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New partner program - bronze partners dropped

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zurgutt -

Thursday 02 July 2009 1:36:13 pm

I wonder why it has not been announced or discussed on this site yet, although it has been a week.. nothing has come in for the partners by email also. So the ones who were not at conference are still in dark. Anyhow, i think a week is enough grace time for eZS to announce and explain those controversial changes, so here we go:

New partner program was announced at the eZ conference in Paris a week ago.

The essence of the change is, that the point system that partners currently use for determining level will be dropped. Also, Bronze partners will be dropped and deported to upcoming community site. Entrance to the elite eZ partners club will only be possible starting from silver level, by paying entrance fee (10000€ mentioned on presentation slide). The only reason offered for these changes was, that "it makes things clearer".

These changes prompted a significant discontent from among the audience, to put it mildly. 3/4 of eZ partners currently are bronze level partners, so the impact on whole community is huge. This being the case, I feel that partners and whole community deserve to be informed about it early and be given chance to discuss the decision and offer feedback. Hence this thread.

As far as i know, everyone loved the point system. It was fair and enabled everyone to be compensated for contributions and community participation on equal grounds. It also enabled lower cost entrance to the partner status for small companies, by recognizing the value of public contribution.

I am inviting eZ Systems to explain in more detail, what exactly is meant by the new system being "more clear" and how this will positively benefit everyone in the eZ community. I also invite the community, especially the Bronze partners to share their opinion about the change and perhaps suggest alternatives. I have my own suspicions as for reasons behind these changes, but perhaps im paranoid or just have misunderstood, so im keeping them for now. In fact, I hope I have misunderstood. So correct me :)

Certified eZ developer looking for projects.
zurgutt at gg.ee

Bertrand Maugain

Friday 03 July 2009 4:24:09 am

Hi,

As told at the partner day, we are gathering all feedback and will implement all details this summer.

A first email to partners has been sent and a discussion created in the partner forums :
http://ez.no/partners/knowledge_centre/ez_partner_forums/updates_partner_program_2010

Thanks.

(by the way, we never referred to this price at all. This is not decided yet)

Bertrand

Kristof Coomans

Sunday 05 July 2009 4:11:39 am

Several people who might be interested to become a partner but who are currently not a partner, do not have access to the link you provided Bertrand.

Is there a way for those people to know what is going on?

Also, I'd like to know what the status is on the recent discussions we had about partners vs non-partners and the GPL contributions from which the commercial support information is censored by eZ Systems. Was this further discusses on the conference? And will there be some report about this available to everyone?

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Bertrand Maugain

Sunday 05 July 2009 5:10:26 am

Hi Kristof,

The discussion about the partner program is a strategic discussion that we keep Partner Only so far. We will be glad to exchange the results of those discussions together with the whole community later on.

This is the center piece of the business model of eZ and that is why we have partner meetings, partner mailing lists and partner forums. I hope you can understand and respect this confidentiality here.

I will make sure we share info about the changes as early as possible.

When it comes to our previous discussions, we should promote more any freelancer or community developer who wants to gain business from its community involvement and from its expertise. So we will go the way you have been asking for. We are also working on that so that it is part of the new community platform.

A lot of organizational aspects are part of this and we will use the summer to put that in place.

So I am kindly asking for some patience here :-)
However, if you have strong meaning about how you or any developer wish to be promoted / visible on the community site, please feel free to share that. I agree that we need to change this.

Thanks for your patience, eZ Summer will be intense !

PS : Your questions about GPL contributions etc have been addressed by Paul and Roland in the Community track. I will check what report will be published. There is no difference in terms of contribution possibilities if you are a partner or not.

Bertrand