Koozali.org: home of the SME Server

Foundation - the future of SME.....

Offline gzartman

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #30 on: May 07, 2013, 12:27:11 AM »
Any branding is better defended with a recognisable logoform.

Patience everyone....   It's not even been a week since we made the update about the Foundation. 

We've been given some concepts by a graphic designer.  As soon as we refine the search a bit, we'll put some options up for everyone to look at and comment on.  No point in putting up a bunch of designs that don't remotely meet our needs.

Greg
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Greg J. Zartman
LEI Engineering & Surveying

SME user and community member since 2000.

Offline purvis

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #31 on: May 07, 2013, 08:11:19 AM »
I believe a name for the server should be something that server does well at.
A lot of work(TIME) and money goes in making of the server. From the past experience I have had with the server. I can really say there has been few software that has been as dependable and packaged  with more than basic needs of most servers than SME provides. It is a linux server with the work attitude of a mule.
I would think that idea, a stable, not much nonsense to operate, reliable, hard to break server is what SME is and a name should be given it that resembles what SME brings to the needs of it's users.
I want SME to continue and succeed. That is in my own best interest to be selfish about it.

I think the best way to get others on board with a SME server is for new comers to take it as serious work mule of a server.
Maybe even Besty, similar to Betsy(a common name for a mule) might be good.  I am pulling your leg. And an actual real mule did break my arm when I was a young.

I still think a memorable, easy  and sayableJ name would work better if it closely matches what the product actual is and also a name that would be worthy of the hard dedicated work put into it. Just as people associate cost with quality. They associate frilly names with non quality and short term usage(things that do not last). Anybody know a Tina.

« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 08:20:30 AM by purvis »

Offline Stefano

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #32 on: May 07, 2013, 09:40:44 AM »
Purvis

I'm a SME user since it was E-smith and site (and forums) was on e-smith.org..

when it changed the name I was very disappointed with it but..

people follow the product, not the name

now you have, as usual, 2 possibilities:
- be part of the game
- go away

I can't see any kind of "[silver|gold|platinum] supporter" on your profile.. does it mean you are not donating anything?

Offline ReetP

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #33 on: May 07, 2013, 11:49:35 AM »
I believe a name for the server should be something that server does well at.

So how does that figure with names like Windows (which is anything but reliable half the time) or say Apple and Mac - what do THEY say about the product ? You do not NEED to make the name anything to do with the product to make it successful. Anyone for a Snickers ? What is a Ford Escort anyway ? What on earth IS a Boeing 747 ? Sexy name isn't it ? Not. You only know it is a car or a plane or a chocolate bar because the advertising, branding and marketing TELLS you that. I am sure we could produce a million example of this.

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A lot of work(TIME) and money goes in making of the server.

Yes, we are working hard. What about you ?

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From the past experience I have had with the server. I can really say there has been few software that has been as dependable and packaged  with more than basic needs of most servers than SME provides. It is a linux server with the work attitude of a mule.

We know.

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I would think that idea, a stable, not much nonsense to operate, reliable, hard to break server is what SME is and a name should be given it that resembles what SME brings to the needs of it's users.

See above. It isn't NECESSARY. And as I said before, you can have Koozali SME server (not that SME server says everything there is to say in any event)

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I want SME to continue and succeed. That is in my own best interest to be selfish about it.

Oh I am sure of that.

You (and unfortunately a lot of others) WANT a lot, but probably aren't contributing ANYTHING, apart from criticism on a subject which you clearly don't understand.

We have 30,000 or installations out there. But a few hundred subscribe to the lists, probably similar in the forums. Where are the other few thousand admins who make money from the installation and service ? If they aren't prepared to either help, or donate sensibly then those who ARE doing the work can make whatever decisions they feel is best for the system.

Remember - our current income is a few hundred dollars a month which is pathetic and doesn't cover the costs of the hardware.

If we can't up the voluntary contributions I can tell you NOW that we will have no choice but to look at other ways to raise revenue. Now whether that is by sponsorship, or charging for commercial use or whatever, it HAS to happen for this place to survive.

So, the upshot is get involved, do something, pay something, and be involved in the planning and future.

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I think the best way to get others on board with a SME server is for new comers to take it as serious work mule of a server.

To do that we have to market and sell it correctly. As above, the name is completely irrelevant.

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Maybe even Besty, similar to Betsy(a common name for a mule) might be good.  I am pulling your leg. And an actual real mule did break my arm when I was a young.

Now you really ARE taking a flight of fantasy....

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I still think a memorable, easy  and sayableJ name would work better if it closely matches what the product actual is and also a name that would be worthy of the hard dedicated work put into it. Just as people associate cost with quality. They associate frilly names with non quality and short term usage(things that do not last). Anybody know a Tina.

You still clearly know nothing about the power of branding and marketing. Rolls Royce ?? Brand and quality ??? They were two brothers. Does the name tell you they make quality products ? Only NOW, because you know. They BUILT the brand from nothing.

You are looking at it from the perspective of one who is SOLD TO, not the one doing the selling. Please go and have a good read around on the whole subject, educate yourself, and rethink things.

B. Rgds
John
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 03:02:00 PM by ReetP »
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline janet

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #34 on: May 07, 2013, 12:57:35 PM »
purvis

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......a name should be given it that resembles what SME brings to the needs of it's users.
I still think a memorable, easy  and sayableJ name would work better if it closely matches what the product actual is and also a name that would be worthy of the hard dedicated work put into it. ...... Anybody know a Tina.

Really your comments about the name are too late, the decision has already been made & I'm sure it will not be changed. You had a chance 4 months ago to get involved & you did not take up that opportunity, so you forfeited your chance to get involved in creating the new name.

Please end this topic.
 
....and yes I do know a Tina, a very clever sharp minded lady who runs her own business. If you are suggesting all Tinas are automatically of less intelligence, then you are very wrong & perhaps even a male chauvinist pig I'd say.
Please search before asking, an answer may already exist.
The Search & other links to useful information are at top of Forum.

Offline piran

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #35 on: May 07, 2013, 02:39:21 PM »
See above. It isn't NECESSARY. And as I said before, you can have Koozali
I have stopped short of quoting your typo on our brand name so
that the search engines do not maintain that typo via the quote.
Please edit your post to keep branding references consistent.

Offline ReetP

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #36 on: May 07, 2013, 03:05:57 PM »
I have stopped short of quoting your typo on our brand name so
that the search engines do not maintain that typo via the quote.
Please edit your post to keep branding references consistent.

:shock:


Ooops :-) I seemed to have misspelled Koozali. I have corrected it....

Thank you VERY much for being so observant and for picking that up.

I should know better ;-) I'll go outside and flog myself now.

Many thanks.

B. Rgds
John
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline piran

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #37 on: May 07, 2013, 03:07:56 PM »
Don't flog too hard ;-)

Offline purvis

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #38 on: May 07, 2013, 09:01:34 PM »
I have had my say anout what i thought would help the new SME to suceed  and tried to make a point from learned experiences.

I do not think most non profit organizations advertise their name or branding in a big way unless they are marketing towards a large group to ask for donation from them, say like  United Way, Red Cross, etc. International and national companies spend a large percentage of their cost on advertising to get the name in front of potential buyers.

My neighbor use to say "The best lessons are the ones you have to pay for as long as you don't have to pay too much".  She was referring mostly not to money but to all things of life in general.

On another  note.
Everybody on earth has childhood issues. Everyone of us including me. Yes you too. Even Jesus had childhood issues. But there are different levels of it and many times these issues can keep a person from having a happy life. The happy life most people dream of. To overcome these kinds of issues requires one to forgive and go through the issue. You cannot go around. You have to go through it. This hopefully creates a resolution to the issue and gives peace to the individual. Like I said. All people have issues. If one can find the resolution and many times not on their own. Life will be much happier.

Offline ReetP

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #39 on: May 08, 2013, 10:46:34 AM »
I have had my say anout what i thought would help the new SME to suceed  and tried to make a point from learned experiences.


Unfortunately however well meant your comments are, you are talking to people who have quite a lot of experience in this field :-) Not ALL of us are coders/devs..... I think you may be surprised when you see things come together a bit more. Just give it a chance. As I mentioned, I would have liked to have launched everything together, but equally wanted people to know what was going on.

The best thing you can do right now to help is either donate, or get involved with v9.

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I do not think most non profit organizations advertise their name or branding in a big way unless they are marketing towards a large group to ask for donation from them, say like  United Way, Red Cross, etc. International and national companies spend a large percentage of their cost on advertising to get the name in front of potential buyers.

Don't get mixed up between 'Not for Profit' and 'Doing it for Free'. As a NfP we could have a turnover of a million dollars, just so long as we don't make a profit. We need cash to operate. End of story.

If this place was a business it would have been bankrupt a long time ago. We run at a loss. This HAS to change.

The simple truth is that the system here cannot run on thin air. Unfortunately, many people think they can just take and get it all for free and nothing has to be paid for, but they forget there are costs in all the infrastructure that have to be paid for. This just hasn't really been discussed or publicised much before and is a situation we have to change.

We therefore have to tackle two problems :

1. Raise sufficient funds to maintain the current infrastructure.

2. If people want new developments, and want them in a hurry, then we need to raise funds to aid future development be it employ a developer to work on specific items or whatever.


If we can't raise funds for No 1 voluntarily then we will have to look at other sources of revenue, be that sponsorship, advertising, subscription or whatever.

Yes, that sounds painful, but it has to be done. It wouldn't change the Open Source status of the basic software. But we have to do something, somehow, as we cannot run at personal loss forever.

No 2 is something that I am sure many would like to see, but we need to seriously up our game to make it happen. That means everyone has to contribute in some way, shape or form.

Onwards & upwards :-)

B. Rgds
John
...
1. Read the Manual
2. Read the Wiki
3. Don't ask for support on Unsupported versions of software
4. I have a job, wife, and kids and do this in my spare time. If you want something fixed, please help.

Bugs are easier than you think: http://wiki.contribs.org/Bugzilla_Help

If you love SME and don't want to lose it, join in: http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation

Offline mikedawson

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #40 on: May 17, 2013, 01:36:54 PM »
Hi,

I've been using SME Server and have developed some mods that I'm putting up on sourceforge.net shortly - mostly around bandwidth management.  I love the development model of SME server, and I don't like the way other similar projects try and get the intellectual property rights for any add on, plug-in etc.

I run an IT company in Afghanistan (www.paiwastoon.net); as well now as a company in Dubai Internet City.  We did the One Laptop Per Child pilot there, and I've been working on putting per user bandwidth management into SME server.  I have a small business appliance system in the works for people on the other side of the digital/bandwidth divide.  We have literally battle tested SME Server :) .  It's our Net Speed Manager server that is based on SME Server.  Right now it's running about 8 Internet connections in Kabul as a test.

I'd be interested to know:

1. How much infrastructure cost are we talking here?  I read over the forums and a few posts - I didn't see what the numbers look like.  Is this mostly hosting the downloads?

2. I went over some numbers looking at how we're going to launch our magic black box appliance - there are definitely places that could be monetized.  Moodle has an interesting partner model for service providers - flat yearly fee plus a percentage of Moodle revenue to be given to the moodle foundation.  Is something like that up for consideration? 

Then all those folks looking to cash in on SME server can get some marketing;  those looking for help can find solution providers, and the foundation itself can get some money in.

Regards,

-Mike

Offline stephdl

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #41 on: May 18, 2013, 09:51:33 PM »
Hi,

I've been using SME Server and have developed some mods that I'm putting up on sourceforge.net shortly - mostly around bandwidth management.  I love the development model of SME server, and I don't like the way other similar projects try and get the intellectual property rights for any add on, plug-in etc.

I'm very curious to see your sme mod as i have seen the short video of presentation, can we test  ourself your work. it needs a wiki page and a link to binaries, eventually the src.rpm could be nice to look on the way you do this contrib.

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I run an IT company in Afghanistan (www.paiwastoon.net); as well now as a company in Dubai Internet City.  We did the One Laptop Per Child pilot there, and I've been working on putting per user bandwidth management into SME server.  I have a small business appliance system in the works for people on the other side of the digital/bandwidth divide.  We have literally battle tested SME Server :) .  It's our Net Speed Manager server that is based on SME Server.  Right now it's running about 8 Internet connections in Kabul as a test.

Nice website :p

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I'd be interested to know:

1. How much infrastructure cost are we talking here?  I read over the forums and a few posts - I didn't see what the numbers look like.  Is this mostly hosting the downloads?
Contribs.org is hosting by Shad on his own server farm, repositories are shared by people over the world to help the project (i own aubrac-medical.fr)....we can say right now that there is no business plan, and less money in pockets. Simply i hope that in few time "Things they are changing"

hum it was a song no ?

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2. I went over some numbers looking at how we're going to launch our magic black box appliance - there are definitely places that could be monetized.  Moodle has an interesting partner model for service providers - flat yearly fee plus a percentage of Moodle revenue to be given to the moodle foundation.  Is something like that up for consideration? 

Then all those folks looking to cash in on SME server can get some marketing;  those looking for help can find solution providers, and the foundation itself can get some money in.

Every ideas are good and especially when we speak about money raising :p

But there are many kind of ways to help the project, effectively you can make a monthly donation and you may as you were saying give some percentage of your customer bill to the contribs.org. All doors are open in this case.
Don't forget that money is really important but people working in bugzilla, or editing documentations are completely necessary. Ideally If we are aware of the contribs health we have to do both, a financial donation and we must give some times to work together on the project.

Quote
Regards,

-Mike

Nice to see you, may you subscribe on mailling list, notably the discussion list which is more appropriate to discuss of these purposes.
See http://wiki.contribs.org/Koozali_Foundation
irc : Freenode #sme_server #sme-fr

!!! Please write your knowledge to the Wiki !!!

Offline gzartman

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #42 on: May 19, 2013, 07:10:15 PM »
Hi,

1. How much infrastructure cost are we talking here?  I read over the forums and a few posts - I didn't see what the numbers look like.  Is this mostly hosting the downloads?

Our current, BAREBONES, running costs right now are about $31,000 per year.   This includes only the hard costs of hardware, utilities, and ISP to provide the contribs.org community services (e.g., forums, mailing lists, wiki, etc) and the buildsys (i.e., the system that automates much of the building of the distro rpms).   There are NO allowances here for any compensation to individuals who run and maintain all of these services.

Our current revenue (via donations) is $5,000-$6,000 per year.  So, we are $25,000 per year in the red.   This deficit is made up by the generosity of 1-2 individuals.  Without this, SME Server as a project would have been dead a long time ago. This HAS to change. 

I'm one of the board members of Koozali Foundation, Inc, the new foundation started recently to manage the community assets.  We are working to put together a proper budget and develop ways to increase revenue for maintaining the community and disto.   As soon as we have something, we'll post it for all to see and comment.

Greg
« Last Edit: May 19, 2013, 07:30:00 PM by gzartman »
----
Greg J. Zartman
LEI Engineering & Surveying

SME user and community member since 2000.

Offline mikedawson

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #43 on: May 21, 2013, 06:08:14 PM »
Hi,

Sorry for the delayed response - was travelling.  Wow - that's a shortfall of $2K/month.  That is rather a lot of generosity and and unfortunately an unsustainable proposition.

I was planning anyway on putting a portion of SME related sales into donations - that likely take a couple months before we launch..  Re the contrib plugin that I made - the code and binary rpms going up is a work in progress, I'm planning to have that done around mid June.  That will include the .src.rpm, and I'll put the project on sf.net (which also nicely saves on hosting bandwidth costs...)

I was reading re. the Koozali foundation and I'll look forward to seeing the proposed revenue streams.  I spent quite a bit of time going through revenue models that I saw around the bandwidth systems and appliances.  I think a lot of people; as is rightly so with open source software, have got revenue streams around SME services (running, maintenance, hosting VPNs, etc).  But enough has to come back.  I have done coding for around 12 years now; but it was business school that I dropped out of.

What is frustrating about SME server competitors is that one company is attempting to monopolize all the revenue opportunities around it (e.g. ClearOS, Zentyal, etc) as opposed to having a marketplace with a variety of providers.  I also suspect customers prefer the latter - so they know they have somewhere else to turn if required.

Sure some of this already occurred to you guys...

Paying to get into a service provider's directory or sponsorship would have appeal to a lot of service providers I would hope (I can say it holds so for me).    Do you have download stats on how many people are downloading SME Server and traffic to the website? 

Paying to be an official training partner - though one of the great things about SME server is how little training is needed to take care of it.

Perhaps even more interesting and helpful would be to throw up a quick survey on the homepage and ask for those who are providing services around SME Server to at least answer a few questions about what they would pay for....

But in the meantime I look forward to seeing the budget/revenue generating ideas and comment when that comes out.  Moodle, OpenERP, and the like spring to mind following similar business models.  I'm happy to help both with input/review and most importantly likely with participating thereafter.

Regards,

-Mike

Offline RvLardin

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Re: Foundation - the future of SME.....
« Reply #44 on: June 30, 2013, 04:19:41 PM »
Hi all,

I represent one of the (so many ?) compagnies who make their business on top of SME-server.
I'm very attached of working on a "community-driven" distro either than a one with a commercial editor behind.  This makes a lot of meanings for me, and I hope things will go in this way, even if lot of people need to have a "structure" to better understand the whole project. There is not so much distro in our world who still exist in such a "community" organization and i'm very attached to it.

Regarding the name changing, i'm as lot of us a bit despite but we have kown the transformation from E-SMITH to SME a few years ago and it was a hard change. So, i think we can deal with that.
We also experienced a very painfull rebirth once, when we were to deal with SME 6, appart from Mittel. I think we got the power (and the glory ?) to win this new challenge.

My hope will be that the new organization can find a good balance between money contributions and other ways of contributing. For me there is not a so big difference between a contributor who test and feed the wiki or the bug-tracker, some-one who reply to posts in the forums, some-one who just write an how-to and those who are involved in core-dev. My feeling is that contribution is made on a volontary basis, whatever it could be. Most of people, in the first times, don't contribute so much : everything is open, it's not a problem.

For us, we contribute as we can. Sometimes by creating some usefull contribs and sometimes by money donation. It seems to me important to find a good way to balance every contributions, allways on an unconstrained volonte.

Long life to the new e-smith organization and many thanks to those who are doing the hard job for that !
:)

RV.
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"Those who are willing to lose some of their essential liberties in favour of security deserve neither and will lose both."
- Thomas Jefferson .