mukund wrote: > 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).
You can't ever say that in public... The 'thing' you need to be selling is the confidence that even if the employee or local consultant who set up a server is no longer around that a company will still be able to access their data, migrate to faster/bigger servers, etc. with your support. If you even hint that you might go away there is nothing to sell. > 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. No one has any complaints, but you need to inspire confidence that you will continue to be around and ahead of the competition in the future. > 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. Have you followed the history of SME server (currently at http://www.contribs.org? It is a similar 'appliance' type distribution that provides more services but is more tuned to a small and otherwise windows-only shop. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from it, but there should be something to learn from it's rough past and the length of time it is taking them to get a new release out. There seems to be a community of consultants around it that install it for others that have kept it alive this long. I think OF would be a better fit in a mixed and larger environment but in that space you are more likely to have experienced admins that can manage without the web interface. > 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. My personal view is that I wouldn't use it at all if I didn't expect updates to be available for free and not too far behind the upstream and competitive products. However, after it is in place and proving its worth there would be a moderate chance that the company would pay for a support subscription to have someone to call for help if needed. > 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. I think your real competition is more in the SnapServer appliance neighborhood - the type of dedicated box that doesn't cost much more than a PC and drive - or maybe even less - but includes embedded file server software. If you already have a PC and the software is free, OF is an attractive choice. If you have to spend money either way, you'll need some sales hype to convince people why the software approach is better. -- Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Openfiler-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openfiler.com/mailman/listinfo/openfiler-users
