Proxmox VE 3.1 released!

[Russell Shaffer]

Well ... my two cents:

1) I won't argue with Proxmox's right to do what they are doing with limiting the access to the stable repo to subscribers (they have the right 100%).

2) I will state that I think it is a poor model to get revenue. It alienates a thriving community. There are other ways to get revenue. This is ... is just plain lame.

3) The announcement and responses by staff have been purposely obtuse and vague. Not cool. Yes .. I read[FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT] http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_repositories and I understand it. However, from CREDITABILITY standpoint it doesn't excuse the staff responding on the forum and the announcement from making it crystal clear as to what is going on now. Frankly, it feels like you snuck this in and it is a slap in the face.

I ... for one ... will be exploring alternatives because of this. Doesn't mean I will move in different direction. Doesn't mean I won't subsicribe. It DOES mean that I will always have a bitter taste in my mouth in regards to Proxmox VE staff/company attitude.

PS - Who is going to be the first to set up a mirror of the stable enterprise repository and accept VOLUNTARY paypal donations (hint hint Proxmox on what might have been one of many better options) for bandwidth and effort?

 

[kobuki]

Well ... my two cents:

1) I won't argue with Proxmox's right to do what they are doing with limiting the access to the stable repo to subscribers (they have the right 100%).

2) I will state that I think it is a poor model to get revenue. It alienates a thriving community. There are other ways to get revenue. This is ... is just plain lame.

3) The announcement and responses by staff have been purposely obtuse and vague. Not cool. Yes .. I read http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_repositories and I understand it. However, from CREDITABILITY standpoint it doesn't excuse the staff responding on the forum and the announcement from making it crystal clear as to what is going on now. Frankly, it feels like you snuck this in and it is a slap in the face.

I ... for one ... will be exploring alternatives because of this. Doesn't mean I will move in different direction. Doesn't mean I won't subsicribe. It DOES mean that I will always have a bitter taste in my mouth in regards to Proxmox VE staff/company attitude.

PS - Who is going to be the first to set up a mirror of the stable enterprise repository and accept VOLUNTARY paypal donations (hint hint Proxmox on what might have been one of many better options) for bandwidth and effort?

I have formed a similar opinion here and in another thread. I just wanna say that I completely agree with what you said, even if it sounds a bit harsh. Even saying this, the product itself is one of the best in its playfield, so the attitude sometimes displayed by the staff here won't change that fact but will cast an unnecesary shadow.

 

[ozgurerdogan]

Should we worry about stability and reliability on non-enterprise repo.? Do not get me wrong just curious... because I do not feel you may just throw away unstable files to non-enterprise repo just because it is a free version.

 

[Ein]

Source is AGPL, you are free to get a copy of the source that was used for the Enterprise packages and complie your own packages.
If you want pre-compiled Enterprise binaries, subscribe.

You're also free to get a copy of the source code used to build the Enterprise packages, build the binaries yourself, and distribute them for free to anyone you like. I know that they included this fun tidbit in the "agreement":

(Re-)Distributing Software packages received under this Subscription Agreement to a third party or
using any of the Subscription Services for the benefit of a third party is a material breach of the
agreement. Even though the open source license applicable to individual software packages may give
you the right to distribute those packages (this limitation is not intended to interfere with your rights
under those individual licenses).

But honestly that seems like a blatant violation of the AGPL license, and would love to see someone bring it up on the gpl-violations mailing list. After all, don't I have the right to modify the packages (in whatever tiny way I see fit) and distribute my changes to the community? That's the entire point of the AGPL.

 

[Serilkath]

Well ... my two cents:

1) I won't argue with Proxmox's right to do what they are doing with limiting the access to the stable repo to subscribers (they have the right 100%).

2) I will state that I think it is a poor model to get revenue. It alienates a thriving community. There are other ways to get revenue. This is ... is just plain lame.

3) The announcement and responses by staff have been purposely obtuse and vague. Not cool. Yes .. I read http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_repositories and I understand it. However, from CREDITABILITY standpoint it doesn't excuse the staff responding on the forum and the announcement from making it crystal clear as to what is going on now. Frankly, it feels like you snuck this in and it is a slap in the face.

I ... for one ... will be exploring alternatives because of this. Doesn't mean I will move in different direction. Doesn't mean I won't subsicribe. It DOES mean that I will always have a bitter taste in my mouth in regards to Proxmox VE staff/company attitude.

PS - Who is going to be the first to set up a mirror of the stable enterprise repository and accept VOLUNTARY paypal donations (hint hint Proxmox on what might have been one of many better options) for bandwidth and effort?

I agree that the bait and switch technique and the overall staff's responses and shifty attitude is pretty off-putting. I for one will look for alternative for my customers because I think this is not reassuring at all about the future direction of this project. There was no warning of this sudden change.

 

[Raymond Burns]

As an avid user of Proxmox, I say we slow down with the assumptions and thrashing, and give them a chance to answer. They ARE helping in the forums daily, by the way, which is a paid support option. The Proxmox team, also, have tons of bug work and beta testing. It may take a day or two to get back to these questions, especially when it has been noted that there will never be a paid subscription, only paid support.

We just released Proxmox VE 3.1, introducing great new features and services. We included SPICE, GlusterFS storage plugin and the ability to apply updates via GUI (including change logs).

As an additional service for our commercial subscribers, we introduce the Proxmox VE Enterprise Repository. This is the default and recommended repository for production servers.

To access the Enterprise Repository, each Proxmox VE Server needs a valid Subscription Key - these subscriptions start now at EUR 4,16 per months (was EUR 9,90).

There is no change in licensing (AGPL v3), also packages for non-subscribers are still available.

I support the Proxmox Team, so I may be biased. I haven't paid anything yet, but they are still eager to help and respond to me. That's more than most developers. Additionally, they haven't pushed the support subscription on me, like 30 days.

 

[tom]

Печально, но для наших стран бывшего соц лагеря, реально проблематично платить. Не paypal не одной серьезной платежной системы здесь нет. Другие берут в три дорого, и из 4 Euro мы получим 12. Проблема даже не в этом, мы платим за репо, но если в нём что то не работает, так как нам хочется, нам надо платить за тикеты, цены на тикеты ещё более не приятны. Да и вообще новость не сильно приятная. Такие ставки делали на этот проект. Придётся пересматривать в сторону oVirt, openstack, apache cloud и тд. Деньги, тормозят технологии. Это давно доказано. А ведь хороший продукт был)
Останавливаемся на 3.1!

Отправлено с моего SPH-L710 через Tapatalk

This is an English only forum, please do not post in other languages.

 

[wahmed]

I am not going into debate what Proxmox did wrong and what others did right. But as a loyal Proxmox user i just want to share my experience and my thoughts on this "subscription" matter.

Almost all streamlined Linux flavors out there has Paid and Free version. I myself used Mandriva Linux for long time and paid yearly "subscription". RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu all has some sort of subscription and FREE versions. Could you build an entire infrastructure using those free counterparts? Sure. And those are not even full blown hypervisor like Proxmox. I appreciate that proxmox staff tried to reduce the cost with hope that more people will be able to afford it. That clearly says they were thinking about their community.
Proxmox is a clustered Hypervisor solution. How important is a 100% stable, never breaking down cluster for a home use? Not much. Even for student who are trying to self teach them can live without subscription and continue using "unstable" version.
As for somebody building "enterprise" solution with full clustered system, that little bit of subscription is really not that much.= compare to features/cost. Hyper-V free? How about the licensing cost for Windows Server itself since Hyper-V is not a standalone solution? And lets not even think about the licensing cost of VMWare. Of course the #1 reason most of us hunted down Proxmox is great feature at little to no cost. But the truth is the feature that we keep receiving from Proxmox out weighs the little cost we should commit to.

No, i didnt purchase any subscription yet even though i have been using proxmox for over a year now. But with lower price of community subscription, i am sure to purchase it. If not for the stable repository but for sure to show the support. As people mentioned in above responses, somebody has to pay for all the work, commitment has gone to bring Proxmox where it is today. Of course 1 person cannot bear all funding, but together the community can help support the staff so they can concentrate on what they do best, bringing great features to Proxmox.

Of course i cannot pay for all the Nodes in various clusters, some can stay free some needs stability. But my only concern is how "unstable" the free repo going to be? I think this can be elaborated little bit more by proxmox staff. I think in Proxmox community we have more of "home" cluster builders than "entrerprise" cluster builders. Despite of low subscription cost, still lot of people will not go for subscription. I do not think Proxmox staff should or will leave those free users with completely unstable version. After all we are all in a way beta tester here and we do share issues of all sorts. This is just another no paid way community shows its support.
I do not know what future will bring but i do hope that Proxmox will always think about its community first, paid or non-paid. Proxmox will not exist without the community and community would not be able learn all the wonderful things of Hypervisor world without a quality product like Proxmox.
Thats my $0.02, well more like a $2....

 

[RRJ]

Well, if I understand how repos do work, one don't really have to pay for all the servers.
Just buy subscription for one server with 1 cpu socket and get those .deb packages. Then bring up your own local repo and use it on other nodes/servers. Or just spread them using ssh/ftp etc.

by the way, it is true - really unexpected action.
We are going to pay for as much time as we need to find something new to use. Sad, was such a great product and community (*yes, I do personally think, that proxmox will lose it's community very soon)

 

[escoreal]

Well, if I understand how repos do work, one don't really have to pay for all the servers.
Just buy subscription for one server with 1 cpu socket and get those .deb packages. Then bring up your own local repo and use it on other nodes/servers. Or just spread them using ssh/ftp etc.

Then they will implement some checks (if there isn't one at the moment) which you have to disable.

by the way, it is true - really unexpected action.
We are going to pay for as much time as we need to find something new to use. Sad, was such a great product and community (*yes, I do personally think, that proxmox will lose it's community very soon)

Same here..

 

[udo]

... Sad, was such a great product and community (*yes, I do personally think, that proxmox will lose it's community very soon)

Hi,
I don't think that the community will lost. If you look how many people are support the forum, there are only few ones which answer the most of the threads.
And most of the mork is done by Dietmar and Tom - so why should that change?

And about the repros: For my private use I can live without problems with this - I allready use pvetest at home (I like the new stuff) and so buggy is the pvetest not - you can normaly run this version without big trouble.
And if you use pve in business, why you can't pay for it? Most companys have no problems to pay for windows-cals and such things, but the hypervisor not?
I think it's more that most companys are not pay - even if the know that they should - if they don't must.
But if the must pay - they will do (my 2 cents).

Udo

 

[wahmed]

by the way, it is true - really unexpected action.
We are going to pay for as much time as we need to find something new to use. Sad, was such a great product and community (*yes, I do personally think, that proxmox will lose it's community very soon)

It is Sad indeed. But honestly though, there just arent anything that can substitute Proxmox at this moment. Even if there is, No Company will provide this level of features and support indefinitely without some sort of compensation through some sort of subscription. Heck as an IT leader i wont even work indefinitely for a company if all they gave me was extremely high praises, compliments and put me on the throne and no money. I believe Proxmox will lose its Community when Money becomes the focal point. We all have seen how 100% free feature rich product crashes without good financial support. Mandriva Linux is one example.

 

[RRJ]

It would be OK if we would have to pay for proxmox from the beginning. But when an engineer (as me for an example) creates the infrastructure and looks for open source project that is free of charge and has some community and suitable functionality, finds proxmox (for about 3 or 4 years ago now) and offers it to management board like "hey guys, I've found just the right thing for us and it is free of charge and even open source" and after 4 years I see such and "update" it just pisses him off. Now I should go to management board and say "hey, guys, now they want money for stable version, today it is 4,16 per cpu socket and what it will be tomorrow - I can't say, as I even didn't know that they are planing to ask money for free of charge product". You still think the management board will accept such behaviour? I don't think so.
Second - I've got another workplace at non-profit organisation (university library), we use only free (which includes free of charge) open source products. And also there I've put up whole infrastructure using proxmox. Can you feel my pain now?

Also, if we would sell something, using the proxmox (having the profit from using it) it would be ok (I would advice proxmox team to create another fork for using in public cloud services and sell it, but keep this version free of charge, keeping the community to test new and stable features etc). But we use it only as virtualization platform to consolidate our servers.

Well, have to look at closest competitor.

 

[RRJ]

there is one. same technology (kvm and openvz) but based on centos. Can't advertise it here (its proxmox forum), but it is the one we will look at. google for it

 

[dietmar]

Sad, was such a great product and community (*yes, I do personally think, that proxmox will lose it's community very soon)

You miss the fact that we basically changed nothing (just renamed the repository).

We just provide an additional repository for our enterprise users.

 

[RRJ]

Is it true? Because I've seen somewhere on this forum, that pve-test is now the repo for non-subscribers and it is not recommended for production (the last says wiki)

 

[ivensiya]

This is an English only forum, please do not post in other languages.

Your product have our language. This is the forum of your product. Other companies have special sections on the forums for localization in other languages. Unfortunately, this is your problem. We express our thoughts better in our language. And if you did not provide it, we will write here on any language.

 

[trendco]

i am sad, a great product now go the same way as many others...

 

[wahmed]

I......................
Second - I've got another workplace at non-profit organisation (university library), we use only free (which includes free of charge) open source products. And also there I've put up whole infrastructure using proxmox. Can you feel my pain now?

I dont know about anybody else but i can certainly understand your pain. I have 8 churches where i have Proxmox running, 4 Non-profit organization who basically runs on run down budget, 2 academic institutions(1 library, 2 computer labs), 2 enterprise customers and my company small data center of our own. Neither Academic institution nor two enterprise company were charged any license fee, but labor for setting up hardware and hypervisor using Proxmox. Just like any other production environment, i do not upgrade all my clients right away, but setup in our own test environment for several weeks then roll out if we feel it is stable enough. Were those 2 enterprise company came on board with Proxmox idea from the beginning? Certainly not. We went through Price/Feature Comparison between Hyper-V, VMWare, Proxmox, XEN. I pushed Proxmox obviously. The companies well aware how much money they saved and saving by using Proxmox. The performance and simplicity of Proxmox for the "no price" is a no brainer to them as it should be for any well informed IT decision makers. I will most probably not offer my enterprise clients anything above Community subscription, because their Cluster is "just working". As for non-profit organization like Library, i do not believe they have a very large cluster of many nodes. A 2 node cluster can manage a library with over 100 patrons and 5,000,000 book circulation very easily. Thats a cost of about $100 per year subscription for a library. If a library cannto add $100 into yearly operating cost , there is a much bigger problem. Our library have 5,230,548 book listed catalog, 307 patrons, 4 staff computers, 2 web servers, 1 domain controller, 3 SQL database servers, 5 Virtual Desktops for Catalog browsing, 12 Virtual Desktops for public internet usage, 3 self book checkout computers, all being handled by 2 node clusters.

 

[wahmed]

Your product have our language. This is the forum of your product. Other companies have special sections on the forums for localization in other languages. Unfortunately, this is your problem. We express our thoughts better in our language. And if you did not provide it, we will write here on any language.

Regardless of Localization, it is more likely you will get the help you need faster if you write them in English language, as many people understands it. Proxmox supports many language or not, your question might go unanswered due to the language barrier as it is a "Community Support Forum".

Proxmox staff can open separate Forum Room for different language, but somebody who is well versed in those languages has to take responsibility to moderate those rooms. Of course we cannot expect staff to know all languages. I know many streamlined open source forums has localized forum rooms, but somebody from within community took initiative to be the middle person between English speaking staff and "X" Language community.