If I was an open-source client I would be pretty cheesed off if features I was using became unavailable to me - however, if I was using these features and my business was dependent on them I would probably also be willing to upgrade to the pro license, it is after all a relatively small investment for what is essentially a very good product. In fact a company that doesn't invest in the tools it needs to support it's business is already on shaky ground - there are two mindsets when it comes to open source - the developer mindset and the business mindset. Sugar for example does have it's community and is great for extending and customising - thats what the developer thinks is great and open-source gives them that freedom. The business mindset is slightly different, it recognizes the benefits of flexibility around open-source, but also sees a huge risk potential; if my business relied on a piece of software I would always choose the supported licensed version over the open-source simply to mitigate the risk. When you start looking at the professional and enterprise versions of Sugar the whole proposition starts to look less like the warm and fuzzy open-source community happiness and much more like old-fashionned software procurement with a bit of an open-source carrot dangling at the front to snag the developers.
I could bang on about this for hours - but thats enough for now ;-)
I guess it boils down to this question: can you get where you want to go with a closed source (or some sort of hybrid) business model. Sugar has obviously been able to do that - but remember they started out much more open than they are now. If you can do that, more power to you! Provide a good product and hopefully you can attract a critical mass of customers that ensures your profitability for years to come. If, however, you lack the financial resources to attract a customer base or you don't have the developement resources to provide the product you wish to provide then open is your best shot.
I think Splendid's situation is rather precarious. If I'm a customer, it doesn't provide enough of a advantage over the likes of Sugar or vTiger to make me want to pay for it, especially since you are up front about the fact that this is basically a Sugar clone on the Microsoft platform. The fact that Splendid is built on a Microsoft stack doesn't help since the availability of virtualization products means using Sugar or vTiger is as easy as downloading a virtual appliance.
If I'm a developer, however, Splendid is very appealing if the code is available (all of it) and the license isn't too restrictive. It gives me the opportunity to add value to an already solid and well-understood product. It also gives me incentive to make Splendid as stable and full-featured as possible. To that end I give back any enhancements I make (depending on the license I'd have to anyway) and Splendid gets better.
So how do you make money? Sell add-ons. Sell support and custom development. Consult. Your business model will look more like that of vTiger than Sugar. Splendid gives you the vehicle to do all those things and more. My advice would be to build a community of developers and end-users who have something invested in your product.
I've been looking at Splendid for a couple of years but have stayed away because, as a developer, not having access to the database just doesn't work. I suppose I could port the vTiger schema to SQL Server and modify the open portion of Splendid to use it. Given the SugarCRM heritage of both products it probably wouldn't take more than a few weeks. But it seems to me that the effort would be better spent in collaboration with Splendid to make it better.
I'd love to build on what you've started but the current license doesn't make me feel welcome to do that. I spend about half of my time as an ERP developer/consultant for large corporations and the other half writing line-of-business software for small and medium businesses. I'd jump at the chance to apply that experience to Splendid. I've considered adding some basic ERP functionality or even building a smart client app around Splendid. None of that seems feasible with the current licensing.
I'm glad you're open to discussion on this. I think its healthy whichever course you ultimately pursue.
-k
kharr0,
Can you provide more information as to why you do not believe that the current SplendidCRM license does not work for you? I would have thought that the free-runtime that we include with the Professional license would have been compelling enough. Is your point that you do not want to pay anything, ever? While the free concept does sound good, there are very few companies that can remain in business with that kind of model.
