Epic: Licencing UI for self-hosted

[mrsimonemms]

Summary

The licencing for self-hosted users does not meet the expectations currently advertised on the self-hosted landing page

This epic is to make the licencing match what is advertised

Context

We offer three licencing models for users:

• community, always free. Does NOT have prebuilds, snapshots or shared workspaces
• free. Free for first 10 users, Has prebuilds, snapshots and shared workspaces
• professional. As per "free", but paid from the 11th user

How the application actually works:

• Free for first 10 users. Prebuilds, snapshots and shared workspaces work (this is my assumption as <domain>/#prebuild/<repo> runs the rebuild functionality)
• Can add a licence via the Installer config. This licence is generated manually after an email request
• As far as can be seen, no difference between free and paid versions
• If number of seats is exceeded, the UI is very poor and only indication is in the error URL (see loom)

Questions for Product Manager

• How do we differentiate between community and free if you have <= 10 users?
• Does there need to be a difference?
• If no difference, how do we communicate that when the 11th user signs up, they will lose prebuilds etc? From a support side, we need to be careful we're not inundated with "my prebuilds have stopped working" requests due to the 11th user signing up.
• Do we need to advise people to use block lists to avoid exceeding their free allocation? See Introduce sign-up restrictions #6372

Acceptance Criteria

• What is advertised must match what is delivered.
• There should be a nicer way of telling users

In Scope

• Offer additional users for those who send telemetry data
• Automated license purchasing

Out of Scope

CC

This requires co-ordination across teams. Will likely require input from @jldec @gtsiolis @geropl as well as @gitpod-io/engineering-self-hosted

[atduarte]

Running the risk of broadening the scope of this discussion too much, I believe we should also talk about the names of the packages (i.e., Free and Community).

I confuse them a lot of times, which indicate that we should make the difference clearer. And, while Community and Professional package names point to the target audience, the Free name is just a characteristic of the associated price that actually is characteristic shared with the Community package.

I would suggest renaming the plans to Community, Starter (or Small Team) and Professional.

🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊

I agree with the current behaviour of automatically starting with the Free (Starter? 😅) package, and would avoid creating yet another option for users to activate/deactivate as there's no benefit in reverting to Community [1].

As you mentioned the problem with automatically switching is not making the change apparent, but I believe we should be able to fix those with contextual hints and warnings. And if that's the case, we should bring @jldec and @gtsiolis in. In the meantime, some different ideas to discuss:

1. (If Community) Differentiate the header of the dashboard slightly. For example, by adding the version name next to the logo.
2. (If Community) Whenever a feature that is not available but in normal conditions it would be, the app should explain why and point to information on how to upgrade. For example, when starting a workspace the terminal should start by mentioning that prebuilds didn't run, why, and how to upgrade; when trying to share a workspace the same; when accessing the project's prebuilds page or admin dashboard a warning should be shown with the same information; etc.
3. (If Community) Show a permanent-until-dismissed warning to all 11 first users that things changed and now they don't have access to the same set of features. Again, pointing to information on how to upgrade.
4. Show the license information in the settings of every users.

[webermax]

I agree; Community -> Registered -> Paid could be another variant.

Furthermore, the functionality is not as announced on the landing page using a fresh installed gitpod instance:

1. Minutes countdown per user (probably inconsequential)

2. Workspace sharing fails with license hint

3. No admin Dashboard (e.g. no global workspace management; at least misleading)

At the moment it's not clear how to "upgrade" from "Community" to "Free".

Suggestion: the button under the "Free" plan should just write "Register" (and link to the signup form) whereas "Professional" would not need any button at all.

[metcalfc]

Some of this was also discussed in #5690. We should allow folks to opt out of the free tier and start with and stay on community. We'd love for everyone to land, see how awesome Gitpod is and stay forever (including paying one day). But if they know from the go that they'll just use community check this box in the admin dashboard and we can disable it.

After that Free (10) or Free with a registration (20) does turn off on the Nth user. We can warn them at X%. Some folks will get annoyed by continuous warnings. So it should be dismissible. After its triggered we can show a header that they're over and that's why things have changed. They can disable the free tier in the admin dashboard. When they disable free tier that warning can go away.

For the Free (10) tier we can point out that they can register with their company name and get a license for 20 to extend their tier.

@atduarte naming is beyond the scope for a GitHub issue. Lots of stakeholders there that don't watch here.

[gtsiolis]

Added this to product design inbox for keeping an eye on ongoing discussions.

[nandajavarma]

The first iteration of the Licence UI in the admin dashboard is currently WIP. The work done towards this so-far are:

• PR to Match the licence as advertised for self-hosting by @mrsimonemms - This change is already included in the current release
• PR to Add the Licence admin UI is currently WIP. What is left is to implement the design specs made by @gtsiolis. The issue for this along with the design specs can be found here.

The above two changes meet the acceptance criteria for this Epic. The other things in scope, including option to purchase licence and offering more users for those who send telemetry data, will be done during the next iteration.

[lucasvaltl]

This has been merged and released :)