I believe thats no good news for the community!?! I think this news operate against the fantastic project of elgg. That cut me to the quick. btw. means for me the end of five years cheap beta testing.

I'm disappointed too... it seems that another good project is now oriented to become an enterprise product with feature reserved for paying customers... sad news :-(

I think the core and basic plugins of community edition and enterprise edition is same. That's enough.

This is great and I wish you all the success in the world! Not sure what the negative reaction from the first two posters is about. Many major open source projects go this route.

This is excellent news. Multisite in particular looks like an awesome concept, and I fully endorse the logic of making a distinction between the flexibility and "roll your own" capacity of Elgg and the QA'd and supported aspects of Elgg Enterprise.

Dont understand the concerns of the first two posters. Elgg Enterprise still uses the OS core, and presumably all the extensions to support it are available to anyone with the inclination to roll their own plug-ins, but now there is a version that is formally supported and suitable for corporate use. That can only benefit the whole Elgg community.

I am guessing that everyone needs to eat(!), and anything that makes Elgg sustainable as a business as well a project must ultimately be good for its continuity and potential. Looks to me like the guys have trodden a very clean and straightforward line and adhered very well to the open source ethos.

Do the critics work for free, or do they benefit from being able to indulge themselves on some corporate or public sector payroll that means they dont have to deal with the real world or survive on their own wits? Nice work if you can get it...

thats a very reasonable move,
it also shows that Elgg team has a solid longterm strategy.. very good

Great idea. We've all benefited from your hard work and you deserve an income. Hope you all become billionares!

I have just been preparing a comparison between your proposed pricing and the various commercial competitors. I sincerely hope this pans out, as your costs are a fraction of the competing proprietary platforms, and the features compare favourably too. It looks to me like you are 1/5th the cost of your nearest competitor.

Add that to the Open Source core, a choice of deployment options, flexibility to develop custom features, a deep pool of contract resources, and the capacity to maintain our own network (even if we ever fall out or you get into trouble) and it looks like a winner. The only area you fall down on is your marketing... I see that as an opportunity, both for you and for us! I want to pay for delivery not for a bunch of marketing psycho-babble.

We currently spend over $60k per year in license fees for something inferior and much more limited..... As soon as my lords and masters come back on my recommendations we will be talking....

I have been tracking Elgg for a while, and the absence of a formally supported version was always the deal breaker- we dont really want to be in the software engineering business, so formal support is needed before you even get looked at. Now you are back in the game.

Is it possible to get the on-site edition without support, just the core engine in MIT license? What's the pricing in that case?

I can understand the disappointment from some over the new and attractive features such as elggmulti only being available on the hosted services. It does seem unfair to the rest of the community. How about adopting an approach that wordpressµ has taken with the premium wordpress site. They offer premium plugins and themes at a price, in their case by a yearly subscription. How about it Elgg?