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.
