I would be rather disappointed if you'd agree so easilyflorian wrote:Michael,
sorry, can't really agree here.... couple points:

florian wrote:- There are major releases, minor releases and patch releases. The first couple releases this year have been patch release (11.0.1 through 11.0.4) and we absolutely made sure that everyone who was on 11.0.0 could use these as we really wanted to get rid of the most common issues that appeared with our customers.
Nice to know... I never used anything between 10 and 11.2 but it sounds like it was a very buggy era... but from my point, there are very nasty issues left, not many but enough to get my head aching, I'll name them later.
florian wrote:Maybe you also should be aware that we ourselves are probably one of our most demanding customers, as we use our product - one of the advantages of being an email company - we really and truely eat our own dogfood.
And there I don't get how those issues could slip through... but it may just be that Murphy does like me more than you

florian wrote:I wasn't happy with the quality of the initial Scali x 11 releases myself, however, since 11.0.4, I've personally had very little serious trouble and I jump between all possible kinds of clients all the time. For me, 11.2 and 11.3, and now 11.3 have truely been what they've been named for, releases that add functionality and capability or change platform support; some bugs were fixed as well, but would I be ok to use 11.0.4 today - surely I would. We originally wanted to make the license change at the 11.1 point, then postponed it for two further minor releases - I think that's a fair game.
The only "fair" thing would be to announce such critical license changes way before they happen. Don't you agree that this will have a major impact on how scalix is used right now? Good or bad for your company does not matter here, I just say it will have a big impact. And speaking of "have truely been what they've been named for", I would have hoped you'd rather called it stable and usuable here and not what you named it, but as I see the issues with 11.2... again, we'll come to that later

florian wrote:There are some annoying issues left, not lack of features but bugs, I would not call scalix to be as stable as theyself say it is but that's a marketing issue, no real problem for me there.
Can you get more specific here? Again, as I said, I'm pretty happy with what 11.2 provided to me. There are some issues left, in particular in specific markets such as Japan, but by in large there are very few big points left, according to my tracking.
NOW we'll come to the point we were all waiting for!! *flourish*

As said, it is not much. In general scalix performs well but some things I don't get why they are still there, even if at least one was called to be fixed in 11.2 (more or less official statement "will be fixed in the next release" dated may 07). The thing with "unread mail count". In general if userA does something, moments later userB notices that... GREAT! But it seems this just works if userB has this place of action (a folder, calendar, whatever) in the focus? The same thing just local for a users mailbox. As the forums indicate this has to do with the rules which move mails out of inbox (too fast?) and the message count lacks way behind this action. This is the most annoying thing I can't imagine how this could happen if you folks at scalix used your own stuff internally... in other words, I would NEVER call anything stable with such an issue, this IS critical! Network wide or just even local work in Outlook must be reliable when it comes to this. If changes in the network would take a few seconds till they reflect at ones mailbox, fine, things need time. Same on the clients inbox itself. If it would take a few moments till the unread message count refreshes, fine, things need time. But the wrong count is there for ages, just restarting outlook solves that issue for the moment. I give a damn about features, just basic operations are needed here.
The other thing is the connector crash... how long is that known? Not critical at all, technically, but how does it look like? Sorry, I just have installed the connector a several times and got almost ever the crash. How often did you folks install this thing? Again, it is not critical, but I can't understand how THAT could slip through too and of course I would have released a fix as soon as possible.
The last thing I can remember right now (users are sometimes just... argh!) google Desktop. Ok, it works for some, maybe most people but most definitely you (scalix) are aware of folks where it does not work. If installed Outlook crashes fairly often, mail indexing does not work at all, tried different versions and of course the exact same versions where it worked for others. Here I have the impression it depends on at what time google desktop was installed, before or after scalix deployment. I did not have the opportunity to look into this any further yet, so this is just a assumption right now. But again, very official statement from scalix "certified to work with scalix", how often did you folks install this in what different environments and what versions? What means "certified" there? Normally I'd say something is certified to work exactly in a well defined environment, like exact version, exact service pack, exact patch level, exact anything, there it is certified... but I did not find ANY hints on what "certified" means in this case for you folks. Seeing mailboxes around several gigabytes in size, users just LOVED google desktop search, they got used to it, it made life a lot easier... but I can't get it to run reliable and properly and I can't promise the users they will be able to use it some time soon. But said this, I am VERY happy nevertheless that at least this thing works at the most important mailbox here. Not that the mailbox is that important, but the user behind it is somehow... oh, let's net get too much in detail here

But again, maybe not as mission critical as some users say it is to them, it is fairly nasty and I've seen several folks having the same issue and are lost too... is it so hard for you folks to reproduce this issue?
Another thing, fairly critical, the activesync thing. It may work more or less, there are issues left... but despite that officially it is... oh, let me paste it:
Code: Select all
Certified ecosystem components.
[...]
Wireless Email: Cradle Synch
Blackberry Desktop Manager
ActiveSync (for Windows Mobile)
Chapura PocketMirror for Palm OS
Again, certified... but deep in the release notes more or less "nahh... works somehow, some issues left", ok, a marketing thing maybe, I changed my mind, I hate marketing!
florian wrote:But changing the license model which WILL have a real big impact for the users between minor releases without further notice or time to react. I know, you may say no one is forced to jump to release 11.3 but otherwise they will stick with some very annoying issues forever without jumping to newer releases and for sites using more than 10 users without paying money (and most annoying annual fees).
- Again, please name the issues that you believe we should fix for free for all users.
Done

florian wrote:- There is no such thing as "annual fees" for any Scalix version, ever - all our licenses are perpetual, the only thing you pay for is software subscription, i.e. continued access to all new minor and major releases going forward, i.e. instead of buying future versions of the software you pay 20% per year of upgrade insurace. As we've released at least 3 versions per year since Scalix started, this will give you another 15 new versions of the product until you've paid the original license price again; fair deal, IMHO.
You like to be fair, aren't you?

Oh, almost forgotten... I don't mind how many and how often you release new versions a year, I really don't mind! New versions introduce new bugs, I have no problem with using old software, I still have some Debian woody boxes around, they work as a charm. Also the almost 5 year old WIndowsXP or 8 year old Windows 2000, they still work great! Sure they have issues and bugs, but nothing critical, nothing that could be a showstopper in any way or at least nothing anyone realised yet to be critical. Or formerly I used to work with Exchange 5.5 or 2000... all basic operations did work without a hassle, there were issues but also workarounds. And that is the one thing I can't understand. Software is complex and so spoken it is almost impossible to code perfect bug-free software, but knowing this the extinction of bugs should be the top priority, then lots of QA and testing and after all that new features. I know QA and testing does not make money... BUT, that's the most obvious benefit of something free and open scalix COULD be. The community as a very wide scattered testing and QA staff! I don't want to see them as guinea pigs, but for sure 1 million users find more bugs as 1 thousand. It may be hard to find a balance between a commercial and an opensource company there but the step you are about to do is not a wise one. See MySQL AB for example. I am not deeply involved there, but this seems to me the almost perfect balance between both worlds. Again, I am in no position, it is just my opinion. I know Scalix and MySQL AB may not be comparable when it comes to the user count... but don't you want to be there one day? How should that work without showing the world how great your software is (or can be, see the issues


florian wrote:I know a commercial company like Scalix needs to pay attention to their shareholder value but changing the license model to rise the income (sorry, but it is nothing more than this) at this time is very disappointing!
Sorry, but that's simply not true; we don't believe we'll be raising our income based on the change, at least not in a very relevant way; it would take a lot of commercial 20-user customers to keep a company our size afloat - it's certainly our overall customer base, including some larger enterprise accounts that make the difference here, as is the case for most software companies.
Ok, provide me with the financial reports of scalix and some numbers and give me deep insights in all financial related stuff at scalix to prove you're right

We have 13 users, would be happy with the CE version up to now, short of money sort of... with the new step we'd be forced to a.) spend money b.) live with issues c.) drop scalix sooner or later. "b" is not a long-term option, "a" and "c" may be, but I don't like one of them anyway.
Either option... the one will raise your income the other will drop your overall user count. I think there are some more companies like them and these options may be very common to those too.
florian wrote:We've simply seen a good number of cases where the balance between free and commercial, especially when it comes to additional services like support, etc., doesn't play out as well; actually, especially in small business space this is more true for our reseller partners than ourselves - and all of them we've talked to have blessed the change so far. Again, the theory is that a company or other kind of commercial organisation running an email system for 20 users or so requiring groupware functionality is a serious operation with serious availability and support requirements and should be treated as such - this is much easier with a commercial license in place.
Can't agree there. If one needs SLAs, guaranteed service and response times, sell it to him. What has that to do with how many free premium users are there? YOU have the possibility to sell anything you want. 5-10-15-20-25-30... premium users packages WITH (or without) support. Maybe 1-2-3-4-5-6 would not make that much sense but... if one demands it, sell it. Plenty of room for market opportunities and resellers. I'd say it would make sense to limit the general "free" options somewhere. I don't know if 25 free premium users is a good limit, but 10 is definitely not, too many medium sized business that won't fit there anymore! I'd also say a limit of features (not basic ones! But the iCal thing maybe and other comparable things) for the free edition would make sense in the one or the other way, this is common practice. It is easy to understand to pay for more features but not so easy to understand to pay for bugfixes, very uncommon.
florian wrote:I firmly believe that, with the new offering, we simply provide the world's best and strongest free email and groupware solution; given the new features, we'll be expanding that role and there are many new things to come for commercial and free users - always keep in mind that we provide pretty rich functionality even for standard users, and they are gaining capabilities with every version we publish.
How can you speak of free groupware if that is exactly what you are about to trim a great deal? Sorry, I don't get you there, not even a bit. This is marketing speaking! Folks beware!!!

You do have an eye-candy webmail client, agreed, but even old-fashioned SquirrelMail does not have this performance issue with laaaaarge mailbox folders. SWA may have real nice features and may be the beauty of all webmailers but the most obvious thing is utterly broken or at least more than just suboptimal designed. And again, features are nice, but stable base functionality is mandatory!
florian wrote:In short words, is it really necessary to change this in between minor releases? Doesn't this sound like a change one should apply in a major release?
In short words, yes - this also has to do with our overall release strategy; I do agree that Scalix 11 was too disruptive, partially because we put too much change in various areas in a single release. Snce then, our strategy has changed and minor releases are our main vehicle to bring careful, incremental change to our userbase, in a system of continous improvement, so the next major one will most likely be out no earlier than a year from now.
Agreed, many mucho grande new features is almost ever a bad idea without major testing and QA taking place. But things need to go on, so basically it does not matter what releases you release and what version numbers they have, But don't you think you should be at least very careful what you call stable? I do remember the late scalix 10, early scalix 11 times... so many had used early 11.something releases and where shocked about the issues they had... those days I had the impression (compared to the old linux kernel development) you released a development software as stable (using kernel 2.3 or 2.5 in production is really fun!). In my opinion version numbers are nothing. See, version 11... but still basic issues with for example the unread mail count? Or is this a new feature introduced in the 11.something release? I am used to use real stable software, so bare with me if I sound a bit unfair but talking about version numbers is crap. If you intend to release less often but more stable... GREATLY appreciated but I must say at least "stable" is imho mandatory all the time with such "mission critical" software.
florian wrote:Given the change in 11.3 and subsequently 11.4, we could have made it a major release, by the way, but decided against it, for many reasons - as explained above.
I didn't get the explanations... but that may be because I see the things a bit different... as described above

florian wrote:Again, very ready to discuss the case you're making in more detail - but by in large I think we're very much on the right track and again, I can assure you that the reasons for moving in that direction are quite different from what you suspect and name......
IMHO this is not the right track... not when it comes to raising the userbase and after all to take some market share... but you said above "incremental change", let's see in what direction it goes. As Scalix in general is a wonderful product, both directions are possible even if I have my personal thoughts about the direction it will go.
florian wrote:Cheers, looking forward,
Florian.
Sure you will? As I think your speech is full of marketing patters which I hate... could get quite annoying methinks

As a side note, I almost ever used "you" but I think you will know when I mean you as Florian, a man his work and community presence I appreciate a lot, or Scalix as the whole company, the release team or whatever department fits.
greetings
Michael