SuiteASSURED!

[samus-aran]

Hi Everyone.

We would like to introduce our latest product, [color=#15667A][size=4]SuiteASSURED[/size][/color], that is aimed at enterprise businesses whom maybe reluctant to embrace Open Source by providing additional software assurances and IP warranties that SuiteCRM can not provide.

We are dedicated to Open Source (and always will be) and both SuiteCRM and SuiteASSURED are published under the AGPL open source license.

SuiteASSURED has been developed to provide surety to enterprise-class customers and other large organisations installing, customising and driving value from the open source SuiteCRM software application.

The launch of SuiteASSURED has generated some confusion and even some controversy within the community. We would like to provide further assistance and clarity by providing answers to a series of community members’ questions.

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[color=#15667A][size=4]What is SuiteASSURED?[/size][/color]
SuiteASSURED is separately maintained from SuiteCRM. It shares the same core code base but some SuiteCRM features, identified as insufficiently mature or experimental, are removed. SuiteASSURED also undergoes separate internal and third party security and penetration testing. SuiteASSURED has specific specific guarantees, warranties and indemnities included that are not available to SuiteCRM users.

[color=#15667A][size=4]So are you moving SuiteCRM to a freemium model?[/size][/color]
No. SuiteASSURED has no added features or significant differences in the code from SuiteCRM. Quite the contrary: SuiteCRM will contain some bleeding edge features which will not be included in SuiteASSURED. SuiteCRM will continue to be at the cutting edge of our development roadmap.

[color=#15667A][size=4]But it sounds like you are going down the SugarCRM route and you’ll gradually abandon SuiteCRM…[/size][/color]
It is worth restating what we have said on numerous occasions: SuiteCRM is and always will be an open source project. Every line of code published by the project will be open source. We are completely committed to open source and SuiteCRM is at the cutting edge of that commitment.

What we are doing is very different from SugarCRM. Both SuiteCRM and SuiteASSURED share the same code base. There are no extra modules or functions in SuiteASSURED.

SuiteCRM users will benefit from SuiteASSURED in profound ways. Any defects identified during third party penetration and security testing of SuiteASSURED will be upstreamed to SuiteCRM. The additional revenues from SuiteASSURED will enable the project to develop more and improved code all of which will be released to the community in SuiteCRM.

[color=#15667A][size=4]You speak of contracts. Are you closing the source?[/size][/color]
No. The source code of both versions is, and will continue to be distributed under an AGPL open source license.

[color=#15667A][size=4]Won’t this split the community?[/size][/color]
We hope that the community will understand that by offering a discretely maintained version with additional security and testing and warranties required by compliance driven organisations, we can introduce SuiteCRM into a sector currently dominated by proprietary vendors and expand our client base.

With more clients, come more users, more resources, more revenue and more developers. This will ultimately help us, the SuiteCRM community, to grow.

[color=#15667A][size=4]Are there any more advantages for SuiteCRM?[/size][/color]
Yes, many more. SuiteASSURED comes with Long Term Support (LTS) releases, and that means SuiteCRM also gets LTS. An LTS will follow an 18 month release cycle and provide critical bug fixes, security fixes and other defect resolutions.

Any major fixes or security patches implemented for SuiteASSURED as a result of security and penetration testing will also be up-streamed into SuiteCRM.

If you would like to know more about SuiteASSURED, there is a complete breakdown of what it is and the warranties it provides on the information page.

Your feedback is always welcome and we will address any concerns or thoughts you have either by emailing us directly or via the forums.
Check out the SuiteASSURED website for a full breakdown.

[salesagility]

I want to reinforce what Ashley has posted.

I completely understand that there will be some in the community who are nervous about this. Especially those of you who lived through SugarCRM’s abandonment of open source.

So, let me put this in as plain a statement as my florid prose allows:

SalesAgility is an open source company and SuiteCRM is and always will be an open source project. Every line of code published by the project will be open source.

We believe that open source is a better way to develop software and that good open source projects (we aspire to include ourselves in that category) produce better software and innovate more rapidly than our proprietary counterparts.

We believe that open source is in the interests of our customers and that vendor lock-in is an inherently poor deal for them.

We believe in community, collaboration, freedoms and openness.

However, first and foremost, we need to pay the salaries of the talented engineers, architects and business analysts that work for the company and the project.

Our business model is a simple one.

We produce great software.
We give it away for free.
Some companies then engage us to extend it to meet their business needs. We charge for this. Some of these companies are large household brands.
The revenue from these engagements pays the salaries, the taxes, the building costs, the legal and accounting fees, the equipment costs, the travel etc.
Profits go straight back into the project.
The more profit we make, the more we expand the full-time development team.
The larger the full-time development team, the faster we can innovate and fix bugs.
The more profit we make, the more we can expand the full-time community team.
The larger the full-time community team the more we can create an engaged and active community.
The more we create an engaged and active community, the more the community contributes to testing and bug fixing.
The more the community contributes, the better SuiteCRM becomes.

None of this happens overnight and it isn’t an easy model. When we forked SugarCRM, 3.5 years ago, there were eight of us. By the end of this year there will be forty. So, we’re growing steadily. I hope that most of you who have been around the project since the early days will see the difference. We’re becoming more professional, more engaged and each release is contains more and better software.

SuiteASSURED is designed to be another revenue stream that will help us do the above. It’s designed for larger organisation who cannot engage with open source because of their compliance regulations. Many organisations require software to have warranties and indemnities. Standard open source licenses specifically state that there are no warranties. SuiteASSURED addresses that and enables larger organisation to benefit from open source too. This is a good thing for them and for us.

The revenues from SuiteASSURED will enable us to keep growing and to keep investing in the software and to keep it all open source.

It is important to understand that there is no code in SuiteASSURED that is not in SuiteCRM. There will however be occasions where SuiteASSURED, because of the external penetration and vulnerability testing that ASSURED clients fund, gets fixes implemented before SuiteCRM does. But SuiteCRM will get all the fixes in a timely manner. That is both a promise and a guarantee.

Nobody in this company is driving around in flashy expensive cars. We are investing in the future. We are investing in software and we are investing in you.

I understand that we will never please all the people all the time. If you have any questions, then please post them in this thread.

Please keep the tone professional.

[pgr]

I read this carefully and I don’t see anything particularly scary about this - except perhaps the “ghost” of SugarCRM which weighs in our memories.

But I appreciate Greg’s clear statements about the openness of SuiteCRM code for today and for the future. They’re as clear as we could possibly ask for, and they’re repeated often, which is also reassuring.

I hope the new model helps generate some steady revenue and helps the project. I guess SalesAgility’s business model is, in a way, SuiteCRM’s business model. The success of one feeds the other. So we’re all interested in that.

[blqt]

Hi Greg,

I fully understand that, and financial success of Sales Agility is key to the success and future of SuiteCRM.

Now, could you please detail “but some SuiteCRM features, identified as insufficiently mature or experimental, are removed”
It would certainly be useful to the community if you could specify which SuiteCRM features you currently consider as “insufficiently mature or experimental”.

Thanks
Benoit

[erevodifosin]

Now, could you please detail “but some SuiteCRM features, identified as insufficiently mature or experimental, are removed”
It would certainly be useful to the community if you could specify which SuiteCRM features you currently consider as “insufficiently mature or experimental”.

Compare SuiteCRM - SuiteASSURED
The modules that removed from SuiteASSURED are Events, Maps and Spots.

[item]

Compare SuiteCRM - SuiteASSURED
The modules that removed from SuiteASSURED are Events, Maps and Spots.

Hi,
thanks to All Salesagility teams.

I fully agree for “Events/Locations” Modules : it’s bad coded, and must be rewritten.
I fully agree for “Maps”, need to be in core and rewritten. Or another solution !?
Spots, I never use. I have no idea.

Maybe “Security Suite” must be to rewritten a must be in core. So all custom module is out-of-box in “Security Suite”. (Notes/Attachements module is not ! / Email !? )

Regards

[DJuser]

It seems a very positive announcement.

To help keep the positivity, and given that it is important to make it as easy as possible for everyone to ‘get it’ in order to avoid needless debate / uncertainty - perhaps these lines from Greg and Ashley above are worth making top+centre on a bunch of suitecrm and suiteassured.com pages:

The One key fact!:

• The source code of both versions is, and will continue to be distributed under an AGPL open source license.

The 2nd big fact:

• SuiteASSURED has no added features or significant differences in the code from SuiteCRM.

•           ie: There are no extra modules or functions
  

•   but there will be FEWER modules than SuiteCRM (eg ones insufficiently mature or experimental
  

Additional Benefits to SuiteCRM code base:

• Defects identified during third party penetration and security testing of SuiteASSURED will be upstreamed to SuiteCRM
• SuiteCRM will get all the fixes in a timely manner. That is both a promise and a guarantee.

[horus68]

SuiteASSURED is separately maintained from SuiteCRM. It shares the same core code base but some SuiteCRM features, identified as insufficiently mature or experimental, are removed.

I think this could be a good move for your company and for us users.

• SuiteASSURED should be your base software for your clients, a more controlled version.
• SuiteCRM needs to be considered more like a “Community version”.

This could help community version to include all the easy fixes that community members has already provided to you on Github but SalesAgillity didn’t merge on fear that it can break their clients. Yes I believe fear to break, not time or resources (you will never have any of those!), is the real issue.

So lets hope now we can evolve: “less fear = more merges”
I hope that you can finally setup up your workflow for community collaborations and realize that users have different systems and they also want their instances working. They have fixed it, they had tested it and they are waiting for you.

[size=4]Now its the time to act, some have already left the project, some are in silence, some do not collaborate anymore… so go get them all back![/size]

[DJuser]

Hi Horus

have you any specific examples of these ‘easy fixes’ in mind:

[quote=“horus68” post=49908]

… easy fixes that community members has already provided to you on Github

[DJuser]

sorry - that edit went wrong - it was horus I was quoting NOT samus-aran

[gunnicom]

Are the critical security bugs fixed in SuiteASSURED, yet?

[gunnicom]

What i mean here is the critical security issue of #3867 and #4099 that Salesagility now know at least sind 10. July.
More than one month, and not fixed.