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Hi Jan, > Either from people running to subversion, the `real free' sollution > already sounds much more `sexy', or worse even if someone gets sick of it > and forks (although I doubt a fork would be successfull given that > everything is still under GPL.) I don't want to start a SVN vs CVSNT thread here, but SVN does have an upsell which includes a lot of the features we give away for free. Their approach is to limit the free product to the core and have companies pay if they need the extra features. They have a very different approach, but it is certainly centered around getting their product sold. > I requested my > company to get a license based on the polite mails on this list recently > and they did. Thank you! > I personally wouldn't ask it again if the message was not in a friendly > mail to the list but in an annoying message in my revision history. Unfortunately a lot of users are not like you. There are far more that will continue to use the free product and never seek to support the project for a number of reasons. This message will help those who are ignorant of the commercial product see it's available, and encourage them to participate. I don't fault our silent FOSS users. When I was still doing the corporate programming thing, I would seek out free or inexpensive products to improve my productivity. "Free as in beer" was always easy to try. There were dozens of closed source shareware time limited apps that I purchased because I had to, and others that were not time limited or ad-supported I used for years without paying for. I think there are a lot of users like me out there, who just need some gentle encouragement to contribute. I got interested in CVSNT and joined the list because it was a new concept to me and took awhile to get my head around it. I participated on the list only partially to 'give back', but mostly to solidify my own knowledge -- and it worked extraordinarily well. If CVS Suite was around when I started learning about CVSNT, and I had purchased it with the eBook*, it would have saved me countless hours of learning by trial and learning the wrong way. Take the cost of CVS Suite into the number of hours I spent learning, and you're looking at sweatshop child labor rates. There is a LOT of value in the product and services March Hare offers (yes, I get paid to say that, but it's true). ... And now to the big question ... If you have suggestions on how we can evangelize the CVS Suite and Pro products to get more sales in a less obtrusive way I would like to hear them. What triggers you decide to open your wallet or go through the pain of your internal acquisition processes? Keep in mind there are some options that are off the table: We aren't going to close/obfuscate the source, we won't purposefully add bugs, we prefer to keep core functionality where it belongs (as close to the server as possible), etc. * For those who don't know already, the eBook we refer to is titled "All About CVS" and is a 300+ page book included with CVS Suite that is focused on CVSNT/CVS Suite, not like a lot of the sources you get on the Internet containing outdated or conflicting guidance for using CVS and/or CVSNT. For example: Don't use flying fish branching, it's bad for performance and completely unnecessary with changesets and the promotion model. Best Regards, -- Glen Starrett Technical Account Manager, North America March Hare Software, LLC http://march-hare.com/cvspro/ 800-653-1501 x803