[Community-desktop] desktop-server-3.0.0-final-beta-6075-py24questions

[Davis, N.]

> 5) Finally, as a non-profit educational research institution, am I 
> under the new pricing structure? A good part of my strategy, developed 
> pre-license change, was to put desktop clients in the hands of my 
> institutional content contributors. We've lost most (well, OK, in a 
> year, all) of our funding, so I need to revise my strategy if 
> licensing is per seat at a low threshold. I don't know what to revise 
> it to, given to how the FOSS nature of Plone was key to Plone's 
> adoption in my project and bulk upload through Winders is key to 
> acceptance of Plone by my content contributors. So I'd like to know my 
> options a little clearer. Feel free to contact me offlist about this 
> item.

> Will contact you offline.  But for us to continue to support the software we had to change the licensing model.

In response to this, I'd say we're in a similar situation. While I was evaluating Enfold Desktop, the licensing changed. This changed my priorities, because its only worth for us to spend the money on Enfold Desktop when we've got enough other infrastructure in place. So I went back to getting some other stuff working that is free. For a large university, the new pricing structure means that with potentially large numbers of users it looks cost-prohibitive. So while I know Enfold need to make money, and its in the interests of everyone in the Plone Community that companies such as Enfold are thriving, I think Enfold might consider putting a cap on the license fees (i.e flat fee for > X users) for Universities, because you guys don't want to put off Unis from purchasing Enfold Desktop at all.

I appreciate that this comment may seem weird, considering how many Universities throw huge £ / $ towards the likes of Microsoft and SAP, but funding regimes can get very political and unfortunately the funding sources connected to people open-minded / informed enough to use Plone, are often small numbers.

Regards,
Nick