Thread

Friends, I’ve been using CodeIgniter for about 3.5 years. In that time, “CI” as we call it, has taught me things, made me more capable, changed the way I use PHP, and more. That said, with a few irreconcilable differences that I have with CI/EllisLab, which I don’t feel the need to specify, I’ve made the decision that it is time for me and my former beloved framework to part ways. Some of you may say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out”, but I don’t really expect any replies.

Community Auth will not be upgraded to CI v3.X, and it’s unlikely that it’s repo will remain public after v3.X is officially released. Until then, if you have any questions, you may contact me through private message.

Kind regards,
Brian G

Gotta do what works best for you, Brian. Best wishes with whatever direction you choose next!

I would say I could continue development on the auth project, but it would likely be revamped (and renamed) to suit my own style anyway. If you’re willing to release the code to be elaborated upon, let us know. Even if you don’t update it to 3.0, it should still be available for those reasons somewhere. I’ll put it on my Github repo if need be.

Also, if you’re willing to make those “irreconcilable differences” public, it may be helpful to other users and/or EllisLab. I know the new CI open source license was a particular speed bump because of your clients, but I’m curious if there was more to the story.

With EllisLabs now requesting $2000/month for prompt (within 4 hours) support, or $300/month for decent (within 1 day) support of their commercial products, I expect many people will be looking for alternates in the near future.

I have to admit, the problem isn’t with the pricing to me - I am luckily in a position with my clientele that if my client requires “premium” support, then the current price tags are entirely fine in my opinion. However I am the 1%.

That said, if my client also needs that level of support - I will charge them a hefty fee and just fix the problem myself for that money. And while the money isn’t the issue, the structure is. Even if my client requires such premium support, there’s no way I am going to pay $2000/month for that luxury because I am only going to need it once or twice a year.

What would I pay? I would pay a per-incident fee or around $49 for 1 business day responses, and $100+ for 4 hour. But requiring a $2000/month plan? Haha…

Private support tickets and all that I actually approve as I know for a lot of us enterprise focused folks like myself, I hate dragging problems into the open.

However, I also want a thriving community built around a product that I am willing to pay dearly for. And by offering *zero* support to a fairly expensive CMS, is absolutely ridiculous and will not only drive the community away, but will drive people like me and my clients away too!

When I wrote my long post about support a while ago, I wouldn’t had guessed Ellislabs would pull this move and as far as I can see going forward I think they really only have 2 road that they can follow or else they are going to experience an exodus away from their product.

1) If you’re going to offer zero support, then EE licenses must be ridiculously cheap/or free. $29 a site or around there-abouts.
2) Re-think your support for the 99%. No one in their right mind will pay $49/month for 2-busienss day support.

I really thought the strategy would had been a clearly fined support strategy for licensee holders (i.e. bundled within the license cost) and then per-incident pricing. Monthly pricing doesn’t make sense to most, and ‘unlimited’ support is just marketing hot-wash to try and convince people it’s worth the monthly price tag - it isn’t!

Honestly Ellislabs, what the hell?

Why not bundle 2-business day support into the license cost and offer $49 support incidents (1 day response) and $89-120 for 4 hour responses.

No-one is going to go for this structure.

Well there’s some good news. I was going to correct you on your $49/month for 2-business day support but I went to check first and saw that’s what it costs. Yesterday morning it said $49/month for 4-business day support, which was ridiculous. 4 business days? If your site is down for 4 days you may as well leave it down. But it shows they’re open to dialing in the options to meet what the market will bear, at least.

They still have to do more. $49/month/site for 1-day support sounds fair to me, $300 for 4-hour support and leave the $2000 intact for 4-hour support and no limit on number of requests or something.

It’s also not clear what the $249 urgent request entails. Is it the same urgency as your main plan? So if we have a $49/month contract does that mean a $249 request will be answered within 2 days? That doesn’t seem like a great value to me.

It’s also be a nice gesture for them to give all existing license holders 3-months of free support, rather than just springing this on us. [Now I’ll wait for someone to tell me they announced these changes in a newsletter I didn’t read! LOL]

When I saw the 4 days support I was almost laughing if the person that wrote that was on drugs or it was a funny joke. In the industry I work, support means 2 hours top and most top companies are going to 15 minute ticket replies to stay in business, and free, this is not extra, its included with their products, even cheap 10$ hosting plans get almost 1 hour ticket replies today in 2012 and they want 50$ a month for 4 days replies? Really?

And the companies I talk about are all US staffed, so I cannot imagine Ellis Lab would be different.

I agree with you, if you have a problem and need to wait 4 days, you just go out of business. If this is the way they want to go, its cheaper to me and others to use something open source and guess what? If I have a critical issue, I can post it on a site like Freelancer and get 10 people in 10 minutes with experience willing to fix the issue, for 100$ or even 200$. So why exactly would someone pay 600$ a year for this?

1 day business sounds reasonable, but even for 1 day I would not pay 50$ a month, not because of the price, because ExpressionEngine is not free in the first place, I assume everyone else here like me paid for the product. And I expect support for a commercial product to be included.

More info here: http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/186993/

This Dream Home Giveaway marks the 16th anniversary of the HGTV sweepstakes and it is a testimony to the quality their goodness.  It is scheduled to be completed in September, and accepts entries from December 30 until February 18.

2 days for a paid support plan is ludicrous. Even if it is the lower tier. AND in my experience with EE staff, it takes into the 3rd or 4th interaction to get actionable help. The way it usually goes, is it takes X days to get “a first response”. Then, you reply, and it takes X more days to get another response. Crap, I’m bummed about these changes.

2 days means you lost me a client. 2 days should be the free support option (free as in, I paid for a license, and you support your software.) $50 a month should mean 24 hour support turnaround, and 90% of the time you hit it in a 1 hour turnaround.

I think of hosting support. 24 hour turnaround, but I only stick with a host that more often than not, gets to it within an hour. And that comes with the service.

**** oh and the forum is so slow, it took 60 seconds for it to post this post.

@skunkbad, will miss you dude.

As far as the Forum being slow I am on a 25Mbs fiber optic cable and it takes me almost a minute also.

Plus hit the browser back button and see how long it takes to reload the page.

I am only just replying to this topic, because I haven’t been around in quite a few months.  Quite a shock to see the web address for the forums has changed along with a drastic change in the site.

I have been dissatisfied with CI for some time now.  Ever since 2.0, things haven’t been the same.  I don’t like the upcoming license changes for CI3, as it won’t fit what I need.

I have been working the last year on my own framework/forum/blog/CMS.  It uses a single backend for everything.  It won’t be downloadable anywhere or released though.  For my use for clients, which these days are more of a hobby than a career.  I’m semi-retired, which gives me time to do lots of things, like tinker with my own framework, raise my children the right way, and enjoy life in general.

I don’t like the upcoming license changes for CI3, as it won’t fit what I need.

Where can I read about that license change? Thank you!