Talk:Alfresco Software

The Alfresco product

"The Alfresco product has a lean, modular component architecture that allows new functionality to be added without any system disruption and is significantly faster than proprietary commercial systems." - Is this POV or is there actual data to substantiate that there is no system disruption and that it is faster than (which?ll?) commercial systems? --Davidp 21:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

"Alfresco is the first ... and a groundbreaking ... takes the lessons of building content management systems for the last 15 years ...". It's not POV. It's an advertisement. 81.208.83.222 13:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Both these quotes are no longer present, Can the advert warning be removed? Rjohnson19 (talk) 21:18, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Alfresco goes GPL

The Alfresco CMS recently switched to the GNU General Public License. Due the switch the company wants to insure that the code will stay open - or as Marketing-Manager Matt Asay said, "We want that the code is bigger than the company." For now the company decided to stay under the "GPL2 only" version of the license. A change to the GPLv3, currently under development, is later possible, said Alfresco.

Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/85796

It seems they are planning on moving to LGPL: http://newton.typepad.com/content/2010/01/a-shift-in-alfresco-community-license-to-lgpl.html Rjohnson19 (talk) 21:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this still a free software?

I just went to Alfresco's website and it indicates that you can download trial versions for 30 days and it also has the option to contact the sales team for pricing information. Is this still a free software or have they moved to some other license? Could somebody please clarify? Golebara (talk) 13:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I spoke on the phone to them today. It is not free. About the minimum, for a small user, is $50 per chair per month; and for larger enterprises they want about $50,000 per CPU. Rengewwj (talk) 19:34, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

There's a free version called "Alfresco Labs". It takes a bit to find it, though. Last I checked, it was available here.216.162.166.106 (talk) 23:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Alfresco now only offers a commercial Enterprise Edition and a open source LABS Edition. As Alfresco states on their comparison site both are open source, but only LABS is GPL licensed. Because GNU does not allow for the commercial part to be called open source in the GNU sense the article must be amended. Because LABS is more like an Alpha or Beta for the next release it should be mentioned also. The license type in the infobox should make the difference and also the first paragraph must be changed. I think the following will do: "Alfresco comes in two flavours. Alfresco LABS is free software, GNU licensed open source and open standards, but never an officially deemed stable release. Alfresco Enterprise Edition is commercially / proprietary licensed open source, open standards and enterprise scale. Alfresco is a Enterprise content management system for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems." Beljoost (talk) 14:26, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Its now called Community instead of labs. Kennethbarber (talk) 04:36, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

It's free. Only when you want to have commercial support you'll have to pay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.105.8.130 (talk) 01:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

No footnotes

I've removed the no footnotes macro as this seems to have been improved. Kennethbarber (talk) 04:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Awards

I move awards here. They are likely the last thing that may look like advert. They are not exactly bad on they own but seem making a too big proportion of the otherwise short article. Audriusa (talk) 14:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• 2008
  • EContent 100 Awards
  • Audemars Piguet and European Tech Tour Association selects Alfresco for “Next Gem Award" which recognizes best young company
  • DM Magazine awards Alfresco customer Surrenda-Link the Document Management Private Sector Project of the Year Award for 2008
  • Linux Magazine names Alfresco as one of Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008
  • Business Computing Magazine Editor's Choice Award
  • InfoWorld Bossie Award for Best of Open Source in Enterprise Applications

• 2007
  • Red Herring 100 Global 2007 Awards Winner
  • Network World names Alfresco in Top Ten Enterprise Software Companies to watch
  • InfoWorld: Best of Open Source Applications BOSSIE Award Winner
  • Computerworld Honors Program: [1]
  • Sand Hill Group: Top Software Innovator
  • Network World: Top Ten Enterprise Software Companies to watch
  • Gartner: “Cool Vendors in Content Management, 2007”
  • World Economic Forum: Technology Pioneer of 2007
• 2006
  • Red Herring: Red Herring 100 Europe
  • EContent: EContent 100
  • KM World: Trend-Setting Product Award
• 2005
  • OSBC: Emerging Elite Award

References

Labs, Community and Enterprise Edition

Each time I look into Alfresco I wonder what the current open source status is. I wonder if it would help the article to include a section about it. To clarify the difference I'll cite some posts I found on the web which explained it to me.

The Labs version always contains a lot of bugs. With newer versions the old bugs are fixed but since the Labs version seems to be some kind of playground for Alfresco each labs version contains a lot of new buggy "features".

— http://stackoverflow.com/questions/150591/using-alfresco-community-in-production, Retrieved on 2012-12-06.

Labs has since evolved into a Community Edition.

The community release has undergone limited testing and care should be taken before upgrading any previous Alfresco Community version with this version.

— http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Alfresco_Community_4.2.b_Release_Notes, Retrieved on 2012-12-06.

Basically, the major difference between community and enterprise is that bug fixes (i.e. patches) go into enterprise sooner.

— http://stackoverflow.com/questions/150591/using-alfresco-community-in-production, Retrieved on 2012-12-06.

Community Edition users should be able to patch [...] issues themselves using information provided in the Jiras and forum post [...]. The fixes will be incorporated into the next Community release.

— http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2012/04/27/1585, Retrieved on 2012-12-06.

When I found ourselves in this situation, I usually googled and worked my way through the forums and JIRA picking up hints on the way. I cannot remember a single case where we have found a patch "ready to apply" against an official release, so usually, we had to fix the release code revision (as in svn) ourselves [...] I wish we (as the community) had something - a system and/or process to support our bugfixing needs. A place to exchange community release (bugfix) patches. Google Code, github, sourceforge all work fine for extensions, but they don't work well for "core changes".

— http://www.contentreich.de/alfresco-community-bugfixing, Retrieved on 2012-12-06.

More information on what is included or not included in the community version is explained on the enterprise subscription (retrieved on 2012-12-06) pages. The page on upgrades and maintenance has a diagram which explains the relation between community and enterprise. -- Beljoost (talk) 16:44, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Quality of Reference

There has been a tag added to the article regarding the quality of references. The original tag was removed when the content being reference was removed. (There was a "citation needed" reference). So technically this is a new call-out by Grayfell. That said, the specific comment is in regards to a new reference and I will address that.

The change states that Press Releases are not good references. That is a sound rule. The reference in question is a preexisting statement of staff joining Alfresco. Looking at an older version Version from December 2016 shows the previous state, complete with the now removed phrase of additional staff additions. The article statement merely mentions the joining of the staff, not the quality or the impact. The only reference still in existence of this action is that Press Release.

That statement in the article is purely factual and offers no judgement as to whether or not it was good or bad. It does not judge the quality of the staff changes. For that reason, the Press Release seems to be a valid source. THAT SAID, if there is no agreement, then we can merely remove that history statement as it is purely academic in nature as part of the history of the software firm and doesn't directly pertain to what most people are likely trying to learn visiting this page. Pie1120 (talk) 02:36, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Reads Like An Advert

This was added by Grayfell and I would like to know what wording reads like an advert. Neutral sources are cited for the features and capabilities and no words such as leading, best-in-class, or other judgmental words are used. There are still negative references on the pages regarding the limitations of the open-source versions. If specific examples could be cited, I am sure that either agreeable wording could be leveraged or the text in question can be removed without removing clarity.

An important part of this is my motivation. I edited the pages as they reflected information from before the previous major release and subsequent product renaming. As someone who actively uses the software, and has for many years, and with writing skills, I decided to update the page. I was not provided any text to use or points to make. These are my words based upon my experience, and I tripled the citations in the article in order to make sure that every statement was factual and substantiated. I plan to make edits to other software products in the ECM industry as time and knowledge permits. Pie1120 (talk) 02:54, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello. Regardless of intent, this article is promotional. Many of these issues predate your contributions, but they are are still problems that need to be fixed, not built upon. There are several issues here:

The use of WP:BUZZWORDs is far from the worst I've seen, but it's still unacceptable. If you don't see it, try looking at this from further outside the industry. What, exactly, is a a suite of digital information management systems? How is anyone not already deep in the muck going to have a clue what that actually means? How is this a core offering, and what does that mean in non-business speak? There are other examples as well, such as "geared towards". This is a subtle form of editorializing, because it implies that the products are good at something, instead of merely stating their intended function.

Otherwise the wording itself is superficially neutral, but this doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The length and detail of this article implies significance which is poorly supported by reliable, independent sources. In this regard, this issue and the one above are closely related. The easiest solution would be to strip-out a large swath of content leaving a stub. This would not be ideal, but it would be better than using this article for promotion.

I hope it's obvious why mentioning the flaws in the free open-source portion of a software package in contrast to the commercial version is completely compatible with spam, and does nothing to make this appear less ad-like.

Listing different version of the company's products is acceptable in the body, but this level of detail is far too promotional in the lede. It's also poor practice because it blurs the line between the article being about a software 'suite' and the company that produces it. Likewise, a list of poorly-sourced or unsourced 'features' is fundamentally arbitrary without a solid source which explains why these features are of encyclopedic importance. Again, I recognize that this has been a problem with the article for a while, and this isn't about blame, or applying a 'badge of shame' to the article.

Hopefully that's enough to make my tagging clear. Again, if you (or anybody else reading this) are affiliated with Alfresco Software, Inc., this is a conflict of interest. Please disclose all editing for which you are compensated, here or anywhere else on Wikipedia, per Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 03:53, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying what you meant by the tag. I will work to address the issues mentioned. I want this to be an accurate representation and will clear the industry speak as much as I can and definitely when there is not an existing Wikipedia page to reference. My measure for that jargon had been what was on similar pages of other products in the space (though "geared to" is definitely tech slang that can be clearly resolved). Pie1120 (talk) 15:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)