[CentOS-devel] Small Business SIG suggestion

[Omar Eljumaily]

Sorry, I didn't mean to harp on email.  It was just an example of what I 
was talking about.

However, most people don't find "free rides" to somewhere they don't 
want to go as something valuable.  It's well established that targeting 
user option spaces to specialized groups is valuable.  In fact I believe 
it's one of the purposes of the SIG program.

My take is that the SIG program represents both technology and 
community.  The community of people talking about small business servers 
is quite distinct from the group wanting to talk about running game 
servers and streaming video to their TVs.  They have different goals, 
different timing, different priorities, everything's different.

Home server may be a pure technological subset of small business 
server.  In that case home users could definitely use the SBS. Whether 
or not there's a specialized SIG for home users is another question.  
That wasn't my original suggestion.  Still, the "branding" issue and the 
community issue remain for me.

Thanks,

Omar


On 5/2/2014 1:50 PM, John Crisp wrote:
> On 02/05/14 20:28, Omar Eljumaily wrote:
>
>> Some of the things I probably will not do on a home server which are
>> listed on your proposal:
>>
>> Postfix
>> Cyrus IMAP (or Dovecot)
>> SpamAssassin
>> ClamAV (from EPEL) (perhaps, but not for email)
>> OpenSSL for user certificates
>>
> I think you are missing the point of many of the small server systems
> out there.
>
> First, most are geared to small businesses, not the home user, hence
> Koozali 'SME' server. It was born as a Linux distro with an easy to use
> interface and aimed at squarely business.
>
> Note 'SME' : Small and Medium Enterprise.
>
> Why ? Ultimately that's where the money is - businesses know the value
> of paying towards the software that helps them make a profit.
>
> Remember also that software might be 'open source' but that does not
> equate to 'free to build'. Someone has to pay for the infrastructure to
> make it all happen !
>
> Ultimately, the home user gets something of a 'free ride' on the back of
> this and gets the benefit of a business strength server at home......
>
> Second, most try to simplify the administration experience with easy to
> use management panels etc etc. That means that if you don't want email
> you can easily turn it off.
>
> So you may not WANT all those items, but it won't hurt you if they are
> there and you can disable them with a click of a button or a simple command.
>
> Quite honestly if items such as email are being developed for the
> business version it makes no sense to remove them and/or to develop a
> 'home' version. Hence you have Microsoft SBS, but they don't sell a home
> server - there's no value in it.
>
> Of course you could easily use SBS at home, but then you don't want to
> pay the licence fee.....
>
> If you think you can make a viable case for a separate 'Home' server
> then please do. However, I think you will find that experience has shown
> that it doesn't pay.
>
> To be honest, I personally think that your best effort would be geared
> towards making plugins/contributions for home users.
>
> At Koozali SME we are happy for contributors to add their own software
> to enhance the basic functionality of the server and there are a
> multitude of 'contribs' for exactly this purpose. IMHO this is much the
> better direction to take.
>
> B. Rgds
> John
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