Whats the long term strategy?

[andy]

We all know that SugarCRM is a mish-mash of code added to over the years by the community often in an less than structured manner.

Are there any plans being discussed by SalesAgility to either re-architect the CRM or maybe just re-write it so that it is more maintainable?

One of the drawback of a fork is that you get some really old code. But one of the advantages is that the code is well-vetted. So it’s a trade-off.

I’m comparing SuiteCRM to the X2 Engine which I understand to be all new code… some of it is very slick, but some of it is very buggy.

What is SA’s thinking on all of this?

We plan to re-architect the worst parts of the CRM like Campaigns for now and work towards modernising it but there are no plans at this time to re-write the entire CMS.

Also I think we are going to release a scheduale of whats forth coming in Suite.

[andy]

I would also like to know in regards to ‘long-term’ support and choice of platform, are there any legal issues that remain to be resolved in regards to this fork of CE?

i.e. could Sugar pull the plug on this project legally??
thanks

I dont think there is anything Sugar can do as long none of SugarCRM’s proprietary code gets used in Suite. Also CE was fully open source so how can they legally do anything?

[HostBaron]

I dont think there is anything Sugar can do as long none of SugarCRM’s proprietary code gets used in Suite. Also CE was fully open source so how can they legally do anything?

I thought since they changed from GPL to AGPL or since version 5.x they have more control in regards to the code and forks?
This is probably more of a question from Greg, and I think would be worthwhile addressing this with an official statement to reassure people like myself that are ‘still on the fence’ due to this particular uncertainty.

many thanks

[andy]

yeah this is probably one for Greg but as far as I am aware its fine with AGPL as long as we give the code away free and anybody can freely download the code. We sell hosting and support contracts. We are not charging for SuiteCRM itself.

[Roquefort]

I like SuiteCRM’s business model and I think it could really work for you guys. It reminds me of the CentOS and Red Hat Linux distributions; they are exactly the same thing - except for the name - but Red Hat comes with paid support. It has worked well for them, and Red Hat is arguably the largest Linux distro in production environments these days.

What you’re doing is essentially “locking in” people into your product. If we get stuck, we always have support that we can fall back on. I like that. I don’t like being ignored completely as evidenced by SugarCRM developers in the past couple of years. And those CE forums are just dead now.

For a company such as mine - ~250 employees, struggling with US healthcare changes - paying $10+/employee isn’t even in the realm of feasible. And truth be told, paying anything up front for SuiteCRM will not be approved by management. However, slowly integrating ourselves into the product - and then paying for support as we need advanced functionality - this absolutely will happen.

I do think you’re playing the “long-con”, in that your profit is going to come from users months or even years down the road, after they are tightly-woven into the product already. But your pricing model is unique in this market, the demand is high, and you guys are obviously competent. I’m definitely rooting for you.