There are a lot of examples out there (Centos, Owncloud, pfsense, etc) that have a “corporate” upstream and a - what shall I call it? A starving dog community version.
Passbolt is not that at all.
The Community Edition is legit in its own right. Both it and the Pro version are developed simultaneously by the same team. And I would call the Pro version the heavy lifter. The team needs to eat and in addition to investments like startups have, they run a business.
In this sense, I want passbolt Pro to hit it out of the park for teams that have high standards. I’ve helped some with the service side in the past and it’s personal like taking your car in to someone you trust. That’s how customers see it, so that’s how the team sees it.
I do also think that with Passbolt it’s not hard to be supportive in the spirit of giving back to open source. Although they want to be transparent for security reasons, in my opinion they have also been very generous in the product path feature-wise.
As the community grows we need more people helping the brand new users who install it fresh and run into issues. After awhile, folks here come to see the progress continues like clockwork without asking when or whether. Passbolt has a good team and a clear vision and it’s inherently hard work to do right. It must be done right.
My job, as I see it, is to pitch the idea that the community here can also reflect this. That as a community we can enjoy an understanding that the team is a good one, that they work hard and care about not cutting corners. That we would enjoy working with them as colleagues and there is a culture of listening around here that makes it easy to be heard.
We can be thankful, and express support for them to be confident as they choose what they see as the best option on how to offer each feature in either version. We all win when they are doing well.
Thanks @shootify for recognizing the devs, it helps. They read it.