Is Alfresco a real Open Source?

[edless]

Certified Alfresco Partners only offer Level 1 Support, Consulting, Integration or Training on either the Alfresco Enterprise.

Open source was born to give people the possibility to share knowledge and expertise.

Why Alfresco is giving just to big company the possibility to be supported  on the product? Why I can't pay a Alfresco Partner just to support me on a community version, without asking any guaranty?

ED

[jerico_dev]

Hi tyco,

BUT it will be not good news if there is more confusion still about which code to get and if some new feature is in Alfresco but not yours, do you not think? You are just one person but Alfresco are many and they do know the softwares better also. What do you think about this?

I don't want to confuse you at all. If you are happy with Alfresco Labs then please do not even consider using anything else. Stick to what you know and use it as you have used it before. If you do that nothing will change for you.

Jerico

[hardcoras]

Hi Jerico,

I hope you had a good weekend

I see some dark clouds are coming around you. Don't give up.  I don't see the reason why some people are so angry about you, i don't think they are representing the true opinion the community has about Alfresco. I think the community is now disappointed and is going after Nuxeo.

I'm very exciting about what you have done about creating an Alfresco's fork. I hope it will bring something useful to community. At least the Alfresco's executives will reconsider their policy about community.

You said that there are some legal issue about forking Alfresco. I'm not good at open source law, I just know the main principles and I know there are some neat things the lawyers could explain. But I don't see any reason why it would be illegal to fork Alfresco code base. I haven't heard any law case about illegal fork from GPL 3 code to GPL 3, but what you know.

Anyway keep up a good work. I support you.

[hardcoras]

Hi mabayona and tyco,

Why are you so angry? Jerico is doing great job, and he is not doing it for himself , but for the whole open source community.
I think the Alfresco ecm is a great piece of kit, but the Labs version shouldn't even be considered as beta, not to mention stable GA. The community is not allowed to commit any patches to make a stable version, because there even isn't any cvs branches for this. If you consider that current Alfresco Labs version is enough for you, then you should just relax and enjoy Alfresco. But I think you won't enjoy it, expect you are enterprise version user (but it's not open source).

In my opinion, you should thank Jerico for what he is doing right now. Now everybody has a better understanding about Alfresco's community policy (at least me), that they are using double standards. If you are ok with this, don't worry, Alfresco won't die because of any fork. But a lot of people who don't like Alfresco's policy will appreciate a new possibility to have real open source stable version.

I'm still hoping to hear some news from December's Alfresco management meeting. But because I haven't heard any up to now I think there won't be any good news for community.

[mabayona]

Jerico,

I´m not the only one that thinks that we need a stable alfresco community version or the community around it will die/migrate.

My comments about are about your comments about going with a rival product and advertising it here. This is not fair.

I think that Alfresco also thinks this way and is doing what it can: publishing all the patches. I think that the community could set a way of identifying the relevant ones  and documenting and patching a "labs" version for stability. Additionally, this would allow the community to contribute with new patches that could be integrated in Alfresco. Something that now is not happening with the extent that it could be possible.

I would like that this be done and leaded/accepted by Alfresco. This would be a win/win situation. If you look around at the most important OSS projects, this is somehow what is happening with the "enterprise" and "community" versions in Liferay, Spring and some other. However, this ends up being a instable situation since if the community is VERY stable, Alfresco could have the perception that some enterprise members could think in saving license fees and using the community version and if the community version is not stable, the community would "migrate".

My impression is that Alfresco should provide an unsupported stable community version for SMB for a small fee. This would complement its reveue and break this somehow evolving relation between enterprise and community-labs.

[dhalupa]

This is becoming more and more ridiculous

jerico.dev 17 posts, hardcoras 3 posts. Really respected and well known members of alfresco community are advocating for community interest

Please, don't..

[hardcoras]

Hi mabayona,

I think that Alfresco also thinks this way and is doing what it can: publishing all the patches. I think that the community could set a way of identifying the relevant ones  and documenting and patching a "labs" version for stability. Additionally, this would allow the community to contribute with new patches that could be integrated in Alfresco. Something that now is not happening with the extent that it could be possible.

I would like that this be done and leaded/accepted by Alfresco. This would be a win/win situation. If you look around at the most important OSS projects, this is somehow what is happening with the "enterprise" and "community" versions in Liferay, Spring and some other. However, this ends up being a instable situation since if the community is VERY stable, Alfresco could have the perception that some enterprise members could think in saving license fees and using the community version and if the community version is not stable, the community would "migrate".

This is exactly what Jerico is trying to achieve. It would be great if Alfresco will provide svn branches for community to patch for stability and will not push any new features into it. Alfresco can hide some new functionality from community and provide it only to enterprise clients.
Jerico does not want to create a new fork, he just wants to create and maintain Labs stable version in sync with Alfresco. From my point of view it's very good initiative if Alfresco won't change their mind.

My impression is that Alfresco should provide an unsupported stable community version for SMB for a small fee. This would complement its reveue and break this somehow evolving relation between enterprise and community-labs.

Hmmm, so for what do you pay (code is open source (community), no support)? Didn't get it.

[jerico_dev]

Hi mabayona,

My comments about are about your comments about going with a rival product and advertising it here. This is not fair.

Agreed. That's why I removed my references to third-party projects that are not backed by Alfresco.

I think that the community could set a way of identifying the relevant ones  and documenting and patching a "labs" version for stability.

As hardcoras already said: that's exactly my intention. That's what we are doing.

I would like that this be done and leaded/accepted by Alfresco. This would be a win/win situation.

Read my other posts on this forum and you'll see that this is exactly my argument. That's why I am seeking to convince people within Alfresco, right on this forum. As I've said before: I'd be happy if Alfresco prevented third-party attempts to do a stable community edition by providing it themselves. This would save us all a lot of effort and Alfresco could maintain full control of what's going on in their community. There are people at Alfresco who understand this argument.

I guess that if we are delivering upon our promises, Alfresco will ultimately be happy to do what many other open source companies have done before with success and less community friction: Provide a stable and production-ready core product as (OSI compliant) open source where you can contribute under an OSI license and sell enterprise-level additions to it. This will give SMB and independent community members a chance to build up a flourishing Alfresco ecosystem. I've got many ideas how Alfresco could even generate additional revenue streams from such an ecosystem. The principle is: Keep the value in the differentiated (enterprise) product and let the community maintain, complement and spread the word of the commodity (community) product. Win - win, as you say.

Unfortunately change doesn't come about by just talking or wishing. Organisations like Alfresco need time, good arguments, persistence and some internal pressure to realize change especially when there are a lot of people with a proprietary background in important positions to whom the open source talk does not come naturally.

Jerico

[jerico_dev]

Hi hardcoras,

But I don't see any reason why it would be illegal to fork Alfresco code base. I haven't heard any law case about illegal fork from GPL 3 code to GPL 3, but what you know.

The legal questions are not concerning the license but Alfresco's (TM) brand. It is Alfresco's good right that nobody makes (ab)use of their name when it is not in their declared interest. We certainly want to make sure that we fully respect Alfresco's rights in all areas including this one.

Jerico

[monitloth]

Now, I would like to ask if the third version (LABS/3) of Alfresco is based on the entreprise edition of Alfresco 2 or also the C.E. edition.
So, are the bugless codes in the second EE version integrated in the third C.E. (LABS)?

Thanks.

[hardcoras]

Now, I would like to ask if the third version (LABS/3) of Alfresco is based on the entreprise edition of Alfresco 2 or also the C.E. edition.
So, are the bugless codes in the second EE version integrated in the third C.E. (LABS)?

Thanks.

Labs 3 is based on 2.9 CE. Some of bug fixes are applied to Labs 3 version but not all. I hope even more bugs fixes gonna be introduce soon because right now Labs version is more buggy than any version we got up to now.