Topic: sme 5.0 really e-smith 4.1.3

[Scott Smith]

Low wrote:
>
> Not all business has to be for great profit.

I'm not sure what kind of a statement you are trying to make by qualifying the word profit; however, just because a business charges for its products, and their chosen price seems high to you, does not mean there is "great profit" being made. Many a company sells "high priced" products, and then fails due to lack of profit.

I think precious little has changed except that some people don't want to have to pay anything for software, and also pay little or nothing for support, and are offended that a company has the audacity to try to make a living. If you cannot afford ServiceLink, or think your customers will not pay for it, then please either find a way to innovate yourselves or go find something that better meets your wants.

Let's not clog these forums with whining about the relative value of the prices selected by Mitel, and focus instead on working with them to create a better product for them, for us, and for our customers. Maybe aXon is the solution for some of you (though I hope they don't procede with a fork but will work with Mitel to create an extension of SMEv5), and Darrell's offering may be appropriate for others. If so, fine, go, enjoy, do well. But let's please see an end to the moaning and complaining.

Scott

[steve macgregor]

Lowell Said...     "I hope this thread doesn't stop here. If you would take the time to look at what Darrell just said, you will find great wealth in those words, and in his hints. I know many many people in our local LUG that use the E-Smith distro as a base for what they do. Local Non-Profit groups are supported by what the LUG does. Keep the wealth spreading! Not all business has to be for great profit. Publicly, Thanks Darrell!"

I hope it doesn't stop either. The theories behind and the practices of 'free software' mean a great deal to many people involved neither in the development nor business use of that software. I have spent the past year learning as much as I could about Linux and E-Smith because I had this big crazy dream (before i learned about e-smith via the Red Hat site) that it was somehow possible to install a world class server solution and network in a poor inner city community center, and do it so well that the kids would have the opportunity to work with quality technology and see to it that the business community would pay attention so that E-Smith would profit from their hard work and ingenuity.

The Damascus Christian Center is operated and populated by the people living in the surrounding housing projects, myself, a few other volunteers and a remarkable man known as Rev. Mills who keeps us full of vision and hope. We fill the role of the black sheep of the non-profit world because we will not deviate from our beliefs when it comes to fundraising or the use of those funds in adition to a fairly non-traditional vision of inner-city redevelopment.

Today was day one for the server and workgroup there. Everything has been built from the piles of junk computers that I bought from the salvation army with my spare change, or was able to salvage from garbage piles outside. We have no processor running over 100 mhz  (I haven't learned overclocking yet) and the server has only 32meg of ram. The wonder and amazement on the faces when they say my pipe dreams alive in front of them in the form of webmail on our very own network. We can't afford internet access yet, so we are limited to the internal network untill I can convince @home to donate an internet connection or I can get the old ISA modem to work.

Our dream is to show the world that the GNU/GPL model is in fact not only a credit to our economy and our way of life, but to the individual lives of all of the people who never would have had the chance to broaden their horizons through the international collection of users and developers working toward their individual goals, achieving them only by sharing freely and openly with others.

I would like to thank Red Hat Linux, the e-smith development and user community, the post-nuke development folks and users, and in particular all of the people who have taken the time to answer my questions, however poorly thought out they may have been.

Please visit our web site (that I am just about done with) at www.damascus.grape.dyndns.org if you could please email or post any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you might have pertaining to the site or our mission or any other thing you might have on your mind it would be wonderfull. Well, I guess this is the site launch... I had better get cracking at completing the site

Regards,

Steve MacGregor
steve@grape.dyndns.org
www.damascus.grape.dyndns.org


Special Greetz out to PaoTzu and the crew over at pigdog (from the early days and my F***** up 386's) and much respect to Mahmood over in Bahrain for helping me out and encouraging me so much just when I needed it most.

[Franck PIERRE]

Hi,

I just want to tell you what i think of the situation :
I think it normal that this new release has a new number as its name is changing (a 1.0 should be a better choice, but it is not vrey important).
It is normal that e-smith's developers work and the services offered by ServiceLink are not free.

So, the situation seems to be normal...

But when i see the Wish List forum, i see that all what we asked wasn't heard (except the Blades) :
No keyboard selection  (try to type a password like j'aime£esNoël$ with a french keyboard...)
No XFS type filesystem
No Samba 2.2.x
No free VPN solution
No kernel 2.4.x
etc.

And some things seem very stange with the install of SME-V5 :
Where are the man pages ? On the CDROM... Ouf !
Idem with slocate

I think that all the great work did by the developpers is only based on ServiceLink.
But IMHO there are still many things to do appart it...

[Ross Laver]

> Initially the price was in the $50 range (cost to resellers) and the product was perfectly positioned for the SOHO market. I was able to compete pricewise with products of a similar nature such DLink residential gateways and such. Then the cost moved up to $200.00 per copy (again to resellers) and I was able to squeek by on some sales. Now the cost to resellers has jumped to $385.00 per copy. (correct me if i'm wrong)

OK, you're wrong Initially the price for a packaged CD and manual was US$40. Then we stopped selling media kits without support, because the cost of manufacturing the kits, processing orders and collecting payment made it a money-loser. Besides (as you know and acknowledge) the software can be downloaded for free, and the manual is available online. Yes, some customers will pay a pretty penny for a nice box and a printed manual, but what you're really saying is that you'd prefer it if we stopped selling services and just went back to being a publishing business - manufacturing cardboard boxes, printing manuals and burning CDs.

You say we then raised the reseller cost to $200 a copy. Wrong. That was the cost for a year of escalation support. There's a big difference.

You say the cost to resellers has now jumped to $385 per copy, plus ServiceLink. Wrong. The prices we charge cover technical support *and* network services. There's a big difference.

By the way, John, how much would/do you charge per year to provide unlimited technical support for a server in a small business with 50 users? Or do you just resell cardboard boxes and CDs? (I'm not joking -- this is the heart of the issue.)

[Ross Laver]

> I hate to see these changes since this makes me now look for a new distro once again since I don't have the deep pockets to pay for servicelink.

OK, help me out here. So far as I can tell, you weren't an e-smith customer. Presumably you didn't pay anything for e-smith 4.1.2. The cost for SME Server V5 is exactly the same - zero. So, um, why exactly is it a problem that you don't have deep pockets?

Ross

[Ross Laver]

> The biggest problem I have is that this is supposed to be a new version, not a dot release. WIth a new version, I expect increased functionality in the base product. The only significant new functionality I see with this release (although I have not done my install yet, I'm going by what I have read in the manual) is commercial.

The introduction of software blades is a *huge* step forward. We have always said (you can read about our design philosophy elsewhere on this site) that we don't intend to transform our server into bloatware by adding endless additional features that only a minority of users want. But with blades, we've made it incredibly easy to add new features to the base server product. In the coming months, you'll see a growing number of blades -- some free, some not. An enormous amount of work has gone into creating the blades architecture. Sorry, but your suggestion that this release should have been called e-smith 4.1.3 is wildly off-base.

Ross

[Kim Morrison]

Hi folks,

Once again there is lively debate about the Mitel business model!

We are committed to continuing to maintain an open source product and sponsor fora for community members.  We will commit resources to maintaining an excellent server software platform even beyond what is required for the commercial interests of the company because we are committed to our open source community.

We are always delighted to see our efforts (and the combined efforts of the open source community) put to good use particularly in good causes and non profit organizations, even though fewer than one in five hundred installations result in any direct financial gain to the company.  I get huge personal satisfaction from that, even if it doesn't help to pay my team's salary.

But get this - WE ARE NOT A CHARITY. The majority of new code in recent versions of our software was developed in house (and not through contributions) and funded through customers and shareholders' investments in the company.  

We're happy to have people enjoy our free technology, but (to paraphrase Dolly Parton) it costs a lot to be this cheap.

For all of you relatively new to this community, two years ago we did offer a $40 package.  John, you bought fewer than ten for your SOHO customers, IIRC.  Many of you have mentioned what a gold mine we're missing out on by not offering it - a few of you imply that we somehow owe it to you to offer you a cheap packaged version.  Try doing the math.  For example, let's assume that there are 500 of you out there and that every one of you bought a $100 package.  That'd be revenue of.... $50k.  Did you know that our FTP download site costs more than that annually to maintain?

In the last year or so, we sold technical support to end users and partners.  When you set out to create a simple to install and simple to use product, providing technical support is also not a viable business. (Heck, we even found certain partners were cheating - they'd install servers for customers without registering them and claim their tech support calls were for the one server that they had in fact registered with us.)

There are millions of small businesses out there who are supported by partners -- our v5 Server with ServiceLink takes a lot of the labor costs out of installing and maintaining a server for those businesses, while enabling our partners to earn enough from the solution.  Because it streamlines installation and management, the TCO is reduced over MS servers.  Goodness for all.  Not every small business will want it or will be able to afford it, but enough will.  And, everyone is still welcome to use the server without ServiceLink.  What's to complain about?

Pardon me, but do you think these forums and having a team of developers integrate your work is your god given right?  If you are upset because we didn't create your pet feature, then get off your ass and create it yourself and submit it! We'll test it and if it's good enough, it'll be integrated and supported going forward.  That's fair trade.

If someone else out there can develop a business by packaging our software and selling $100 packages, then go ahead and try.  That's the wonderful egalitarian-ness of open source.  If someone else out there wants to sell technical support, please go ahead and try.  Don't complain that we aren't doing it for you - like we owe it to you to engage in a non-profitable business just to meet your personal needs. Within legal limits and provided we respect the GPL, we're free to engage in any business we want. Open source is not all about having some benevolent being meet your personal needs for free. Open source is in fact about freedom and fair trade.

Each of you has access to a free product and many of you think it's pretty great.  Many of you have answered other peoples' questions on bboards, made constructive criticisms, and a few of you have tested or made valuable technical contributions.  To you, I say thanks - you've participated in this community in an honorable way.  Fair trade.

But some of you have done nothing for anyone.  You complain. You ask questions that others have answered for you.  Sometimes you demand help - as though we live to solve your problems for you.  Sometimes you can't even say "thanks". That isn't fair trade and it violates the spirit of open source.  

Finally, I encourage any of you who have trouble with the fact that this community is sponsored by a company (which has salaries to pay and FTP bills to cover) to get over it.  Our experience with this community is one of fair trade - we sponsor it, nurture it with our own development resources, and in exchange hundreds of folks test, use, and contribute to the server software.  Fair trade.

But don't think that we do it because of some benevolent desire to take care of your personal needs. I don't wake up in the morning wondering how I can make John Goodwin or Benoit Bousseau's life better.  I might be willing to wake up in the morning and wonder how we can all work together to meet all our aims.  It's a harsh reality in life that one way or the other (in kind or in cash) you have to exchange value for value - meeting your personal needs isn't inherently a priority for me otherwise.

- Kim

General Manager,
Network Server Solutions Group

[Buddy Edwards]

I think that this thread sums up alot in the way people are feeling about the Mitel takeover of E-smith.  People are used to associating Linux with Free Software, and most people that are using linux have been for quite some time and don't need full support or want it.  I for one would rather pay per call than pay for a yearly subscription, and most of my customers feel the same way.  We don't need insurance or want it, to be quite honest.  Most support companies offer choices E-Smith/Mitel offers take it or leave it.  I have not installed the SME 5.0 yet and I am not sure if I want to after looking at all the bugs encountered after install listed in these forums.  It also appears as if I want special features I have to continue to pay for them year after year or I lose the capabilities such as VPN and Virus checking.  I can understand virus checking because of the cost involved updating the virus definitions but even Microsoft doesn't charge yearly for the benefit of using their product.  How can I sell something to someone that forces them to constantly pay to use it, what this is seems to me to be is software leasing, who are you targeting VAR's or Small Business.  If you are targeting Small Business no wonder 1 in 500 copies downloaded are you making any money off of.  VAR's normally support their own customers but are more willing to pay for software and support if needed.  You  have a solid product and I respect the work your team has done to make SME 5.0 what it is you just need to take a step out of your offices and see what the perception of the real world is.  When people are looking at TCO in a small office they are looking at a few things that you may not be aware

1.How good is the backup.(Uh let's think about this, unless the server completely crashes the backup sucks because you can't restore an individual file)
2. Can the secretary take care of problems if they come up, because we just don't have the time.
3. Is it easy to use.(Basically can my 16 year old kid get it running again)
4. How much is it going to cost to get this running.
5. What happens if Mitel/E-smith goes under.

If this is going to cost people $595 or more per year with no other options for support than all or nothing they will still continue to download the free version and never call you for help.  In response to your negative feedback on the issue of how we feel about servicelink or the support plans I feel it was unprofessional that as a company you don't take some of the suggestions from your customers or potential customers and help yourselves.  I don't want this to run much longer but I do have a response to a comment by Ross Laver.

"By the way, John, how much would/do you charge per year to provide unlimited technical support for a server in a small business with 50 users? Or do you just resell cardboard boxes and CDs? (I'm not joking -- this is the heart of the issue.)"

John or any other VAR would never provide unlimited technical support to a customer because he would be faced with the same dilemma as any other company with good intentions but a bad business plan he would be out of business.

Sincerely
Buddy Edwards
IT Consultant

[Ross Laver]

> I feel it was unprofessional that as a company you don't take some of the suggestions from your customers or potential customers and help yourselves.

I think you misunderstand. Some people ask for fax support, some people ask for phorum to be installed, some people ask for calendaring, etc. etc. etc. It appears to be the view of some people that we should add everything. Our view is that what's really required is the ability to quickly and easily customize the server to suit the needs of individual customers. And that's what SME Server V5 provides.

> I can understand virus checking because of the cost involved updating the virus definitions but even Microsoft doesn't charge yearly for the benefit of using their product. How can I sell something to someone that forces them to constantly pay to use it, what this is seems to me to be is software leasing.

Nobody is forced to pay anything -- yearly or otherwise -- to use our server software. We charge for virus protection because it's a service. You're an IT consultant. What would you charge a customer with 50 users who wanted to make sure his server always has the latest virus pattern files installed (not three days or a week after those pattern files were available, but within hours).

> John or any other VAR would never provide unlimited technical support to a customer because he would be faced with the same dilemma as any other company with good intentions but a bad business plan he would be out of business.

Alright, then. I have a company with 50 employees. I need a server. I want support. I need virus protection with constant updates. How much will you charge me for the server and how much should I budget for the year?

[Dan Brown]

Buddy, you seem to be missing somthing--per-incident tech support still seems to be available, if you don't want to pay for a subscription.  If you don't want to pay for the whole servicelink package, you can subscribe to just the parts you want (just want the virus scanner?  No problem.)  If you don't want any of the parts, but just want support for a year, you can get that too.  If you don't want any of that, you can pay per-incident for support.

[John Goodwin]

Hi everyone,

To be honest, I really didn't want to start a big rant.  I was just trying to provide some feedback to Mitel/E-smith based on my opinion as a user of thier product.  I think that the mitel/e-smith product is really good, thats why I'm using it.  Also, to answer Ross, I haven't ever made any payment to E-smith/mitel, I'm running a downloaded copy, but let me explain why.  I'm a home user.  Linux is only a hobby for me.  I have an e-smith box I built for around $400 that provides DHCP, firewall, etc., for my home network, and the product does an incredible job of meeting our requirements compared to other distro's.  For my day job, I'm a project manager for one of the 20 largest system integrators in the world, so I definately do understand that you need to have an eye on the bottom line.  E-smith/Mitel is not a factor in my day job because I primarily deal with applications that require NT/Unix/mainframe environments with huge transaction volumes and large hardware requirements.  I just sort of wanted to make that clear, that I'm not someone that would be a good revenue source for mitel.  On the other hand, I have tried to do my part in helping (replying to post in the forum if I have an answer for example, though I'm not a linux guru so most of my answers are to problems I experienced and figured out how to resolve).  So thats sort of how I fit into the world of mitel and linux.

I definately have a vested interest in the success of this distro, since I do think that mitel has a GREAT product.  I also appreciate the time and money that has to be spent to develop a product of this nature, and its definatley no easy or cheap task.  To all the developers and management at mitel, I think you have done a very great job in building a solid product.  I will also say that the price for support does not seem unreasonable for an office of 50 or more people.  I deal with third party software vendors all the time charge tens of thousands of dollars for maintenance a year and provide less than mitel does.  What I was trying to get at with my post is that I assume many of the people in that 50,000 user install base that was mention in the July 11 acquistion press release includes people like myself who have our servers configured to send updates to e-smith, though this is just an assumption and I'm not sure how this number was determined.  I think all of the users like myself want to stick with mitel and help in whatever way we can, but if it appears that the majority of new functionality will be commercially oriented, we will probably start looking elsewhere for a better mix of open and commercial functionality.  I do think that the very small office/home user community plays a part in the future of the product and I hope that mitel sees this also.  I guess the big question now is how do we as a user group make sure that we are providing value to mitel in other ways outside of the servicelink area.  I guess the biggest way will be as testers of the product by using it and giving feedback, developing new funcitonality geared towards our user community and making it available to other users, and most importantly, trying to help users that are experiencing problems with the product through responses in the forum (I think this is similar to what Kim was suggesting).

As a final note, I haven't done a 5.0 upgrade yet, but the blades architecture does look like a positive move that took a lot of development time and money.  I would consider this to have a similar impact as I-bays (functionality that sets sme 5 apart from the pack).  Also, I have seen several posting stating that VPN acess would only be commercial now.  I don't believe thats true.  I don't have my manual sitting in front of me, but I thought that it was only ipsec that required a commercial license and the pptp was still supported, though I may be wrong.

Thanks,
John Goodwin

[Ross Laver]

> Also, I have seen several posting stating that VPN acess would only be commercial now. I don't believe thats true. I don't have my manual sitting in front of me, but I thought that it was only ipsec that required a commercial license and the pptp was still supported, though I may be wrong.

You are correct. PPTP is still supported as part of the freely downloadable product. For that matter, it's not true to say that IPSEC requires a commercial license. You can conrfigure your own IPSEC connections using open source code, and you don't need to pay anyone anything. What ServiceLink provides is an IPSEC VPN service that automates the configuration process, so that systems integrators can create and/or take down server-to-server VPNs in a few seconds, through a web interface to our Network Operations Center. Naturally, we charage for this service, because developing it and running the NOC costs money.

Ross

[John Helms]

Hi Kim

I see your note in here with everyone else and noticed that you directed a portion of it at my earlier post.

"For all of you relatively new to this community, two years ago we did offer a $40 package. John, you bought fewer than ten for your SOHO customers"

Please recheck your records, mine show 11. What is more important is not the number you mentioned but the tone of what you said. Each of those "fewer than ten" or 11 (whichever version you wish) represents not only the struggle you went through to bring a Linux product to market but the struggle I went through selling a Linux product into an area that is heavily Microsoft entrenched. Behind each of those sales is hours of effort on my part convincing obviously reluctant Microsoft oriented office managers to buy into a Linux solution for their office needs. Not only was I fighting customer resistance, I've also had to convince people I work with that Linux and E-Smith was a viable cost effective, secure, and reliable solution. That was an even harder task than convincing potential customers. BTW one of those people is now one of the partners listed on your main webpage and wouldn't even be there if it weren't for my efforts.
One poster in this thread insinuated that "some people don't want to have to pay anything for software" and that we should "not clog these forums with whining about the relative value of the prices selected by Mitel, and focus instead on working with them to create a better product for them, for us, and for our customers."
As you and some of the E-Smith employees i've talked to know, I have always expressed my willingness to pay for your product and many times said this was the ONLY way I wanted to use it. Lets skip the part about whining since that is obviously that posters effort to paint others with his attitudes.
Another poster, apparently from E-Smith itself said that I would "prefer it if we stopped selling services and just went back to being a publishing business - manufacturing cardboard boxes, printing manuals and burning CDs." As well this same person said "You say the cost to resellers has now jumped to $385 per copy, plus ServiceLink. Wrong. The prices we charge cover technical support *and* network services. There's a big difference." and "By the way, John, how much would/do you charge per year to provide unlimited technical support for a server in a small business with 50 users? Or do you just resell cardboard boxes and CDs?"
About two weeks ago I spoke with one of your sales people who qouted me the exact prices I described. The reason I was calling was to sign up as a partner but once I learned of the new price structure I decided that E-Smith had just gotten too expensive for me to be able to sell. As to technical support I can tell you that there has not been a single issue with your product that warranted needing technical support therefore exactly why would I need to sell technical support???? (great job BTW developers) As well my customers truthfully could not and would not buy the product if I had to also sell technical support with it. I have asked for info from sales staff many times and each time the details and prices of the partner program have varied. Exactly what are the prices and details, are they posted on your website anywhere?
"Heck, we even found certain partners were cheating - they'd install servers for customers without registering them and claim their tech support calls were for the one server that they had in fact registered with us."
Every software company in the world faces this, some like Microsoft come up with ridiculous licensing schemes and others charge all their partners more because of a few lamers. All I hoped to convey in my original post Kim was that your current pricing and approach has left me out of the picture. I do not expect something for nothing. In fact when some of the more Microsoft oriented individuals I work with hinted that I should just use the software freely without any monetary benefit to E-Smith, I refused. The changes in the E-Smith pricing have made it impossible to sell the product effectively in my market area. That is not "whining", that is not wanting to get the product for free, it is simply the truth from where I have to sit.
I have always taken it for granted that what you at E-Smith were trying to do was extremely tough and each and every time you had a success..I cheered for you. It is also hard for us, the people who try to resell your product, and I hope that rather than looking at those "fewer than ten" sales as not worth much, that you cheered for each of my sales as well.
You current policys have left me without the ability to sell E-Smith in my market. Please consider a E-Smith "lite" alternative for us. I would much prefer to stay BUYING your product rather than moving to some of the other Linux based solutions out there. All that my customers have ever needed is a firewall, gateway, web server and mail server. Everything else is nice, but so far no one has needed it.
Please also consider changing the "security through obscurity" policy that has been expressed several times on these boards by E-Smith employees. Theres already one company practising that policy and they are too much.
Thanks and take care.

[Dan York]

John,

> Please also consider changing the "security through
> obscurity" policy that has been expressed several times on
> these boards by E-Smith employees.

Having spent a significant amount of time writing and then
verifying our extensive Security white paper earlier this
year, I am confused about what you mean by this statement.
If you look at:

  http://www.e-smith.org/docs/papers/

The paper "Security and the e-smith server and gateway" goes into
far more detail about our security than I think most people will
ever care.  It has not yet been updated for the SME Server V5
(that is in the queue), but the principles outlined are the same, and the commands are listed there that you can check as well on
V5.  If anything, I think we are generally *more* open about
security (since it is so critical to us) than most other
companies out there.

If there is additional information you would like to see in that
document, let me know, as an update is in the queue for the
months ahead.

Regards,
Dan

[Kim Morrison]

John,

First of all, as you noted, we all cheered every time you installed and e-smith box for one of your customers.  And I consider you one of our longest standing friends. But you should also know that we are happy if you use our free software and a download copy of our manual.  Each one of those installations results in lost revenue to our competitors!  That's part of the business case for open source!  

The fact that it was a challenge to sell your customer on a product for which you paid $40 is not surprising.  Positioning e-smith at $40 against Microsoft at $1,500+ has got to raise questions in the typical small business person's mind about the value of e-smith against Microsoft.  Being open source, we naturally wouldn't raise our prices to a competitive price for the software alone. We've been working toward crafting a solution where we add value "around" the software and are therefore able to raise the price to competitive levels.  I would never want us to go back to a $40 media-only package since, to the average SMB customer, it makes our software seem like a toy.

We shouldn't go back to a publishing business that doesn't pay my staff's paychecks.  Heck we put the software up on a free download site and we offer a nice PDF manual, isn't that more than you can expect from any other software company?  

I fully realize that part of your desire for a package is that you'd like to support the business and I really appreciate the sentiment.  Actually, your on-going moral support and your contributions on these forums have always been fair trade.  I did notice that you poked at our security model in your email.  What would be a really helpful contribution would be a detailed listing of which security practices you question or that you'd like to see implemented.  That's be a terrific way to support the business.

Best,

- Kim