People: Paul, Warren, Tim, Jesper, Thomas, Casey, Doug, Kenneth and Niels (host)
I added the subject to sync the expectations between the community/project "umbraco" and the company umbraco. How can Per and I ensure that we are in sync with the community and make sure that the community understands our intentions. What does the community think is proper to release as commercial products and what's not.
It was a really nice and constructive dialogue that also evolved into a conversation about what people who make money in the umbraco eco-system are allowed to do (when is it ok to make money) and also ended up touching commercial packages.
The conclusion framed by Doug was : "It's equally ok to make money as well as to give away"
I gave some insights in how Per and I tries to evaluate what we think is proper to release as free and what we want to release as commercial products. The feedback on how we should behave was:
- It's good that the umbraco company is profitable. It's beneficial for everybody and only ensures that umbraco matures
- We should communicate our plans for future products as we've done so far, to ensure that no one is working on the same type of products. Not that people are not allowed to do so, but it would be hard to compete with the official umbraco products and it could cause frustration. I explained that it's the very reason that we've been announcing both Forms, Videos and Courier long time before it has been ready, but it was suggested to create a Work In Progress page under products without deadlines, simply stating that we're working on this.
- The community gives the green light for the umbraco company to work on any type commercial product (we shouldn't hold anything back), but it's also important that we don't try to "kill" competing free offerings (and we don't have any plans for that)
Doug suggested that we also made a page with great ideas that we've got and plan to build as free offerings. Even if we don't have the time, we could encourage people to grab the ideas and co-creative them. It would be a good way to "guard against seeming greedy" and make sure that people who doesn't know us in person realize that our intentions with keeping umbraco free are for real.
From here the conversation moved to how people who're doing umbraco implementations, should behave. I told that we - the umbraco company - don't and won't do umbraco implementation and that every time we get a request we guide people to the list of certified developers/solution providers as well as the jobs category in the forum. I also stated that it's great that people make money on umbraco and no one should feel obligated to give anything back. People making umbraco implementations are helping spreading umbraco and driving it forward and eventually it'll bring customers to us. I also revealed our plans for reseller options for our products, which got well received.
Then it evolved into a discussion on packages and again I encouraged people to do commercial packages, maybe with a free option for non-profit. People are very interested in paying for good products and that income helps maturing the packages, which again in-directly matures the umbraco product. And it's good for companies doing implementations, as Paul put it: "Services brings products, products bring services and so on. Everybody wins".