I think you are making the comments from a point of view that does not contemplate all of Feng Office history, what we have done, and what we do, which turns out to make your comments unfair.
The Feng Office development team started releasing its software as GPL from the very start (year 2007). When we started we didn't have two Editions. We only had one (actually... not even one... and we used version 0.X for a long time).
After years of supporting the work of the development team through selling support services only, and lots of personal financial and time investments, we found a few things:
1. Many clients required more features than we had developed.
2. It was easier to sell additional features than it was to sell support services.
3. Our initial business model was not going to sustain the level of investment required to build this type of software.
So we decided to develop new features as add ons and sell those. And we invested more time and more money in developing the Professional Edition.
But we never stopped improving the Community Edition (the new name for what used to be simply "Feng Office" and "OpenGoo" before that), we didn't stripe it of any single feature - unless not purposedly :) - and we have millions of users letting us know everyday how happy they are with the Community Edition, and we try our best to give them online documentation so that they can support their installations.
Also, clients purchasing a license for the Professional Edition also get the source code.
So that is why I feel your comment is unfair, and it hurts that - after so many years of personally working and financing a team that develops an Open Source system so broad and feature rich, used by so many - you call us a "ghetto".
We appreciate all types of criticism, and we welcome all types of advice. But we appreciate it more when it is constructive and respectful.
Sincerely,
--
Conrado Vina
Founder and CEO
Feng Office
Do you not understand how offensive it is to make so many -or any- claims based on personal assumptions?
Most of your comments are based on your assumptions. You even say that yourself more than once!
I will just point to one of the first: my motivations.
I have stated this publicly often times, but of course I don't expect you to know this:
My motivation is to help build the best possible Collaboration Platform.
So no, my motivations are not about maximizing profit.
And we have found a way to work on that and - in the process - produce a robust and feature rich system.
It is great that the project you are sponsoring has found clients willing to pay for features and then release all as open source. We took a different approach to financing.
And because a project or a business does not release under the GPL every line of code that they produce it does not make it a failure. We have many happy users thankful of our work. Many paying, and many more not. If only for that we don't feel we failed.
Authored Comments
Hi Tarus,
I think you are making the comments from a point of view that does not contemplate all of Feng Office history, what we have done, and what we do, which turns out to make your comments unfair.
The Feng Office development team started releasing its software as GPL from the very start (year 2007). When we started we didn't have two Editions. We only had one (actually... not even one... and we used version 0.X for a long time).
After years of supporting the work of the development team through selling support services only, and lots of personal financial and time investments, we found a few things:
1. Many clients required more features than we had developed.
2. It was easier to sell additional features than it was to sell support services.
3. Our initial business model was not going to sustain the level of investment required to build this type of software.
So we decided to develop new features as add ons and sell those. And we invested more time and more money in developing the Professional Edition.
But we never stopped improving the Community Edition (the new name for what used to be simply "Feng Office" and "OpenGoo" before that), we didn't stripe it of any single feature - unless not purposedly :) - and we have millions of users letting us know everyday how happy they are with the Community Edition, and we try our best to give them online documentation so that they can support their installations.
Also, clients purchasing a license for the Professional Edition also get the source code.
So that is why I feel your comment is unfair, and it hurts that - after so many years of personally working and financing a team that develops an Open Source system so broad and feature rich, used by so many - you call us a "ghetto".
We appreciate all types of criticism, and we welcome all types of advice. But we appreciate it more when it is constructive and respectful.
Sincerely,
--
Conrado Vina
Founder and CEO
Feng Office
Hi Tarus,
Do you not understand how offensive it is to make so many -or any- claims based on personal assumptions?
Most of your comments are based on your assumptions. You even say that yourself more than once!
I will just point to one of the first: my motivations.
I have stated this publicly often times, but of course I don't expect you to know this:
My motivation is to help build the best possible Collaboration Platform.
So no, my motivations are not about maximizing profit.
And we have found a way to work on that and - in the process - produce a robust and feature rich system.
It is great that the project you are sponsoring has found clients willing to pay for features and then release all as open source. We took a different approach to financing.
And because a project or a business does not release under the GPL every line of code that they produce it does not make it a failure. We have many happy users thankful of our work. Many paying, and many more not. If only for that we don't feel we failed.