Users Speak out about Proposed activeCollab 1.0 Prices

Over at the activeCollab blog, Ilija wrote up a post describing the proposed pricing structure for his release of version 1.0. From my perspective, if there were ever a time for him to do it, it is now, after almost a year of waiting for a big update to the software. There are several issues that users are raising, firstly the upfront cost, secondly the ongoing maintenance (support and upgrade) fee, and thirdly the lack of scalability for the free Lite version.

The Lite version doesn't feature advanced modules such as tickets and commercial support, but for individuals and non-profits you can always rely on the very active activeCollab community forums. activeCollab Lite is distributed with full source code so you can use it to learn how the code works and extend activeCollab from there on.

Comparison table: 

activeCollab 1.0: Plans and Prices | activeCollab

A while ago on the activeCollab blog, Ilija hinted at some fees for helping out with installation, these dollars are vastly different from what he's now proposing...

Fee I had in mind is $20 per intervention (that is my hourly rate). If your host meets system requirements and I still fail to provide a solution you get your money back.

How does this sound to you? This is just an idea and I'd like to hear what you have to say about it.

Btw, If you fear that I might make installation or upgrade process a bit harder just to get more interventions gigs - don't. I would never do something like that.

Professional help with installation and upgrade | activeCollab

On his personal blog, Ilija wrote about pricing about a year ago. I'm not sure if his philosophy has changed...

There are a lot of people and organizations who like to pay for security and open source should welcome that. There is nothing bad in making money as long as you follow basic principles of open source.

Area52 ? Area51, improved

And on a final not, a quote from Joel...

The more you learn about pricing, the less you seem to know.

I've been nattering on about this topic for well over 5000 words and I don't really feel like we're getting anywhere, you and I.

Some days it seems like it would be easier to be a taxi driver, with prices set by law. Or to be selling sugar. Plain ol' sugar. Yep. That would be sweet.

Take my advice, offered about 20 pages back: charge $0.05 for your software. Unless it does bug tracking, in which case the correct price is $30,000,000. Thank you for your time, and I apologize for leaving you even less able to price software than you were when you started reading this.

Camels and Rubber Duckies - Joel on Software

Where does this leave me, well, I'm a big supporter of open source software, and in the past I've shown support for activeCollab, and I still think the software is and will continue to be a great product.

Back to Open Source Software, I'm plugging Project Pier for now...

The goal of the ProjectPier.org project is to create a new project fork, picking up the code after activeCollab 0.7.1. The code will remain open source under the Honest Public License. Ilija has indicated on his website that activeCollab is being rewritten and the new version 1.0, while it may remain open source, will only be developed by his new company. ProjectPier.org should not detract in any way from what Ilija is doing and I sincerely hope Ilija succeeds in creating a successful commercial version of activeCollab.

About ProjectPier | ProjectPier.org