[smashedtoatoms]

"It's not exactly making me feel valued as a community member"

Neither is not getting paid for work/services. If one works hard on things and can't pay their bills, that's unsustainable. Why is developer time worth nothing to other developers? If you can write it and host it, do it. If you can't, and the folks that can charge for it, hand over your credit card so they can continue to do it. Or watch it die when they have to abandon it to make a living writing code for someone that will pay for it I guess.

No one owes us their time and effort for nothing.

[wkat4242]

I do support many FOSS projects. Obviously I can't provide the kind of funding that element is looking for. And that's really where it rubs, none of us in the community can. It's their choice to position this as a massive enterprise level solution.

[portaouflop]

It looks like they have a 5 and 10€/user/month tier. While that is not insignificant it also isnt that much if you really care about it.

It does not seem to me like the only choice is either FOSS or massive enterprise 5-figures/year here - what am I missing?

[wkat4242]

Can you actually buy that for a handful of seats? All the benefits they're touting apply only to massive installations. So it sounds to me that they wouldn't be interested in selling this to home users. They'll probably refer you to element one or the community version.

But I have not asked, that's true.

[portaouflop]

Yea I am also not that familiar with the different editions that are available and the whole ecosystem is confusing to me with matrix/element/dendrite/synapse etc.

I feel like though they would have some accessible paid plan for “smaller” users that want to support the development of the project long term - I believe this is the most sustainable way to build complex “big” FOSS projects - apart from having someone sacrifice themselves for the greater good I guess

[Macha]

Pricing: Get in touch ( https://element.io/pricing )

Which seems to me they want to talk to purchasing departments, not end users. But let's pretend I'm trying to give them money anyway. No Buy/Sign Up link, the Get Started link in the top right and Get In Touch link on each price box lead to the same place: https://try.element.io/get-started?utm_source=pricing-busine...

Again, "consumers go away and use the free tier" or "learn more" about their enterprise offerings. Learn more brings you here: https://element.io/server-suite with a generic sales pitch and a "Get Started" link on the bottom.

Which sends you right back to the second page. So right now, apparently you can't pay Element money

[Macha]

So I'm not sure if Element has made an improvement to this page since, or it's a layout difference based on screen size, but on my windows tablet, the page was as described above, but on my Linux desktop, there is actually a lead generation form. Still a pretty onerous process that individuals are not going to do, which is clearly by design.