Advertising "open core" software

Joerg Simon jsimon at fedoraproject.org
Thu Apr 15 11:02:39 UTC 2010


Am Donnerstag, 15. April 2010 11:41:39 schrieb Jan Wildeboer:
> I am more fearful of an opposite possibility. That companies can "buy"
> themselves in to Fedora marketing. Noboidy brought this up *yet* but
> soonish someone will propose that companies could "sponsor" this. It is
> a natural thing to think about but it would be so wrong to do.

We promote Fedora and EPEL to companies "as the possibility to have "their" 
Software packaged/maintained along our guidelines on a stable enviroment with 
a broad userbase - and that it is good to become a community member by 
maintaining it together" - with all the benefits that are related - we get more 
features, users and contributors and they get a out of the box working product 
in Fedora and EPEL to have a better market penetration. This sounds like a 
good symbiosis. 

> And with complete I mean that any fedora user must be able to use all
> the features of a project in the repos. If whatever part of the expected
> featureset needs external and possibly non-opne components, we cannot
> promote it.

"any fedora user" is able to use all the features that zarafa provides to all 
fedora-users!
We do not care for proprietary windows-connectors that are out there to 
connect to databases, frameworks, application ... in fedora!
 
> Zarafa is not positioning itself on its own website as "All advantages
> of Micrososft Exchange at 50% of the costs" [1]. The version we have in
> the repos also seems to have a limit of 3 outlook users according to
> [2]. 
> So in this specific case I do have some pain in promoting it. I
> would even go as far as saying that if the version of Zarafa in Fedora
> really has this 3 user limit it is against the philosophy and spirit of
> Fedora.

Jan, Zarafa in the Open Source version does not support outlook!
And it is not about Outlook or Zarafa marketing!

> But that is not my call. As Zarafa is in the repos, I am sure this
> aspect has been throughly checked.

why mention it then ;)

> But as outlook integreation is a strong selling point for Zarafa, our
> users will expect this functionality to work. If it doesn't do that, we
> have a problem. 

It is about Fedora Users! The Users expect the Zarafa Open Source Framework 
and this is what they get. With all features! 

> And that is why I am not supportive of promoting it
> beyond the fact that Zarafa is in the repo.

We should not discourage the idea to have a good symbioses with other vendors.
The Framework is working and can be used with all Features that a Fedora User 
is able to use. 

We should be proud that we are the "first" and only who have zarafa build by 
ourself in our own infrastructure and not from zarafa itself. It was the 
community who felt the need to have it in fedora and they made all the work 
together with Zarafa - and Zarafa even changed licences. 

Zarafa is in Fedora and it is a success-story and we should be proud, it 
reflects perfectly 

freedom:
freedom to use a Enterprise Groupware without the need to use probrietary 
connectors or clients

features:
the only real working FOSS Groupware with a perfect full featured FOSS 
Webinterface

first:
we are first and only who ship zarafa inside the distribution

friends:
it is done by a close symbiosis between 
Ambassadors (it was me who made started the effort two years ago) 
Packagers (it was Robert and Jeroen who stand up and made the all the work)
Vendor (it was Zarafa who helped and showed will to learn and even changed 
licences for us!)

cu Joerg

-- 
Joerg (kital) Simon
jsimon at fedoraproject.org
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JoergSimon
http://kitall.blogspot.com
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