Cloudron Forum

Hi again @micmc !

Thanks for the detailed reply!

First things first, changing these two files will get you 80% of the way

• https://github.com/kaleidos-ventures/taiga-back/blob/main/taiga/base/templates/emails/includes/footer.jinja
• https://github.com/kaleidos-ventures/taiga-back/blob/main/settings/common.py (actually, overwrite some variables using config.prod.py, you don't need to change this file at all)

Your feedback is very welcome, particularly while we are designing the next major Taiga release. Welcoming feedback doesn't mean blindly accepting it. We have our own research and our metrics after 5 years or running this beautiful open source platform and we need to put together all those inputs. I came here (the "ringing of a bell" moment you mention) because a Taiga core team member said "Hey folks, I read this, we should take this input into account for the next release, it's interesting". So, please, please, please, don't project intentionality into my words expressed above, it's simpler than that.

I was privileged enough to enjoy early access to the Internet as back as 1995, went into open source in 1996, SuSE 5.1) and I made my career in open source since 2002. I've seen quite some stuff over the past 19 years and what you say is true, but may I say I don't like that truth? I mean, white-labeling Taiga is not something that excites me. We put much work into having a strongly opinionated project management platform and then we make sure it's flexible (besides being open source) for people to adapt it both at the end-user level as well as sysadmins, but it's not a priority to make it absolutely trivial for people to wash out Taiga branding. Also, our data doesn't support that need. Our hypothesis here is "some people high in hierarchy in big corps do value platform rebranding" and also that "they'd be willing to pay something, not much, but something, in order to have a fully controlled rebranding module". Well, we can develop such rebranding module as paid add-on. 99% of the Taiga community couldn't care less about that but they care about a sustainable product so that's some revenue that we can use for other more exciting stuff.

When you develop a commercial open source platform (meaning, you need revenue for payrolls) you have many choices to make. One in particular is how much you're willing to be washed out for the sake of being used. There are red lines, you may call it ego, but I also like to call it "open source should be respected, not abused". We have a delicate equilibrium here. On one hand, you want people to have zero barriers to use and adapt your tools (whether it's SaaS, self-managed, or intermediate services like Cloudron), on the other hand, you want to have a strong presence, avoiding being diluted as a project and as a brand.

Again, these two files are nearly everything you need to change to adapt it to your audience.

• https://github.com/kaleidos-ventures/taiga-back/blob/main/taiga/base/templates/emails/includes/footer.jinja
• https://github.com/kaleidos-ventures/taiga-back/blob/main/settings/common.py (actually, overwrite some variables using config.prod.py, you don't need to change this file at all)
  Cloudron doesn't give you access to those files but that's simply Cloudron, it makes sense for them not to allow for that.

You made your point here when you said:
"it's your software and you can believe it's "fair" to have Taiga branding and link in OTHER PEOPLE'S private communication emails, but I will say imho it is not. Moreover, I will ad it is very likely much useless for the purpose of promoting your app as you may think it does. As much as the link the designer puts at the bottom of a website he's built."

That's fine. We can disagree, but rest assured we are listening. This is not a GPT-3 generated response... or is it?

@micmc Hi! this is Pablo, from the Taiga team. I very much enjoyed this debate, truly constructive.

Now, I'd like to make sure we're covering the same Taiga version here, since we made significant changes to the "un-branding" of those emails. Taiga 6 is much less heavy on that when it comes to... well, everything, but notification emails in particular.

Here is a real example of a change notification email. Taiga logo is subtle, content and call to action are king. I see very little Taiga branding here. Actually, it's the logo, which, well, it's quite nice and fair to have it and then "Taiga support" which is also convenient to have (some people do use it from these emails).

Now, was it like this in the past? Like in Taiga 5? No, it was much more cluttered, more branding, etc. So, again, my question is, which Taiga release are we talking about? If we're talking about Taiga 6 I'm afraid we don't see an issue with branding on emails. There's always room for improvement, but it would lean on "optimisation" aspects (for us). If it's Taiga 5 then we all agree but it's important to upgrade.

A separate point would be how easy is to modify email templates. Well, it's easy enough. People running their private instances do it all the time. It's a bit techie, you need to edit some files, but that's all. If you're using a service like Cloudron then I guess there are some limitations to what you can customise but it's not a Taiga constraint per se. We estimate between 100.000 and 500.000 Taiga instances around the world and this is clearly not an issue at all.

Here at Taiga we are busy with what we call "Taiga Next" (the screenshot I shared is a bit of a spoiler, actually) which is codename for "the next big release" and we are listening very closely to feedback such as this. We want to create the best agile project management experience for teams and it's tough just by going auto-pilot, it's great to have feedback!

Hi!! We are super honoured to be considered a cloudron package!!
You already packaged our other product, Taiga, by the way.

Cheers!