[BlueOnyx:12393] Re: Solarspeed / Compass / BlueOnyx stores

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Jeff,

> It's clear that it's the intention for BX to remain free - that's
> admirable - but personally if you were able to quit your day job as
> you said you could Greg - and hire more staff - wouldn't that make
> for a better BX?

Certainly. The amount of time that Greg or I can spend on developing
BlueOnyx is limited by our needs to get food on the table and to pay
rent and other necessities. Greg has his daytime job, but for me "this"
is it. There are days when I sit here and wonder how to pay the bills
that are stacking up. When that happens I don't have the time or energy
to crank out some new BlueOnyx code or improve old code. Instead I'll be
slaving hard on things that make sure that there is some revenue first
of all. By bundling the commercial side of the BlueOnyx related aspects
Greg and I could streamline our efforts and managed to eliminate a few
redundancies. Which frees up time and the limited resources and that
helps the project as a whole. However, in the longer term a bit more
revenue from sales would help us a lot, as we can then also work more on
the parts of BlueOnyx that will always remain available free of charge.
All in all this is really a great and helpful community, so it is fun to
be part of it. But economically it's probably not the best of choices. ;-)

> So my first question is - what's is the goal here? Is it to provide 
> a free BX - to feed the meter with the occasional package sale and
> essentially 'maintain' it - or to move BX 'onwards and upwards'?
> This I would like to know.

For me "just to maintain it" doesn't cut it. Because that will lead to
stagnation and eventually the user base will drop away for greener
pastures.

I remember the days of the Cobalt RaQs pretty well. I turned
self-employed in full time in early 2002, which was already at the time
when Cobalt had been sold to Sun Microsystems. Back then there were
still hundreds of thousands RaQs in usage and when Sun EOL'ed the line,
all these people were left in limbo.

Remember: Back then there was no BlueQuartz yet. Even after the sources
of Qube 3 and RaQ550 were released under GPL a year after the EOL, it
still took at least another year and a half before the commercial and
non commercial successors of the RaQ's started to mature enough for
usage - if you accepted a lot of things not working entirely right.

I tested them all and (out of dire need for continuity) and even made a
few commercially questionable and unwise associations with this or that
project, company or product which seemed to offer a viable RaQ successor.

However, there was a two or almost three year gap between the EOL of the
RaQs and BlueQuartz becoming a usable and reliable alternative.

In these three years the customer base and user base dropped rock
bottom. In 2002 I started my day at 8:00 and prepared a fresh sheet of
paper to take note of the support cases that had poured in during my
nights sleep. At the end of a 14-15 hour work day I usually was on the
5th or 6th page and had serviced up to 180 customer requests that day
(which didn't count the "short" questions by email, but required actual
logins to servers). In 2005 when BlueQuartz got really into swing I only
managed to survive by having Aventurin{e} as an emerging commercial
alternative that generated some extra revenue. Fast forward to today: If
I have 180 support cases in a month now, then it's a very busy month.

The lesson I draw from this is: If the non-commercial part of BlueOnyx
is doing well enough, then the commercial part of it will also benefit
from it. We also can't allow it to happen that the project stagnates. We
have to cover new major OS releases when they appear (not like
BlueQuartz, which never evolved past CentOS4) and we have to keep a
watchful eye on what the users want. Both short term and long term wise.
Because this needs to be where we take the project, too, or we will be
left behind.

The re-theming effort of BlueOnyx is just one aspect of it, but - for
the moment - probably the biggest. We need to shed the ancient look of
the GUI to make it more appealing to those who never had been exposed to
the RaQs. Because to new clients the ancient look of the GUI might be a
turn off that we can't compensate with what goodies are under the hood.

There is an old saying that goes like this: "Those who don't adapt will
become victims of Evolution." Which is something that also applies to
BlueOnyx.

> Then to say we are not allowed to discuss commercials on list - 
> this also I find a bit 'inhibitive' - to me a new feature is a
> new feature,  whether it's a paid feature or a free feature,
> I would like to talk about it. There is a lot of experience on
> this list - I'm sure many could add value and suggest
> improvements etc?

As you can see, there are two sides to BlueOnyx: The open-source part
that provides the OS and the commercial part that provides add-ons and
extra services.

We have people on this list who never have the intention to use any of
the commercial services. Which is a pity, but it's their choice and
they're absolutely entitled to it.

We don't want to bother them with topics that are of next to no interest
to them. Such as handling support issues for commercial products, which
they don't own and never want to buy anyway.

So we politely ask our commercial clients to use all the other means for
support that we provide: Forums, mailing lists, email, contact forms,
phone, Skype and whatever else.

Because doing so will keep the list a bit more cleaner for those who are
just interested in the non-commercial aspects of BlueOnyx.

But also let me tell you a little secret: There are thousands of readers
on this list. Every now and then it might happen that Greg and I have
our hands full with this or that urgent support request. Like someones
server has blown up, they have no backups, just mounted their faulty
disks to a new box and now somehow need this mess urgently sorted out,
because they have hundreds of clients already screaming at them.

In the middle of all this mess someone has a small problem (smaller than
this full sized emergency we're already dealing with) and they didn't
get a timely answer to their email or support ticket. Next thing that
happens is they post to the mailing list instead and reiterate their case.

Now thousands of people who have nothing to do with it get to see that
we're allegedly providing a crap service to this one person that posted
to the list, because we didn't answer his support request the minute it
came in. This forces us then to take time away from "the other
emergency" to sort this public relations disaster out (because that's
what it really is). There have been a few instances of this over the
years and there have been times when I felt being bullied as someone who
posted to the list used it as undue means to attempt an elevation of the
priority of his support case beyond those that needed urgent help first
of all. It is rare, but happens as well.

So all in all I think it is only reasonable to ask that if you have a
support issue for commercial parts of BlueOnyx, then please try to not
use the mailing list for it.

Yes, Greg and I want to hear about your problems and we will take care
of them. But others on the list might not want to be part of it, so
please spare them the troubles. Thank you!

> In my somewhat warped mind - the way I see it - is that the folks 
> buying the packages are actually subsidising those downloading BX
> for free. If everyone paid something, surely that would be a
> fairer / better system?

In an ideal world that might be the case, Jeff. But as soon as you put a
price tag on something, your "reach" peters off dramatically.

Say for a moment we'd charge $5-10 US for downloading the latest ISO
image of BlueOnyx. In that case two things would happen:

a.) Dozens of mirrors spring up where you can download the copies of the
last versions of BlueOnyx ISO's that were issued free of charge.

b.) The number of downloads would drop by at least 90%.

I also sell a totally commercial clone of BlueOnyx that also provides
virtualization: Aventurin{e}. Now Aventurin{e} was never available free
of charge and the entry version of it has usually cost around 99,- EUR.
Which - for a product of that size and capability - is a quite
reasonable price. However: We probably have more downloads of BlueOnyx
on any given day or two, than I manage to do sales for Aventurin{e} in a
year. That's how dramatic the difference of applying a price tag to
something similar is.

When I look at the list of countries where BlueOnyx is used: If it had a
price tag (regardless of how small), then we certainly wouldn't see
BlueOnyx servers in most of the developing countries.

All things considered this is something that we really don't want to
change. Hence BlueOnyx will always remain available free of charge.

> I would like Michael to buy a coffee plantation - and to produce me 
> what would surely be the worlds best coffee.

Oh, I'd sure love that - if I can get internet access there. :p

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber