Sustainable Funding for EasyEngine - From "side project" to Real Project

v3
#1

Hi @rahul286,

I wanted to ask you if there has gone more thought into a sustainable funding model for EasyEngine?

I really like EE and am using it to build my own hosting company with LXD as the backend for resource limiting and client separation and security. And I would like to contribute to the development with cash, I dont have a lot of it but I would be willing to donate a small amount each month. I am sure others feel similarly and would also love to contribute in this way.

I would also offer other services but I am very busy in building my own business right now so contribution would have to be financial.

I think what people might really go for is some mildly increased support response priority to their requests here when they donate monthly. Noticable with some badge or something. But of course this is optional and just an idea to make it more interesting for people to donate.

I am sure many little voluntarily given amounts each month will make the future of EE more secure financially. And make you more happy to spend the development time on it.

What do you think?

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Good alternative to EE?
#2

They have a premium support and hosting plan so i dont think they need a sustainable funding model

#3

@vibhi I dont think they need this kind of model. But I find it only logical and right to give back to a project that makes your life easier. Not only easier, It think I could not set up fast cached wordpress hosting like this myself. At least not without considerable time and effort. I would spend the time on it of course but thanks to EE I dont have to.

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#4

I am a big fan of EasyEngine but I think that in this current state it wouldn’t be the smartest move to start some sort of fund-raising.

To be honest, what for? The last serious updates have been ages ago, except for some external user-driven input literally nothing has been accomplished. I do not want to sound harsh as I am extremely grateful for all the insights I have been able to acquire through EE and for all the time it saved me.

Right now it would be fair enough to call its quits and let user move forward.

#5

I think they already working on v4 and Launching new version every single month doesn’t make much sense

#6

Yes, they have been working on it for the last two years or so…:slight_smile:

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#7

Then must be something big coming why crying about the update then

#8

I am absolutely not in the mood for debating but please watch your language and take some time before offending. I am not crying for updates.

There are plenty of ways to maintain and update easy engine on my own. I just would not want to fund anything that unfortunately is not moving forward and has been stuck in hiatus for years.

Besides that this is an open-discussion thread and my opinion is not a final statement of any sort.

#9

im not getting offended you simply sound like this project is dead nothing more than that

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#10

@vibhi Please stay out of this topic as your kind of language and abusive writing is not ok! I have flagged your post as inappropriate.

@mrmad Thanks for your input! I am not thinking about any fundraising but a way to let them work more on it so that exactly those few updates can happen more often.

@rahul286 Please share your input with us.

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#11

I feel the same way. A donation model with some people contributing via code. I would be willing to contribute to EE as while I am familiar with code I don’t have the time and skill to contribute. Such a model would have seen EE getting much more updates. No offence to the Dev team but the move to V4 has been slow by comparative past standards. Updates used to be more frequent and now it seems everything has stalled and the project is beginning to feel like its not a priority. I would encourage someone who knows Python to fork the current release instead of the PHP release.

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#12

@Garikai_Dzoma Thank you also for your valuable input!

#13

I don’t have time to dig old links now… but my (achy breaky) memory tells me that V4 was going to be some sort of freemium model. The paid/subscription version was to have features like a web-based panel to administer your EE instance, backup management, staging environment, etc, while the basic offering continued to be free.

But then, for some reason, development stopped/slowed. However you want to phrase it, v4 development was announced way back on Oct 6, 2016. We’re in May 2018 – nearly 2 years later – and we don’t even have an ETA.

v3.7.4 was released on Aug 29, 2016 and the next point release v3.7.5 was published on Mar 30, 2018 – nearly 1.5 years later. While I’m not saying a server software should necessarily have a rapid release cycle. What’s important here is that this is a total deviation from the release cycle EE users were used to.

Add to this, the sporadic (at best) communication from the team, and it should be no wonder people are considering the product dead and asking for alternatives.

I’m not a developer, and I’ve no idea of the issues at hand here. I’m just an end user who loves EE’s simplicity and elegance, and willing to pay for a well-supported product with a clear vision and development milestone.

But right now it’s clear EE development is not a priority for rtcamp. Not saying they’re not working on it – it just doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of TLC to move the product forward quickly. Heck, they can’t even commit to an ETA because it’ll put a whole lot of pressure on the team:

v4 ETA

I do not have any ETA for v4 this time. It may happen next month, next year or I might give up on the project someday (unlikely).

Last time announcing an ETA created a lot of pressure on me and my team. So I am avoiding committing to a date for something we still consider a side project at rtCamp.

The only promise I can make is that if we abandon EasyEngine, I will be the first to let you know. Sorry but I do not like to sugar coat reality.

So walk along at your own risk!

That’s the reality, straight from the horses own mouth.

And how well does that score on the vote of confidence scale?

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#14

EE is great. I read that they place their resources in the “money aking side”.

I love EE. However, I have been playing with the idea on installing trellis & bedrock.

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#15

@GeorgeAppiah Thank you very much! I agree!

We should try to convince them to make it a real project instead of a side project and that is also the reason for this thread.

The freemium model sounds good @rahul286, (thanks for the info @GeorgeAppiah) why not test the waters of how many people would be willing to pay some money on a monthly basis. Like I said in the other thread about alternatives: There are no alternatives I can see replacing EE because they all lack in some way. (Correct me if I’m wrong but full page redis cache is kind of an EE innovation?!)

Unfortunately @rahul286 has not communicated with us in a longer period now. Please do.

Also thank you @madbradjohnson for your short and to the point input which reflects the opinion of many others. (I have a VPS that I split into LXD/LXC Containers because I cannot do another layer of virtualization so roots/trellis is out for me, also correct me if I’m wrong about the virtualization with Vagrant).

Please all like my first post if you are willing to pay a monthly something to make the project a real project instead of a side one. And convince others if you can. Thanks!

1 Like
Good alternative to EE?
#16

Have you opened up a line of communication with the people heading up EE?

#17

@madbradjohnson I thought this is the line of communication. :smiley:

#18

Nope… How about a direct email. Or a phone call? I am not even sure if they monitor the forums???

#19

I thought I saw some comments from them here. But I will let them know about this topic via email. Thanks for the suggestion.

#20

There is no need for more communication, EasyEngine development is done on Github, and if you want to follow progress of the next release, you just have to enable “Watching” on EasyEngine repository. If you take a look on the pull requests list, you will see you are wrong about “EE development is not a priority for rtcamp”. There is already a EE v4 release branch with a lot of informations about v4 commands and configuration. And the docker.hub EasyEngine page is the proof, we should not have to wait too much before the official release.

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