Hello, Thanks Dan. Nice response. I've added one or two points below.
On Monday 16 July 2007 22:30, Dan Langille wrote: > On 16 Jul 2007 at 22:19, Francisco Rodrigo Cortinas Ma wrote: > > > - In the fact that you need funding, the right way is to ask for > > "donations". This will remain valid as long as the project remains > > "small". > > We have asked for donations. In a prevoius email, Kern mentioned > this has been about $8000 since 2000. That's about $4 a day. Given > the number of users, it's pretty clear that donations don't work. Exactly. I tried donations first. It didn't work. > > > - The case you have is that you do a lot of work to provide > > binaries, and people does not "donate" the amount you need to > > support the project. System operating licenses are not free..... > > I do not understand your point here. I'm also slightly confused here. If you mean that you already pay for something like Red Hat and don't want to pay again, OK, but talk to them about supplying you the binaries, other distros such as Debian, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mepis, ... (also FreeBSD?) supply the binaries. I see no reason why that will change. > > > - Other thing is that the binaries you support are not to all the > > OSs that people use out there, that is, i think that almost > > everybody will compile their own binaries (except for windows, i > > thin) for their oss. That is perfectly fine and the way it should work. > > Personally, we use AIX and HPUX (and > > others...), oss that you dont provide a binarie for them. > > So this step won't really affect you. Not only that, but if we can generate a minimum of revenues, we can hire someone who will produce all those binaries and more -- or there will be independent people who come forward to do the work for a reasonable renumeration. > > > >From the point of view of the customer, if you want users like me > > (im not a user now, but we are planning to use your software) to pay > > for the use of the software, one of the major thing that move us to > > use the software (the fact that is free) will go away, and there are > > other commercial software that do the same that your software do, > > and have much more experience doing marketing of their products. Suppose I said to you that we will use your telco services if you provide them for free. Would you then provide free services for Open Source projects and for commercial companies so that we will convert to your telco? I doubt it. > > People can use the software for free. It is just that we will stop > building binaries. Others are free to build binaries. In that > regard, nothing has changed. The software remains freely available > for anyone to use. This is true except for one nuance, I hope we can build more binaries and to test them better. The binaries will remain free to individuals and charities, and they will be provided as part of our professional support contracts, but those companies that want our binaries and don't want a support contract will need to purchase them. In the current OSS models, most small projects don't create binaries, and in certain such as Red Hat, no one gets their binaries without a support contract. > > > What i want to say is that if you want to, please put a fee on the > > support of the software, that is, online fixing problems, answering > > customer questions, etc, not on the use of it. Im glad to say that > > im willing you to grow up this company, and give us support on the > > future releases of the tool, but at a reasonable fee......:). The current support mechanism will remain, I see no reason to change it, but there is a strong need for a support for the professional support organizations, and that will be provided for a very modest fee, and with a fee structure which will virtually guarantee that corporations will not have to worry about license violations. Most fee structures are based on the number of CPUs or servers or clients or volume, or some such model. Ours will be a flat fee for each platform supported -- not all platforms will have the same fee. > > Using the software is and will continue to be free. > > > Again, its an impressive software. > > Thank you. > > All we're asking is for the companies that are saving thousands of > dollars to consider donating a relatively small portion of these > annual savings. > Yes. Someday in the far future, it might be that the revenues from binaries are so small that it is not worth the effort to charge for them. This could be because all the distros build Bacula binaries or that most enterprises have support contracts, or that the commercial effort becomes very large. Best regards, Kern ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
