Nag-Screens
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Thanks Olivier for your clear feedback. I so experienced you are open to - even critical feedback - and realize you tried to understand my point of view. So I'm motivated to provide the feedback to the other points where I think things can be improved(in a new thread).
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Regarding the UI in general? We started to work on XO 6 anyway, so everything will change
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@olivierlambert said in Nag-Screens:
Not sure to understand: what's not solved? The top banner than you can remove now?
Hi Olivier, did I miss something?
Is there other way of doing this the one described on GitHub(which btw looks to be outdated?)? -
There's a cross on top right to dismiss it.
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But it will show next time you go to XOA on new cart. I thought you meant ease way to permanently remove it from sources like described here https://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra/issues/4175#issuecomment-488320434
closed Permanent banner when running XOA from the sources #4175
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As we said there, we found a compromise: ability to remove it. So you won't have any space lost after dismissing it.
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Link to the descriptions to patch the disclaimer away:
https://github.com/FoxieHazmat/xenorchestraSourceBannerFix/issues/1
and to the script that does it for you(tested with XO 5.44.1):
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You could break at any time after an update because the layout changed for any reason.This amount of effort to contribute could have been done to actually improve the software. At least try to bring other contributions. Open Source is not just taking, it's also giving.
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Open Source is not just taking, it's also giving.
Yes, I totally agree. I'll have a look at the bugtracker to see what's to be done.
Are there any open tasks for a person like me with some scripting skills?
Open Source is also not about fighting against its users, I thought!
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Indeed, but "our" Open Source is fully independent from Facebook, Google or other big corps than can just throw their technology in Open Source because they have almost unlimited money to support it.
Without our paid users, there's no Xen Orchestra nor XCP-ng at all (remember that currently XO revenue is still paying for XCP-ng dev).
Having some removable banners displayed is just a small price to pay to enjoy both software without paying anything. I thought people would understand that. This means:
- a fraction of companies using it that could pay will see that and maybe change their mind
- others (home users) will just have to click on a cross to close it
I think this is a very reasonable amount of things to "endure" to get all the rest for free.
XO wasn't built by the community, despite everything is fully open since the start: so we are completely offering it to everyone without any counterpart.
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So, do you have needs for ...
- ... financial support to keep Vates running and growing and to have the resources to be able to further support XCP-NG development?
- ... other kinds of support for XCP-NG?
- ... a balance between giving and taking and you request some giving back for your huge efforts to bring forward xcp-ng and xo?
I have needs for ...
- ... trust, that software I use, will be developed in a direction that I appreciate and not into ways i hate(because I do want to avoid the needed efforts to abandon a software and migrate to another software):
- maximize usability
- keep free features free
- request reasonable and fair prices
- keeping ways to migration to other products open
- ... efficiency and tidyness
- clean and tidy interfaces
- easy ways to contribute with my competence(scripting skills). (I checked out the bugtracker and worry about having to need at least weeks to dive into the software before being able to do anything)
- ... a balance between giving and taking(giving something back for what I got)
- ... autonomy (deciding what and how much I give back in order to help)
- ... recognition of what I have gave to support others
- ... practise and development my compentences (scripting skills, ...)
- ... contribute to the world community for shared values, knowledge and tools
Suggestions for strategies about how our both needs can be met:
- Vates offers a sponsorship license: An easy way(web page) to pay a regular payment with an amount of the donators choice. All donators have the option to be listed with their preferred Name(company,private name, fantasy name) on a web page of donators(maybe sorted form hightest donation amount to lowest).
- Someone shows easy ways to help to improve XCP-NG with a time budget of hours instead of weeks or month for persons with scripting skills or maybe for various other needed/existent skills.
- Similar to the above: A task list is being created, where people with a limited time budget can contribute. This will serve as possibility for minor contributions and as a possible easy entry point for long term participation within the xcp-ng project
- Getting needs met is important: Think more about what needs exist and figure out strategies how to meet one ore more of those needs on both sides
What's regarding me, I'm a user of mostly Citrix XenServer at the moment. I personally decided to head for proxmox because performance is better. But never the less as stated above it would meet my needs to support xcp-ng.
Update:
Of course I knew you probably wouldn't be very fond of my action of supporting the prevention of the disclaimer. But I'm impressed that you didn't start to fight me and still stay in contact and communicate your needs! In my experience in IT forums that's a rare personal competence and I want to say thank you for that!
I thought several times about buying a starter subscription of xo, but I decided against it, because ~1000 EUR per year seamed to much for my company budget. (Yes, there are many other companies for which this amount of money is ridiculous, but not here). I definitely would pay a lower rate if I keep using XCP-NG for the companies virtualization.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I have no "need" personally, but the structure (Vates) must have money to pay full time developers on Xen Orchestra and XCP-ng. You don't work for free, right?
So basically, we are investing a lot of money into Xen Orchestra and XCP-ng to be able to deliver great products, and continue to improve them everyday (there's a monthly release in Xen Orchestra for example). Roughly, we need around 1 million USD per project and per year. For XCP-ng, it's growing bigger than that. I think you might have missed the order of magnitude needed to run a business like this.
All the money earned in XO and XCP-ng is reinvested in R&D and product improvements (you also need other services to run the company, but we always keep those costs as low as possible). Support is done by people developing the product, which is great because devs are never far from "the field".
When you need anything, you are usually paying for it, working for it or supporting it at least. Or you can be a free rider, which is OK if you are not too many. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem
Thank you for your advice, but don't you think we never thought about what you said, really? On prem Virtualization market is far too small to rely only on people donation. Seriously, even if you give 4 USD/month, we need 21k users donating this amount. It's just impossible.
So what are we selling in the end? We are selling a service, mainly on turnkey software AND support. This is how an Open Source business can work (not Open Core, eg like ElasticSearch). Because company need support. So why having those screens? Just to be able to remind "corporate" free-riders that they should take support. And you as a home user? Just ignore them, it's the small price to pay
We don't want to do Open Core, but I have the feeling that people reacting this way ("I need this"/self-centered free-riders) are clearly pushing companies in that direction.
I have no grudge against you (I don't even know you
). Vates and I don't owe you anything. You can use XO, or not. It's up to you. You can support it or not. I can't force you to stop creating patches that might help us to convince companies to get XOA or pay XCP-ng support.It's just that I don't find this supporting the project
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Ok. If you like to drop out of this conversation at any time, a conversation which you may consider a useless waste of time, it's ok for me.
I thought about if this concern is important enough before starting into that direction. I decided it absolutely was and still is. And I still think it is a great contribution once my thoughts are actually understood - which is not the case currently.
The following benefits are realistic to me if the suggestions are adopted:
- Additional money as donations from home users/small company users(100k+ €/annually medium term worldwide)
- Increased User satisfaction
- Increased encouragement and participation in xcp-ng and maybe xo
- Increased efficiency in communication
If you're not interested in that, I'll gladly stay away from further consuming your time and just may look on my own on how to contribute to xcp-ng in a way it contributes to your needs as stated by you so far.
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I'd like to have both user satisfaction and being able to pay my team at the end of the month. In the end, luckily, there's a minority of users like you complaining about a banner that helps to tell people they can support the project in a pro environment
Other points:
- We haven't displayed this banner before, and it didn't increase or decrease participation to XO/XCP-ng (so this argument is irrelevant)
- We'll never reach 100k€/y donation due to the market size, I can bet on that if you like. And it would finance only 1 person on the project, far from making a large difference (and it will be less and less due to project size increase). Plus it will damage the product perception as something like more a "charity", losing the professional perception needed to sell to corporate (that's the reality).
So basically you are trying to do a strawman: trying to convince people (or yourself) that I don't want user satisfaction and participation or better communication. That's not true and this is a fallacy
Again, if you don't want to contribute/support the project, just do it! It's just about admitting you want to be an active "free rider", and you are doing it actively (not just "passively"). I'm just saying I'm not finding that really helpful for the project and that energy must have been push for a greater good.
To be fair, when I'm using other Open Source projects, like FreeNAS or PfSense, I'll never complain about any banner or warning about the fact I don't have support. When I have issues with Zimbra, that's on me, I'm alone to solve them (I don't have support). I'm a "passive" free rider sometimes, but I won't fight those devs/companies about it. I prefer to use my time to contribute if I need or to build myself an Open Source thing. Or even promote it!
Again, I have no grudge against you, as you see, I'm listening and getting your input. I'm not asking you to get out of here or whatever, I'm always open to explain in details reasons of our choices
Hope my message is more clear now. -
@olivierlambert said in Nag-Screens:
I prefer to use my time to contribute if I need or to build myself an Open Source thing
Ok. Thanks again for your time.
I'm not understood by you mostly and I won't follow my current agenda being understood any longer to get to a mutual understanding with the goal of contribution while respecting both sides needs.
I'll respect your doing business your way and some of the thoughts you wrote seems plausible to me while I completely disagree with others. I leave that by this comment and stop here to save your time.
My last question on that is to repeat in other words what I already wrote:
You said I could have improved XCP-NG with the time I invested in writing the remove-disclaimer snippets. I checked the bugtracker of xcp-ng to see if I can
do something and realized that it'll probably take several days/weeks to get familiar with the code before being able to contribute something useful.I'd like to contribute to xcp-ng with my scripting skills.
Can you or some other person suggest what I - a seasoned sysadmin with scripting capabilities(lua,php,perl,shell,ruby,...) - can do by writing/improving/checking scripts with a a budget of some varying amount of hours per week/month? (See my github repo for the past small scripting examples of what I've shared so far: https://github.com/megabert/)
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We are working on trying to create/tag "simple issues", but as you said, it's a big project (same as XO), requiring a lot of efforts/time (therefore money) to be able to bring contributions.
The best way to contribute at your level is:
- to promote it around you, and tell companies to pay for support This way, more money invested in it, less bugs etc.
- improve the documentation if you find unclear statements or missing things
- help others on the forum
- to promote it around you, and tell companies to pay for support
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a) Just want to mention the proxmox way of doing what I suggested:
https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve/pricing
The have a community subscription - the lowest price subscription. Would be interesting how many "community" subscribers they have. (They probably won't tell if asked
)b) The top result in google search for xcp-ng and "donations" points to this thread
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Thanks for the suggestion, but don't you think we never thought to that before? I start to think you are considering us as 2 people in a garage.
We are crunching numbers on a regular basis, and it never computes with those models. Proxmox is here since a long time, with a strong and "large" use base allowing to use this model. This is not the case for us now.
So on short term, this is not doable. But be assured we are continuously working on testing various models to see what's the best fit.
