3 ms·

+1, Proxmox is awesome. I set up a cluster with two machines I wasn't using (one almost 10 years old, one fairly modern with a 5950X) and now I don't have to wo

+1, Proxmox is awesome. I set up a cluster with two machines I wasn't using (one almost 10 years old, one fairly modern with a 5950X) and now I don't have to worry about that single Debian box with all my services on it shitting the bed and leaving me with nothing. VMs are useful on their own, but the tools Proxmox gives you for migrating them between machines and doing centralized backup/restore are incredibly freeing. It all works really well, too. Most recently I set up a Windows VM with PCIe GPU passthrough for streaming (Moonlight/Sunshine) games to the various less-capable machines in my house, and it works so well that my actual gaming PC is sitting in the corner gathering dust. My only complaint is I wish there was a cheaper paid license. I would love to give back to them for what I'm getting, but > $100/yr/cpu is just too much for what amounts to hobbyist usage. I appreciate the free tier (which is not at all obnoxious about the fact that you aren't paying), but I wish there could be a middle ground.

znpy 3y ago
> My only complaint is I wish there was a cheaper paid license. I would love to give back to them for what I'm getting, but > $100/yr/cpu is just too much for what amounts to hobbyist usage. I don't use proxmox anymore at home (1) but as an user I would have loved to pay, say, $5/month and just get access to the updates repository (the stable ones) or maybe something similar. $100/year/cpu was just too much for me as an hobbyist. [1]: not because I don't like it, for life reasons I had to downsize that hobby a bit and I don't need proxmox anymore.
- caconym_ 3y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Anyone from Proxmox reading? Could it be that you're leaving money on the table here?
  - jtriangle 3y ago
    Hard to tell really. I do wish they had cheaper access to their enterprise repos, perhaps a no-support option...
  - tlamponi 3y ago
    Proxmox Dev here, albeit personally speaking here, so do not make more out of it than the educated opinion this is. No, I do not think we leave much money at the table. In short, we're targeting enterprise users with a mix of a (soft) stick (e.g. pop-up to note that one isn't having the most production ready experience) a carrot (way better tested updates and depending on the level also enterprise support). Homelab users aren't in the target of our subscription services at all, and if we'd target them with cheap prices that would be just misused by companies too, we know this for a fact because the project is over 15 years old, and there was a lot tried out before getting to the current design. And while there might some protection mechanisms we could set up, we rather avoid DRM'ifying Proxmox projects and avoid wasting time playing cat-and-mouse games with entities trying to abuse this. Note though, that we still cater to the homelab in other ways even if it isn't our main target audience, like being very active on our community forums for all users, or simple having 100% FLOSS software, no open-core or other, in my opinion rather questionable, open source models. And the price of a pop-up or using the still very stable no-subscription repository is IMO also quite small compared to the feature on gets 100% for free. If one wants to contribute to our project but either cannot, or does not want, to afford a subscription, then I think helping out in the communities, submitting elaborate bug reports and thought out feature requests, spreading gospel at the companies they work with/for is not only cheaper for them, but also much more worth for the project. ps. The actual license is the AGPLv3, which is always free, what we sell are subscriptions and trainings for additional services.
    - znpy 3y ago
      Hey, thanks for your reply! Just wanted to say proxmox is great and you and your colleagues are doing an amazing job! Keep rocking!
    - caconym_ 3y ago
      Thanks for the reply. I guess if the enterprise repo is the primary reason most organizations buy a subscription (implying that your existing subscriptions are already skewed toward the community license), and you added a homelab-tier subscription that also offered it, you might indeed see some cannibalization. I'm not sure what "complete feature-set" means—the free offering already seems pretty complete to me, though obviously my use case is not very demanding. Still, I wonder how many homelab users would be willing to pay something like $10-20/yr (or maybe a one-time license purchase) just to make the nag dialog at login go away. I certainly would, just as I've paid for shareware-style licenses in the past simply because I wanted to support the developer, and not because they made their software unusable if I didn't. Either way, thanks for your excellent work on Proxmox.

znpy 3y ago

> My only complaint is I wish there was a cheaper paid license. I would love to give back to them for what I'm getting, but > $100/yr/cpu is just too much for what amounts to hobbyist usage. I don't use proxmox anymore at home (1) but as an user I would have loved to pay, say, $5/month and just get access to the updates repository (the stable ones) or maybe something similar. $100/year/cpu was just too much for me as an hobbyist. [1]: not because I don't like it, for life reasons I had to downsize that hobby a bit and I don't need proxmox anymore.

caconym_ 3y ago
My thoughts exactly. Anyone from Proxmox reading? Could it be that you're leaving money on the table here?
- jtriangle 3y ago
  Hard to tell really. I do wish they had cheaper access to their enterprise repos, perhaps a no-support option...
- tlamponi 3y ago
  Proxmox Dev here, albeit personally speaking here, so do not make more out of it than the educated opinion this is. No, I do not think we leave much money at the table. In short, we're targeting enterprise users with a mix of a (soft) stick (e.g. pop-up to note that one isn't having the most production ready experience) a carrot (way better tested updates and depending on the level also enterprise support). Homelab users aren't in the target of our subscription services at all, and if we'd target them with cheap prices that would be just misused by companies too, we know this for a fact because the project is over 15 years old, and there was a lot tried out before getting to the current design. And while there might some protection mechanisms we could set up, we rather avoid DRM'ifying Proxmox projects and avoid wasting time playing cat-and-mouse games with entities trying to abuse this. Note though, that we still cater to the homelab in other ways even if it isn't our main target audience, like being very active on our community forums for all users, or simple having 100% FLOSS software, no open-core or other, in my opinion rather questionable, open source models. And the price of a pop-up or using the still very stable no-subscription repository is IMO also quite small compared to the feature on gets 100% for free. If one wants to contribute to our project but either cannot, or does not want, to afford a subscription, then I think helping out in the communities, submitting elaborate bug reports and thought out feature requests, spreading gospel at the companies they work with/for is not only cheaper for them, but also much more worth for the project. ps. The actual license is the AGPLv3, which is always free, what we sell are subscriptions and trainings for additional services.
  - znpy 3y ago
    Hey, thanks for your reply! Just wanted to say proxmox is great and you and your colleagues are doing an amazing job! Keep rocking!
  - caconym_ 3y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I guess if the enterprise repo is the primary reason most organizations buy a subscription (implying that your existing subscriptions are already skewed toward the community license), and you added a homelab-tier subscription that also offered it, you might indeed see some cannibalization. I'm not sure what "complete feature-set" means—the free offering already seems pretty complete to me, though obviously my use case is not very demanding. Still, I wonder how many homelab users would be willing to pay something like $10-20/yr (or maybe a one-time license purchase) just to make the nag dialog at login go away. I certainly would, just as I've paid for shareware-style licenses in the past simply because I wanted to support the developer, and not because they made their software unusable if I didn't. Either way, thanks for your excellent work on Proxmox.