Licensing Concerns with Community Server 2007
I haven't had a whole lot of time recently to check in on Community Server, so when I took a peek at the forums this morning, I was surprised to see that there had been an update posted on licensing for CS2007, and this spawned a massive thread, along with quite a few blog entries, including this one by Tom Lynch.
There has certainly been a whole lot of discourse on this topic over the past 3 days, and to their credit, Telligent came back with a modified proposal that addresses the vast majority of concerns that were made for the low-cost segment of their market. As several folks have pointed out in the forums, however, the restrictions in the commercial product are still a bit too onerous.
Quite a few people have pointed out that most people who use the platform -- whether they use a commercial version or not -- do not use all of the functionality. Some folks use blogs and forums, some use blogs and photos, some just use blogs, some use forums and photos, etc. It would be great to have a configuration where you automatically obtained any two or three of these major CS "applications" in an unlimited capacity, and then you could pay for the others on a usage bases.
Here is a spreadsheet that I put together this morning to outline one proposed way of dealing with the licensing options. I have to update it now that Telligent revised their licensing options to include the Express/Personal editions.
I'd like to know what you think. I'll have an update later this evening.
I really hope they can come to a decision which does not weaken community interest in this platform, or make it harder for us to feel good about recommending it to small clients.
Let me know what you think.
About Logik!
Andrew S. Baker aka ASB aka Logik!
Andrew is an accomplished, hands-on IT Executive with a solid track record of providing timely and cost-effective business solutions using technology. With over 16 years experience in Information Technology, he has proven to be effective both as a Team Leader and as an individual contributor in designing, deploying, securing and maintaining enterprise networks.
His personal interests include Astronomy, Basketball, Bible Study, Chess, Comics, Computers,
Family Life Ministries, Reading and Strategy/Role Playing games...
Some of his contributions include several whitepapers on technology and Information Security, the UltraTech Knowledgebase, various postings to technology mailing lists and forums, active participation on LinkedIn Answers, along with a number of interviews for articles published in industry magazines.
A condensed version of
Andrew's current resume is available here.