javivazquez at Zentyal

Exactly 6 months ago, November 18th, I wrote a post with the title “2.000 users registered in the eBox forum”. If you read it, you will find the following sentence:

“[...] We hope to reach 3.000 members in the following 6 months [...]“

And guess what, today, exactly 6 months later, May 18th, we have reached 3.000 users registered in the eBox forum… Should I try now guessing the lottery numbers?

However, I am afraid the 2.000 number given 6 months ago was not precise, by then we haven’t found out how many (SEO and the like) spammers  were hidden among our real registered users.

We did an important cleaning during December, and we kept continuously doing it since then. Therefore, our current +3.000 users are for real.

In the medium term, as soon as the forum software we are based on (SMF from Simple Machines) releases its new version, a revamped SMF 2.0, we will migrate and install some extra plugins to keep spammers out, or at least put it more difficult to them.

On the other hand, would any of you guess when the eBox Forum will reach 4.000 registered members?

As of today, November 18th, eBox forum has reached the number of 2,000 users registered.

2.000 members is not a small amount for a Linux small business server such as eBox Platform. It’s more impressive if you know how the numbers have evolved lately though.

The eBox forum was originally set up in May 2007, more than 2 years and half ago. However, 58% of the users registered during 2009 only, and 30% in the last 4 months and a half, since we released eBox 1.2.

Whether as Gateway, UTM, Infrastructure manager, Office Server or Unified Communication Server, it’s good to know than eBox Platform has become one of the most used server-side  products out there.

We hope to reach 3.000 members in the following 6 months, or even less if we have into account the number of improvements and new features already being tested for eBox 1.4:  Active Directory sync, remote backup, webmail, support for Master-Slave LDAP, PPPoE support, usability enhancements, …

The bigger is our community, the better will become eBox Platform, and also faster.

My sincere thanks to all our eBox community members!

This evening some of the eBox’s staff  -Javier Uruen, Isaac and myself- have been interviewed by the guys of Debug Mode On, an on-line community for IT professionals. The edited conversation will be the second podcast of a serie dedicated to innovative Spanish companies, to be published in the next few days.

What has most shocked them, according to their own words, is how internationally focused is eBox Technologies, despite of being a small company based on Zaragoza. However, an open source company  should have a global aim to be successful, because open source is global by design. For us, it’s the natural and only way to be. Some examples:

First, talking about our community, by visiting eBox forums anyone could easily realize how globally spread is our community: guys from South and North America, everywhere in Europe, Asia and Africa sharing concerns and knowledge about eBox Platform issues.

Secondly, referring business opportunities, during the last couple of days I have been speaking with people interested in professional support from US, Ecuador, Perú, Portugal (my speaking -Galician/Portuguese- is better that my listening ), Italy and (of course) Spain.

Finally, regarding to companies interested in becoming eBox’s partner, we are in negotiations with ~20 candidates from 4 continents, after having initially received more than 40 signs of interests…

But it’s not us, it’s free software, which is global by design. Our challenge is to fulfill that huge demand, and that’s we are working on, and the key during the following months.