100% Open Source Release (1.2.1) now available!

[paulhh]

We would like to announce that the completely, 100% Open Source  Release of Alfresco is now available (V1.2.1).  This release brings into the Community version all the "enterprise" functionality, including: groups, LDAP and Active Directory integration, single sign-on and high-availability (clustering & replication).  There are also a couple of enhancements for search.

There are full installers for Windows and Linux.  These include everything you need to run Alfresco (Java, MySQL, Tomcat, OpenOffice) in a wizard-based install.

All downloads are on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=143373

Release notes for V1.2.1 can be found in our wiki here: http://www.alfresco.org/mediawiki/index.php/Release_1.2.1

Please see http://www.alfresco.com if you are interested in the fully supported Enterprise Network.

Thank you again for your continued support,

The Alfresco Team.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It will take at least 24 hours for SourceForge to update its mirrors for the downloads to become available! Suggest you try the European SourceForge mirrors first as they appear to update faster.

[paulhh]

Going 100% Open Source is a big deal for a Professional Open Source company.  Remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch - we will be paying our developers from the support contracts that companies take out with us. 

So we have done our part, now the community will need to its.  Obviously, our developers now need to spend more of their time helping those that have paid for support: so do not expect to find them on the forums as much as they have been in the past.  They will still be around - just not as much!

Cheers
Paul.

[mfeldstein]

Kudos. This is a smart move. I would imagine you'll see increased adoption and code contributions first; increased support contracts will follow.

[rdanner]

Going 100% Open Source is a big deal for a Professional Open Source company.  Remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch - we will be paying our developers from the support contracts that companies take out with us. 

So we have done our part, now the community will need to its.  Obviously, our developers now need to spend more of their time helping those that have paid for support: so do not expect to find them on the forums as much as they have been in the past.  They will still be around - just not as much!

Cheers
Paul.

Watch lest alfresco support in the forums is extrapolated by others as an indication of what alfresco support contract means.  Remember that it behooves alfresco to mentor on ECM period. 

Most of the forum support needs I have witnessed over the last year can be handled by FAQ / Wiki.  But as you know we don?t like to read, it?s easier to ask.  Alfresco can't really afford to have the engineers answering and answering the same questions.   Paul, it?s a tricky set of waters to navigate.  Whatever brings down the barriers to entry is good for alfresco and is disruptive to your competitors.  Alfresco fits the mold, like Sony, Toyota, cannon, Linux its "cheap", "simple" and accessible.

The only deviation from the pattern is that people don?t believe they need ECM yet and if they do the hate the fact that they do.  Alfresco already sees this and exposes tools like email and CIFS.  The next frontier it to really mentor people in understanding ECM which I see going on with the pod casts.  Don't stop there, people should love ECM not hate it… it?s a bug and if you catch it and make it your own, you become an evangelist the likes of which a salesman can?t touch; which means more support contracts.

I certainly don?t have the answers.  I think its alfresco is playing a complicated and uncharted game but has made all the right moves so far.  Any company that downloads alfresco, wants to use it and can afford the support will buy it.  I have no doubt about that.  If they don't by the support it?s because they were never going to buy the support… they don?t have a critical application and if Alfresco wasn?t free they would use a shared drive and call it a day.  What they need is not ECM … but they see some value in alfresco and can still use it for what they need.  The need something much more simple (a shared drive.) pluse maybe one other critical feature.

How do you balance how much information and documentation, forum support you put on line for free with the things you hide and give only to people who buy from you?

How do you create more then one sales channel?  Alfresco support, Alfresco university, Alfresco roundtables, Alfresco user groups, Alfresco on site whatever, If you make the documentation and community so good you will marginalize you place in the market.

What if I start a company and sell these things?  How do you compete with squatters and even partners who can?t help themselves but skim your market?

My advice to alfresco is: don't ever let fear be your motive. You have the best OS CMS, a constellation of the engineers who have been doing this stuff forever, and great management.  Keep feeding the community and don?t try to manage it.  Above all stay engaged… keep talking to the community, keep helping people become alfresco inventors.

Don?t act or resist acting based of fear, we can smell it, and it?s a repellent.

Don?t try to manage the community, that is in danger of creating a one way conversation and it?s the death of your community.

Stay engaged, keep the conversation going - don?t worry about where it goes.  If it diverges from where your core clients are, don?t ignore it, someone else will pick up on it and disrupt you. The people not paying for your product are just as important to you as the ones who are – they are not buying because you are are simple enough to use or cheap enough for them to buy from.

Whatever it takes to make the community at large smarter, more interested, take more ownership – Do it.  Mentor.  Eventually the community will care for itself – don?t fool yourself, your not there yet.

I think it?s interesting that many open source companies use downloads to measure the size / penetration of the community.  It?s certainly a good data point but it can?t possibly indicate anything other then interest on its own.    What is the KPI Alfresco is using to measure its community and its revenue potentials?

[paulhh]

Hi Russ

No fear, just reality 🙂

The engineers have been spending a couple of hours each day on the forums and that is just not sustainable.  It doesn't mean they'll abandon the forums, just not spend that sort of time on it.  We will also be putting more resource into FAQs and documentation, which will help everyone.

We absolutely want to put effort into fostering the community - hence the Forge, for instance.  We'd like to see people adding categories, templates (space & presentation), as well as language packs and extensions.  That means you don't have to be a Java-head to be able to contribute.

Cheers
Paul.

[alexander]

Greetings

We are using latest Subversion updates to align our development efforts with Alfresco development.

Ara all changes mentioned also refelcted in SVn version (I noticed groups management, just want to confirm)

Thanks
Alexander
One Point Consulting

[ronnyt]

You made the right decision. Enterprises of any size will not risk a lack of support once Alfresco contains critical information. All other issues (debugging of code, extension, license model, …) are simplified.

I suggest to open fully your support site - so customers can see all posts from everybody and convince themselves of the quality of your support (time to respond, quality of reply), which will help them subscribe to the service. Customers should pay attention not to convey company critical information in their support requests  anyhow.

You could call it an "Open Service" model (with a bit of imagination).   :lol:

[paulhh]

Alexander:

We have not yet merged the enterprise functionality into the 1.3 SVN - that will happen sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Ronny:

Not all companies like to have their support visible to the rest of the world.  Often, commercial data can be involved.  We let the companies decide how they wish to communicate issues with us (publicly or privately).  We encourage people to raise issues in the forums or Jira and then alert us via the support channels - that way they get timely support, but others can benefit from any solutions and workarounds.

Cheers
Paul.

[rdanner]

Hi Russ

No fear, just reality 🙂

The engineers have been spending a couple of hours each day on the forums and that is just not sustainable.  It doesn't mean they'll abandon the forums, just not spend that sort of time on it.  We will also be putting more resource into FAQs and documentation, which will help everyone.

We absolutely want to put effort into fostering the community - hence the Forge, for instance.  We'd like to see people adding categories, templates (space & presentation), as well as language packs and extensions.  That means you don't have to be a Java-head to be able to contribute.

Cheers
Paul.

Paul,

Absolutely, I don?t want to give the impression that I think there is some utopian answer to any of this.  There is a balance, and everyone is trying to figure it out.  I hope alfresco makes a ton of money; they certainly are have all the showing of a company that has the potential. How much benevolence can Alfresco afford?  For me the communication is the value in open source not the functionality or the service, paying for service and is an obvious part of running a sustainable business with SLAs.

Alfresco should not communicate less, it should communicate more.  The source code is available, that is one form of expression and to be honest it?s just an enabler and it has a tiny reach.  The forums and the wiki are another place to communicate.  We need to get people discussing and learning about ECM here because it will create a demand for alfresco.

Parts of my questions revolve around an unclear understanding on my part about what exactly the composition of Alfresco support is.  We purchased it [support] early on, and under different conditions (access to LDAP code required support etc).  What?s the support process? What does support cover, and what does it not cover?

The Alfresco staff doesn?t have time to answer the questions like why doesn?t my FTP work… and I don?t want them to.  Dave, Kevin, John, you and the rest of the team need to be pushing the product to the max and extending the boundaries of ECM and mentoring. Ok but if the community was there, it would answer the FTP problem and then put it in the FAQ – this happens at apache – it should happen at alfresco (but then.. alfresco is going to have to play like apache in a lot of ways).  Is alfresco services contract about "why doesn?t my FTP work?"  I guess if I ask that question, because I have support someone at alfresco will answer it quickly.  And I expect that if someone did, I would be more then happy to post the resolution on an FAQ and in the forum, and even let others know when if they asked the same question. 

That?s what I would call, Alfresco Insurance.  In most cases I pay the server cost / CPU and if I don?t have questions Alfresco collects; if I ask too many questions, Alfresco looses. Do you have actuaries ready to figure out who the "right" clients are?  You need to mentor and offload the time consuming little questions to the community – which is really important because then the community is allowing the Alfresco insurance to make a profit (which means alfresco will stay alive – symbiotic relationship) and at the same time the community is lowering your barrier to entry.

Alfresco professional services:  I have questions about best practices.  I?ve asked them in the forums, I?ve asked them on the phone.  In general there is not a lot of feedback which leads me to wonder if my support contract converse that and if I need to buy Alfresco engineering time to come look at my issues and help me architect a solution, or if the practices are simply not well known just yet. It seems to me that professional services stand to make the most money.  No matter how much wonderful documentation you put online (you can put the solutions on line)… people will in general never have enough time to implement.  They need help, and they want help because they would rather succeed without stress.

Alfresco University:  I see you provide training… great, no questions here. This is obviously on track. Workshops and seminars at conferences are great for making coin and fall nicely outside of support contracts (discounts are nice for the guys that have support).)


Hope this is helpful… otherwise let me know and I'll shut up

[simon]

We are using the Alfresco 1.2.0 Enterprise edition at this point but need to upgrade to a higher version. Alfresco 1.2.1 should have some bugfixes we really need.

I found this in the release notes: "Fixes: none" but Andy told us he fixed the empty groups LDAP import problem in this release… is this the release we need or is this just Enterprise 1.2.0 with a new version number?

Can I just download and install 1.2.1 now? How will you make the difference when an Enterprise customer asks for support?