Express Edition?

I'm interested as well...

mm yeah seems to have vanished...

Wonder if Rob's promise of customer who bought personal licenses always being able to upgrade still stands- or was that for the old "Community server" product?

Can we have an official response re the fate of the express edition or those of us that have personal licenses?

So, if i understand well, don't upgrade to telligent community 5... That sounds bad.

I was using CS for many years as a personnel blog.

I installed Telligent Community 5, but i can't use it but on the localhost. What a shame.

CommunityServer has always went the road of killing off the small users. Did you know that there was a free license once? I'm sure it's the best interest for the dollars and revenue to go this way. I'm okay with it since I've got a personal license and have jumped ship to other products. ActiveSocial is great for us little people. It cost $300 but isn't trying to be friends with Intel and Myspace.

Open source people and helpers beware. This product has nothing to do with the little people anymore.

Whilst this doesn't affect me directly as we have commercial licensing, I just wanted to voice my regret at the discontinuation of the Express edition.

Of course Telligent is a commercial enterprise, but I feel like the value added by the vibrant community of enthusiasts cannot be underestimated. Indeed - when I was in the process of selecting a community platform, I placed a lot of value in the fact that there was an active community largely comprised of CS hobbyists who were keen to collaborate and help one another.

This has proved especially valuable to me in times when documentation has been lacking and getting quick support through traditional channels has been challenging.

To the hobbyists whose postings have helped me in the past - thank you. Your contributions will be missed.

I asked to the sales department for the price of a licence that would cover the basics that Community Server 2008 Express previously offered (small number of forums, blogs, media, etc). Today I received the price for that license and almost got a heart attack.

It is amazingly expensive for a single dude like me that just wants to continue having a non profit personal community. I have been using CS for several years for several community projects, but now seems like it is the end. I suppose this is good for Telligent (lots of money), but no so good for us enthusiast developers that liked to tweak and build on top of CS to build great fan community sites.

I'm thinking on moving to an open source solution, still built on ASP.NET, called Sueetie. Seems promising as it follows the same idea of CS and it's free. I will be evaluating this in the following weeks.

While I understand Telligent's view, I'm so sad to read all of this.

I'm another hobbist website owner, and have been building no profit sites with Community Server (and Graffiti) for years, as I always loved them. I hate to move to something else, but with no future upgrades (and a license that I can't afford for my small communities) I fear I shall really look into alternatives now :(

Thank you for such a gret product Telligent, it was great while it lasted

I am on the same boat with you. I hope They find an answer to this issue.

I have been using it ever since version 1.0.

I am so disspointed with Telligent.   We purchased the small business edition years ago.  Then last year we upgraded to the professional edition for a fee.  

When I inquired to pay the upgrade to latest version I was told since they don't offer the proffessional edition anymore and we would have to buy an new license.

Since when does software not have an upgrade path?   Basically they are telling me to go look at there competitors.    I would think in this economic environment they would rather have a current customer upgrade then loose them to a competitor.  

Hey all--

I have nothing to do with pricing or licensing decisions, but I do want you to know that I'm listening and am going to make sure the right people are reading this thread and see if we can get a more direct response.

Joe

It'd be great if people would wikipedia this a lot so that Telligent knows that a lot of people are negatively affected by this. How about: "Don't give a **** about their users."

Thanks for articulating that, Gordon.  The existence of just such a community has been a critical component in recommending past versions of CS to customers.  It's not clear in this particular upgrade cycle whether the same level of participation will survive.  It seems unlikely.

Part of the shift in product focus appears to be a significant reduction in the need for such development, so maybe the weighting on this factor needs to change.  This remains to be seen.

It might be best to consider Telligent Community a _branch_, rather than a clear successor, of CS, regardless of marketing / branding buzz.  It would be nice - and indeed, beneficial to all, including Telligent & TC/TE consumers - if the lower license levels of CS were continued on their own branch, while TC/TE represents the evolution of the previous CS Enterprise / CS Evolution.  However, this would require extra resources from Telligent, which in this economic climate is apparently too much to ask.

Or who knows, perhaps a "TC Lite" will eventually appear, despite current official positions.

Thank you Joe, that would be very much appreciated.

Julio