Interesting, Alfresco, Interesting

Alfresco seem to be making a (gentle) push into turning Open-Source users of their product into commercial users, at least according to their latest newsletter:

As I said, we value our community and want them to use our software in every way they can think of. But we also want them to know that if they use it in an enterprise environment, skipping the support subscription can cost them, as well as us.

From: http://www.alfresco.com/community/newsletters/2010/11/us.jsp

It's very interesting, especially given what existing research has to tell us on that topic: http://guillaumelerouge.com/great-article-on-open-source-customers-vs-com

I wonder how this will end up for Alfresco. In my experience, Open-Source users are a different breed than customers who come looking for professional support and services. I'm not saying that there are no bridges between both, but the post I linked to above is pretty much to the point about the time vs money argument.

In any case, if Alfresco ends up sharing any lessons and feedback from this, I'll be eager to learn them :-)