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I'm here too but I haven't seen much activity from the few of us that have migrated. I won't go back to reddit but I fear most of the MSP community will stay there at least for the time being.
I agree that MSPs mainly push proprietary but there is a growing sub-community of us that still advocate for FOSS where we can, and use strictly FOSS products for their personal tech. I hope to see at least many of those people migrate here. CIPP users and the CyberDrain and MSPGeek communities are filled with these people for example.
I am one of the few. I make use of FOSS and support it when possible.
It's annoying that msp is so against using Foss.
With Microsoft and Google pushing everything to the cloud. Foss is going to grow in the business market.
Synology & OnlyOffice is a great combination to keep your office documents offline.
Well to be clear, the difference between offering Open Source vs proprietary can be significant.
In the Enterprise space, they have the finance, experience (i.e. Management is comfortable with proprietary), and can easily find expertise across all their vendors. So when they need say, a telephony solution for a business unit that is different from the primary Corp solution, they can be confident any vendor will be comfortable working with windows, domains, etc. So it's not just about in-house support capability.
Then there's the whole risk management aspect of enterprise. No manager is going to sign off on the risk of using open source, when a well-known proprietary solution exists, or perhaps there are multiple proprietary solutions to choose from, and since they're all from large vendors they can contractually offload the risk of those systems to the vendor implementing them.
In a nutshell, proprietary provides a predictable cost for performance that they're familiar with. Predictability is practically the primary goal for enterprise IT, even if cost is greater.
When looking at SMB, part of their challenge is similar, in that they're often paying a vendor to manage their systems, and again, the known-quantity of well-established options is hard to overcome. How many SMB vendors have extensive OSS expertise in staff, vs how many are familiar with the mainstays?
If I were managing an SMB support org, no way would I offer OSS - it does nothing to help me reduce risk, minimize hours, etc. It may cost significantly less for my clients, but that's frankly a whole lotta not my problem. From a stability, predictability, support standpoint, mainstay is just easier to support and manage.
Picture a modest SMB support org, with 20 engineers, probably 50 or more clients. You also then need a help desk for those simpler issues that don't require an engineer's time (password resets, software config, etc). So I'm gonna say 10 people on the help desk. Where do you find a large enough pool of talent to interview for help desk that has OSS expertise?
Also, once you're paying for MS licenses, you're sucked in. Again, the devil you know.
I despise SAAS, cloud everything, etc. Google can pound sand, with MS in the front of that line. But they still provide what businesses are looking for, and that's really hard to work against. Not saying we shouldn't keep pushing, just providing a perspective as someone who's worked in both Enterprise and SMB, and I still have friends in both.
For my clients, it's all m365. Except for their router, and backup solutions.
The solutions are paid, but the software is OS. Unifi, pfsense, Synology, sync...
In the msp realm, there's always someone who doesn't understand FOSS. And their knee jerk reaction is, "No!"
If an open source project offers a support package, imo, it's generally OK to use. Means the project is, or is attempting to be, a profitable business.
Bookstack, Odoo, OnlyOffice come to mind.
Yea, it's just a tough sell, given how management thinks. I get both sides, and praise anyone who promotes OSS. it's not easy.
Unless the product is good
I shout out the creator of bookstock as often as I can on Reddit. He's pretty active there.
https://reddit.com/u/ssddanbrown/s/BbeDEVVYoi
Ooh, Bookstack looks like it could be my own personal wiki, maybe get me away from OneNote. Thanks!