Re: very disapointed, sipsorcery is not free anymore
Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:03 am
It seems everyone has a different opinion on this one and for those that have invested a lot of time and effort setting up their sipsorcery accounts there's probably bit of apprehension as to whether accounts could end up with an ongoing cost or alternatively whether it will all go to waste if the service was to disappear. I've said in the past that the intention was always to keep the basic mysipswitch/sipsorcery service free and up until a month ago that is exactly what occurred for three years. At that point the intent of keeping the service free came into conflict with keeping the service usable, the sipsorcery server was not probably a week away from becoming severely CPU impaired. As I pointed out on my blog at the time new accounts had to be halted so that the service could remain useful to existing users.
That's the situation and is pretty clear cut, to my mind at least . The remedy seems to be a bit more contentious although interestingly it's existing sipsorcery users with free accounts that seem to be most unhappy about the eBay auction approach whereas I haven't had any negative feedback from anyone who has participated in an auction. Anyway the solutions that have occurred to me are:
1. Purchase some more server capacity for sipsorcery by forking out another $2,000 on my credit card and hoping that donations would eventually pay it back (highly unlikely given that only about half the $2,000 for the original server has been donated to date). Plus there would then be the issue of what happened in a year's time when another $4,000 would need to be found to keep the service running,
2. Implement a flat rate subscription charge for all sipsorcery accounts in same as voxalot. While it's probably the most sensible option I don't like it: first it would mean the original commitment to keep the basic service free would be broken (while it wasn't exactly a signed in blood promise and I wouldn't say I'd never break it if it was the last resort I'm very keen to stick to it); second by taking money from people on an ongoing basis you are providing a service and a service has to have support. I definitely don't want to commit to a formal technical support arrangement. I'm happy helping out on the forums, as are quite a few others, but it's a whole different kettle of fish when people expect you solve to their problem solved instantly. One only needs to look at the angst on the voxalot forums to see how unhappy a yearly service fee with no formal support arrangement makes people,
3. Use the eBay auctions to allow a trickle of new users onto the existing system as load permits and at some point it may be possible to purchase more server capacity with the proceeds. It has the potential to be a pyramid scheme with new users paying to keep the service running for existing users and if the new ones ever dried up it would potentially mean a server would need to be shutdown,
4. Come up with some sipsorcery based applications that could be sold as a service with an ongoing monthly fee. Part of the fee would be used to pay for the underlying infrastructure and the free sipsorcery service would act as a sales and marketing front for the paid applications. The switchboard is the first attempt at this but needs more work and of late I have found my time more restricted,
5. LHM's idea of a one off "entrance" fee of $35 on existing users to keep their accounts. This option would probably result in the cost of the service being more than covered but on the flip side it would go against the commitment to keeping the serivce free and also The Fug does have a point when he writes that quite a few people did put in fair bit of time testing the service, beta testers as he calls them, to help make it what it is today,
6. Some other clever idea ???
Option 4 has always been the ideal but is yet to manifest. Until it does option 3 seems like a good stop gap measure, although it's hard to say how long it would be needed for.
That's the state of play like it or hate it .
That's the situation and is pretty clear cut, to my mind at least . The remedy seems to be a bit more contentious although interestingly it's existing sipsorcery users with free accounts that seem to be most unhappy about the eBay auction approach whereas I haven't had any negative feedback from anyone who has participated in an auction. Anyway the solutions that have occurred to me are:
1. Purchase some more server capacity for sipsorcery by forking out another $2,000 on my credit card and hoping that donations would eventually pay it back (highly unlikely given that only about half the $2,000 for the original server has been donated to date). Plus there would then be the issue of what happened in a year's time when another $4,000 would need to be found to keep the service running,
2. Implement a flat rate subscription charge for all sipsorcery accounts in same as voxalot. While it's probably the most sensible option I don't like it: first it would mean the original commitment to keep the basic service free would be broken (while it wasn't exactly a signed in blood promise and I wouldn't say I'd never break it if it was the last resort I'm very keen to stick to it); second by taking money from people on an ongoing basis you are providing a service and a service has to have support. I definitely don't want to commit to a formal technical support arrangement. I'm happy helping out on the forums, as are quite a few others, but it's a whole different kettle of fish when people expect you solve to their problem solved instantly. One only needs to look at the angst on the voxalot forums to see how unhappy a yearly service fee with no formal support arrangement makes people,
3. Use the eBay auctions to allow a trickle of new users onto the existing system as load permits and at some point it may be possible to purchase more server capacity with the proceeds. It has the potential to be a pyramid scheme with new users paying to keep the service running for existing users and if the new ones ever dried up it would potentially mean a server would need to be shutdown,
4. Come up with some sipsorcery based applications that could be sold as a service with an ongoing monthly fee. Part of the fee would be used to pay for the underlying infrastructure and the free sipsorcery service would act as a sales and marketing front for the paid applications. The switchboard is the first attempt at this but needs more work and of late I have found my time more restricted,
5. LHM's idea of a one off "entrance" fee of $35 on existing users to keep their accounts. This option would probably result in the cost of the service being more than covered but on the flip side it would go against the commitment to keeping the serivce free and also The Fug does have a point when he writes that quite a few people did put in fair bit of time testing the service, beta testers as he calls them, to help make it what it is today,
6. Some other clever idea ???
Option 4 has always been the ideal but is yet to manifest. Until it does option 3 seems like a good stop gap measure, although it's hard to say how long it would be needed for.
That's the state of play like it or hate it .