Family Licence
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@Captain-Kirk I wouldn't limit the apps, I'd love to see kids have the freedom to learn any of them that took their interest.
There's already the free tier limited to 2 x apps, which is ideal for trial and very limited use.
The Family Licence kids of today could be the Cloudron champions of tomorrow, especially with the viral way kids adopt and share apps and technologies their parents might not be interested in.
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The problem with growing up poor, which I know from first-hand experience, is exclusion from certain things your parents just can't afford. Plus, the trend stigmas from not having branded things.
I don't think app restrictions would be fair, as you then make the cost-difference for full-access a barrier to consideration for parents.
I'm hoping for something that the kids would not feel like they have limits but actually have something better than their schools are promoting (and yes, corporate sponsorship of proprietary software is rife, turning teachers into affiliates).
It makes me uneasy that kids being taught via Google/Microsoft/Zoom tools are losing their privacy before they understand what it is.
I can see a "Cloudron for Families & Education" section for the website, perhaps linking to recommended affordable equipment and blogging on how Linux is a 1st-rate, affordable alternative to Microsoft & Apple.
I have a bunch of spare equipment hanging around that I intend to wipe, setup with Linux and donate to families that couldn't otherwise afford.
It just frustrates me that otherwise taxes get skimmed for funding proprietary tools to eventually become a tax on modern life.
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In our (admittedly limited) experience, the lower we go, the more we have to hand hold and support. People who are new to selfhosting are going to ask all sorts of questions - why is the nextcloud client not working? how are ghost and wordpress different? where do i setup email filters like gmail? How do I setup my DNS and what is a domain? and so on. Cloudron as a company is simply not setup to answer those sort of questions. We can support sysadmins and techies, but not general consumers.
To me, the issue is not pricing. It's just the product has to be packaged and marketed very differently and also developed differently. For example, I imagine the best way to target consumers is to make a hardware appliance and focus on a very limited set of apps. That too, you will find that you are non stop competing with comparisons of these limited apps with SaaS. Alternately, you have to make Managed Cloudron SaaS (this is how Cloudron started, we couldn't make it work and won't do this again).
FWIW, we encourage people to try other business models and pricing models on Cloudron instead of expecting us to try those. If pricing is what stops you, feel free to reach out to us directly and we can come to some agreement. We have made several such agreements already with service providers.
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@girish Good points. That brings to mind that French company offering their services based on top of Cloudron, and their cheapest plan is 150 euro/month! I suppose any of us could start our own "Family Cloud" service, based on Cloudron, and offer our own $5/ month plan.
A life lived in fear is a life half-lived
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@scooke said in Family Licence:
I suppose any of us could start our own "Family Cloud" service, based on Cloudron, and offer our own $5/ month plan.
Only if everyone was on the same server (because otherwise you'd be loosing at least $10/mo - Cloudron costs at least $15/mo when paid annually = before you even got started), which I don't think is what is proposed here.
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@jdaviescoates said in Family Licence:
which I don't think is what is proposed here.
The way I understood it was a "when you handle (first level) support and have a business model, then we can be flexible on pricing".
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