Xavier.A et al
Why fws is supporting Koozali SME Server? It's not for the glory !
Yes they are (AFAIK) using Koozali SME server for commercial purposes (& so are many others small & large who have made input here), but FWS are not directly charging people money here or at contribs.org generally for their time & efforts, it is a donation to a open source project, & that is a pretty obvious & generous one too.
Rightly so they can sell or do whatever they want financially with SME server, as a seperate business function to their involvement with Koozali & contribs.org.
...from my point of view you need more developers to write new codes and to maintain the old one. the store could be the solution, and 1€ or 2€ per app (75% for dev/ 25% for Koozali) it's not expensive, is it ? The main code could be maintained easily for free like that, no?
The concept is not necessarily a bad one, BUT many people here contribute or have contributed in the past because Koozali SME server is an open source project & it is free, & contribs.org etc is not making money from those contributions of time, effort & expertise. Those people contribute for that very reason, it is open source & somebody else is not making money directly from their efforts, & as many people contribute, the workload is shared amongst many (or not as many as needed, some may choose to say).
The problem with Koozali Foundation/contribs.org supporting & promoting some form of store or advertising for experts & payment for those services rendered by those experts/consultants, is that many of the people who contribute do not want to support a system that some people use to then make money from. I mean by this a website etc & supporting backend (with code & whatever else), that is essentially an advertisement for consultants, who are possibly paying very little to use it but getting the site donated to them (in the form of time, effort & cost etc).
The whole concept of contribs.org has been the open source free model, & if some people (advertisers/experts/consultants benefit from advertising & payment for services that are supported & promoted by Koozali/contribs.org, then people who contribute their time freely feel their time is no longer going to an open source project, but to help others directly make money.
These reasons (& I'm sure many others) have been raised in the past, so nothing is new.
The issue at hand now is how (or even if) Koozali Foundation and/or contribs.org can adapt to some form of paid model to help SME server to be developed further etc etc.
I am not necessarily speaking against the concept of some form of payment vs free, there are pros & cons to either approach, or a mix of approaches, but finding the right balance is critical, a balance that does not cause existing contributors to leave (for the reason they feel their free work is of financial benefit to others).
It is probably better to have a seperate Koozali Business Unit, & advertisers etc who use the service, pay a certain amount to fund the site etc etc. Would it be self sustaining without free input from Koozali Foundation & members of this community ?
Your suggestion needs much more thought re how to best be implemented, if at all.
Others have done it commercially eg Dungog, who created many contribs & maintained & supported them totally seperate to contribs.org, Gordon Rowell also had his own consulting & support business, heavily based on SME server but broader than that, Charlie Brady has done paid development work for specific components for SME server that a business needed, & that paid for code was then donated back to the base core of SME server, but these three examples were seperate business entities, although these developers were heavily involved with the open source side of SME server.
What now ? Of course suggest anything to Koozali Foundation, but keep the above in mind.
34 Replies
7085 Views