In a recent thread a legit question was asked about what options open to people who can’t use the Amazon based tied storage options. Discussion was prevented by the thread being locked by an Admin.

We are in same position that original poster is – we can’t use the Amazon storage system for internal policy reasons – and would seem that any further / future development of our use of Basecamp is closed off as a result (we’re OK with existing account, but it seems we can’t change the account or add additional accounts if we want to keep the FTP feature).

Having the FTP feature retained seems like a reasonable / legit Feature Request. I’ve not yet seen any sensible explanation as to why discussion of adding this service back as a feature request is not OK.

Still – looks like there are some Public Domain alternatives to Basecamp coming along . that do allow local FTP storage. Maybe conclusion is 37 Signals is happy to let them pick up people who need FTP. But again – clarification of this would be helpful.

glawrie,

Still – looks like there are some Public Domain alternatives to Basecamp coming along

What have you got in mind?

Maybe Active Collab?

We’ve not done any exhaustive comparisons, but there is this blog entry you might find helpful. Alternatively, Google on ‘Open Source Basecamp’ or look at the this Wikipedia entry that lists many.

Wow, CogHead is a good example of ‘How not to design a web based collaboration tool’; ackkk.

Glawrie, we’ve explained why FTP was phased out many times in the forums now. Different people post different threads and then the discussion gets diluted. We’re locking new threads to keep the discussion focused on the existing threads.

Here’s the official answer again:

The feature is file storage, not ftp

One of the reasons we removed FTP is because we replaced FTP with Basecamp file storage. FTP was originally conceived as a temporary hold-over to allow people to upload files until we were able to offer our own hosted file storage system for all paying plans. Over a year-and-a-half has gone by since we introduced Basecamp file storage. We’ve phased out the old feature (FTP storage) and replaced it with the new feature (Basecamp file storage). We’ve also increased the file storage limits on Basecamp File Storage significantly since we released it 1.5 years ago.

Tiny usage, huge frustration

Another reason was that the percentage of support resources dedicated to troubleshooting and continuing to support the old FTP feature didn’t make sense any longer. FTP has been the most frustrating thing for our customers. It’s frustrating for us as well, but we don’t want to offer frustrating experiences and broken features that we can’t correct (almost all of the FTP problems were related to the FTP server configurations on the customer’s end that we have no control over).

Decision based on numbers, backward-compatability, and customer behavior

Businesses of all kinds have to make decisions about backward-compatibility and what they choose to support when a newer, more modern feature/version has been introduced. FTP was used by a tiny minority of active customers and an even smaller percentage of new customers were choosing the FTP option as time went on. A year-and-a-half later, we’ve made the decision and phased out FTP.

Current ftp users grandfathered in

In fact, FTP isn’t entirely phased out. Existing FTP users are grandfathered in. If you were using it you can continue to use it. New customers or people who’ve never used it will no longer see the option.

Hi Jason. Thanks for the boiler plate. But that’s really not the issue that was being raised in the thread that you blocked and lead to this thread. The issue is what happens to users who cannot use the Amazon storage system? The original posting raised what was a legit point about regulatory issues – and asked for suggestions and advice about what to do about it. I think people understand what you are doing – what is at issue is whether you are going to engage in any discussion about it.

You’ve been artificially discriminating against users wanting to use FTP for the whole time we’ve been using product – with the strange and unexplained limit on upload file size being 1/3 that offered to users of the Amazon storage, and reluctance to explain how the XML version of a grouphub can be reconciled with attachments.

I really don’t see why you don’t just go other way and simply charge these troublesome users who can’t configure an FTP server more to use their own storage… that way could turn an annoyance into a revenue opportunity. (Though, getting a ‘refund’ on the unused / unusable Amazon storage might be also an option… :) ).

with the strange and unexplained limit on upload file size being 1/3 that offered to users of the Amazon storage

I’m all for keeping FTP storage (in fact, I’m really glad I still have it now) but the reason for this was that the http protocol was just not stable enough to go between all the systems involved, and that uploading more than 10mb through basecamp to your own FTP was causing corruption. To be fair, this limit was there before Basecamp storage was ever introduced and FTP was the only option.

Again though, I’m glad to be on FTP as well.

Hi,

I am one of the early users with our own file server.
A few weeks ago however we changed to the file servers of BC.
Since jpg upload would appear in the message as a thumbnail.

I don’t understand why the previous thread was closed. Very un 37s like.
What I DO understand that 37 has the right to change it’s policy.
Just like they improve BC they can also downgrade options such as own FTP.
They didn’t take it away from me, that’s fair.
New customers can’t but that happens with every product. Even Apple does that.

A few weeks ago one of our customers (HQ of a well known global brand) wanted their own Basecamp.
Our client was very enthousiastic but the IT department has forbidden her to store any kind of files on a server that don’t belong to them.

I can understand their reasoning.
But I can also understand 37s. They are NOT in the business of giving IT support. And I am convinced their is a lot of support in clients FTP server. Just imagine when you have + 1 million users and only ONE percent have trouble.

I believe the right way for 37s is to build trust of their own system and company. Time Magazine articles help with that. I use it to build trust.

I would also like to see more export/backup systems, especially files. Jason earlier said I ca back up but it is not very user friendly , not everything is exported (yet).
As I understand 37s wants to go for the small and middle sized businesses. The big ones have all these restrictions that make them slow and heavy. BC is not made for them.

Question for Jason:

Why was that thread closed?
What is the future vision how to deal with this challenge? (law department restrictions of clients)
Establishing trust with your own file storage.

Thanks

UPDATE: I just saw the explenation of Jason of blocking the thread.
I don’t agree with that.
If people start a thread on earlier subject it means they care.
Like me I can’t follow each thread on this forum, I still have a business to run…. ;-)
If you have to block threads with earlier explained issues you can close down more then half of this forum.

Hi again,

First off, thanks for reviving my thread here. I was “somewhat disappointed” by the initial response of Jason. I don’t want to know why my thread was closed, but thanks all the same to all of you for your reassuring comments. I felt a little bit like an intruder.

I sure did not want to create such an emotional set of responses with my – I would like to believe candid – question. Apologies if I was repeating questions already raised somewhere else, I did search for similar issues but could not find an existing thread – honest!, so consider me somewhat retarded… or also busy managing a business and many teams, so not too interested in looking for something forever.

Not being a native English speaker, please apologize my appearing to be rude or inappropriate… it is probably a cultural and linguistic difference.

• I became a customer when FTP storage was offered.
• I kept the use of BC under the radar screen at my company, during “testing” – no point in raising hell with IT, compliance etc. until the benefits are well established. They are at present, so now comes the time to put BC back on the radar screen…
• ... and I am now told that a feature that existed when I signed up… goes silently extinct

I am not even interested in understanding whether the contractual agreement I had when becoming a customer included or not the FTP storage feature, which I would thus be entitled to now, whether I started using this feature 6 months ago, or decide to do so now…
Go tell a car owner that since he did not use his integrated GPS feature for the past 6 months, it’s “decommissioned” and he now has to rely on good old paper maps.

That is beyond the point. How odd however that a company priding itself on a (superb) collaboration platform has so little time or open-mindedness for holding a sensible discussion with “contrarians”.

All I was/am looking for is some dialogue. As Glawrie pointed out, my question is not answered by Jason’s original post, nor by the one here. Point by point:

1. File storage: Trust me if I could buy that service from BC, I would not even consider using an alternative. I just can’t, full stop.
2. Huge frustration, numbers, backward compatibility: I happen to be running pretty large support groups (technical and operational) here, so I am quite familiar with the roles, the economics and the related operational and product development challenges. For us, support is as much a cost of doing business as an opportunity to expand business. I would not buy Jason’s argument here, on the basis that I believe there is room for a pricing and related product development strategies that covers the ability to offer support, the cost of ensuring backward compatibility, etc
3. Tiny usage, numbers, customer behaviour: ok, so your customer base is currently primarily individuals, small and medium-sized customers. You may choose to ignore us, the “bigger” ones, but is it really a good choice? Your product is great, your philosophy (simplicity) all the same, your pricing makes you a no-brainer and the gap between you and competitive offerings (I purposefully ignore opensource/freeware), leaves you ample room to manoeuvre in this dimension. Why ignore us?
4. Grand-fathering: I won’t dignify this response with a comment. That level of truthfulness is not what I expect from a “business partner”.

Having said that, you’d make me want to come and join you to convince you there is a market, a business / a need to help the others out there who are like me, and ways of doing so internally or externally (i.e. if you are not interested in owning the support, outsource maybe?).

PR/magazine articles won’t fix it this. Trust with BC file storage is never going to be enough for some/many.

So I’d definitely ask you JPB’s 2nd question: what is your future vision on how to deal with this challenge? Please.

Thank you in advance.

Your methaphor is not completly right.
It’s more that the car had initially some F1 high-tech stuff under the hoot that people didn’t know how to handle.So 37s removed it, to avoid more unhappy customers.

Concerning building trust, Google For Your Domain (GFYD) doesn’t give any own server storage either.

Concerning business opportunities for support ?
OMG no, that’s is what Microsoft’s dealers and distributors make their living of. A good product doesn’t need support.

So, it is clear why 37s doesn’t offer it anymore. Don’t put energy in it.
It’s there decision and I respect it.

I am more interested in the extra backup features of files in the future.

Just out of curiosity, to the people who for legal reasons can’t have their data on the BC Storage—why doesn’t that apply to your actual messages and comments? Don’t those have the potential to contain as much private data as the files themselves?

I can’t speak for those with legal / regulatory restraints. But for us our policy is driven by the risk management requirement that we can retain control of our data / meta data without reference / dependence on the good will of a third party. Crudely – we need to be able to keep a complete backup of the data, and be able to reconstruct the service on another server / system if required. The Basecamp system (in theory, but possibly not in practice) allows you to download an XML copy of the meta data, but this meta data is incomplete – it does not contain any of the files stored. AFAIK, 37Signals does not provide independent access to the S3 storage area used to store any files attached to Basecamp, so since Basecamp does not provide mechanism to create archive copies of attached files, nor independent access to them (so we could make our own) we are required to use our own storage that we can back up.

The unsolved bit of our puzzle is the XML dump which does not appear to provide transparent information about attachments to messages – I’ve posted a couple of questions to 37Signals about this and so far got no reply, and we’ve not managed to work out how / where this information appears in the XML. It’s probably there somewhere… but without ability to decode whatever system is used by 37Signals it isn’t much use to us. We’ve tolerated this issue while we work out if it is just us being dim, or if we can get answers from 37Signals. But if we can’t solve this soon, we’d be off to ActiveCollab or whatever second best alternative we can find in the Autumn. This silly behaviour from 37Signals about FTP is probably encouraging us out the door – but we’d be sad to go. We quite like the product, and it seems to be be getting a bit better over time.

Maybe offer it up with a no-support option?

Just give us a useful log if a problem occurs and call it a day.

I fully agree with slapshotw.

Let’s say Mc Donalds (not a client yet)
doesn’t want there files on a foreign server.
But they work with a good organised company like us ;-)
They send us files and info and messages.
We put the files on BC.

So ?

Therefore, and I would like to have an excellent system (export) to not be locked in to BC.
37s makes since the beginning an excellent communication about export and leaving the system.

BUT if you look a bit in detail, you will notice that moving or getting your data back is not that simple.

Closing down threads on this matter, or not giving answers on future vision on this policy creates NON TRUST.

I could live with an answer like : you trust us or you go ! or

We don’t want to answer fortune 500 needs.
Then at least I know .

But I prefer an answer like: somebody is working on an API to get your full exported data organised.
Or we have a tool to get your data fully exported.

It’s not an priority I know , but as you grow , it will !

Constraints I am aware of as a former financial auditor, and now business manager:
1- Banking secrecy laws
2- Regulatory framework for operational and IT environments for regulated industries (such as the ones for banks and professionals of the financial sector)
3- Internal risk management policies and procedures

• Is there a black/white delineation between what you can or can’t do ? No
• Is there a clear issue with not having under one’s own control one’s data, one’s customers’ data, or even one’s customers’ customers’ data ? yes.
• Is it therefore a big hurdle ? yes
• Can it be fixed without offering an FTP storage feature? No

So unfortunately for me, the lack of desire to find a solution to this problem, or lack of vision to communicate, means I will have to ditch my plans for using BC on a larger scale. Currently my best option is to keep it for small internal matters, where we make sure no customer data is stored, but I know BC will lose out to whatever corporate solution will be found for other projects, which complies with data storage requirements. No need for 2 competing platforms, user interfaces, places to go check your work, etc.

I am really disappointed and truly sorry.

37signals’ response seems reasonable and fair to me.

They grandfathered in people who were using it and don’t offer it anymore moving forward for those who weren’t.

This changing/grandfathering is common for services. Basecamp is a service, it’s not software. Software is something you download on your computer and it never changes until you decide update it. Basecamp is a service that you subscribe to. It changes often. All changes can be seen as good or bad depending on where you stand, but that’s part of the deal when you use a service. If you want ultimate control you may want to set up your own servers and host your own software.

Take a cell phone or cable service for example. Plans change, options change. If you get 1000 minutes for $50/month, and the cell company decides to discontinue that plan, they let you stay on it but no one else can sign up for it. If a cable company packages HBO/Showtime together, but then decides to split them into separate plans in the future, they let you keep your HBO/Showtime package but no one else can sign up for it. You can’t use something that isn’t offered anymore unless you were using it when it was offered.

In this case, 37signals used to offer remote FTP file storage. They then offered both FTP and Basecamp File Storage. Then 1.5 years later they decided they didn’t like the tricky experience offered by integrating with external FTP servers. They phased out FTP and replaced it with Basecamp File Storage. Those who were using FTP can keep using FTP. Those who weren’t, or those signing up today, don’t have the old FTP option anymore.

Seems reasonable and fair and in line with decisions that have to be made from time to time by service providers.

Just my thoughts.

Hi BryanJ,

I think you have a point. It is definitely within BC’s right to alter the service they deliver. I think the question here is more related to client satisfaction rather than a legal / business aspect.

• Is this a change that should be revisited as if affects client satisfaction?
• Is there any plan to address the needs / concerns of clients who need to have their own storage rather than the BC solution?
• Has anyone facing this issue found a suitable alternative to BC ?

From what I gather here, this is not the case. And to be honest, whilst the right of BC are not questioned (“fait du prince”), the answer to the question was not up to my expectations. I learned the term boiler plate thanks to Glawrie, what went through my mind before knowing that term was more like “communist party leader speech”. Sounds sensible, just off the mark / not answering the question.

Anyway, it seems this is the end of the discussion here.

yeks! i stopped by home for a minute so i thought i’d check email & google news reader and noticed a heated discussion… and WOW, 37s is getting slammed here.

Calling their response a “communist party leader speech” is completely uncalled for. Jason’s response was not like a “communist party leader speech.”

It was clear to me from Jason’s reply that:

- the reason “discussion of adding this service back as a feature request is not OK” is because there are other threads talking about it.

- “what happens to users who cannot use the Amazon storage system?” is that they’ve “made the decision and phased out FTP” so find a different solution or live with their solution or repost in existing threads. (i can understand not finding other threads… mostly because we dont have time to keep digging.)

- “why you don’t just go other way and simply charge these troublesome users who can’t configure an FTP server more to use their own storage…” is because they have made a business decision on what is best course of action for them is to “phased out FTP.” Respect the decision or move on… like u’ve done with other products/services u don’t like.

Personally I don’t have a big problem with the BaseCamp storage method but I can understand that certain companies… especially financial companies, have lots of requirements.

I also understand it must be really frustrating finding a product as good as BaseCamp that you can’t use… so i feel you on that. I have similar feelings about HighRise since they don’t have certain things I need. You just have to voice you problems and either live with it or move on.

Calling their response a “communist party leader speech” is uncalled for.

I can understand the reasons (from 37signals point of view) not continue the feature in the future.

BUT – the month i signed in (and the month after that) i had the chance to use my own ftp-server (and it was one reason i choosed an promoted basecamp in this times). I never reached any message, that this feature will be phased out. From my point of view it depends on me when I start to use a feature which belongs to the package im paying for. I payed the same sum of money every month and i think i should get the same features also. Now I’ running out of diskspace – im “forced” to upgrade my account. Thats not OK.

I am really disappointed.

Hi Melvin,

Got your point. I guess I am frustrated that after having had to push for using BC in my company and with our customers, I now look like a fool because one of the critical issues I had to defend and said was not one, is indeed an issue that is not solvable. After having spent so much energy convincing users, detractors, legal departments, internal policy makers, etc. this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

As for my qualification of Jason’s “copy/paste” answer, I was just tired of looking my words in English – in French, “langue de bois” gets translated into “set language” by Babel, not sure it is what I wanted to convey, but more politically correct than referring to some old Kremlin demons. Thanks for reminding me that I went too far on the “ready-made speech”.

Apologies for that.

It is one thing to be convinced there is always a solution, it is another to cope with the fact that there isn’t.

And yes for now, I will have to vote with my feet, disappointed, disillusioned and dissatisfied.

I can only hope that BC becomes so much more successful that this storage question gets revisited and the conclusions are changed, as I have strong doubts that regulations/laws will become more flexible on this topic.

We are new to using this product. We are amazed at the functionality. We are three weeks into testing and have hit a snag with one of our biggest clients. I am not sure this is the appropriate place to ask this so please redirect me if not.

Our client’s firewall blocks the S3 service. It is a public school and they do not want students to access that service from school. Part of the problem is the authentication does not go down to the file level as I understand it (my understanding may be flawed)

Are there any alternatives to using S3? Or can the authentication be changed? Help me ask the right question here, please.

It would appear that the only alternative currently is to go with something like ActiveCollab and your own server. “Version 1” of ActiveCollab appears to be ready to go, and from what I can tell from various reports about V1 (based on the beta) it is a reasonable alternative to Basecamp – but of course we’ll only know for sure when the product actually ships.

Since ftp is still working (we’re using it – and I wouldn’t have known it was being grandfathered unless I’d stumbled on this thread), 37 Signals could have quietly contacted Sebastien and activated ftp for his old account. The trouble of one more ftp-using account would seem to pale in comparison to the fallout of alienating a formerly-passionate Basecamp advocate. In my opinion this is bad business. Thankfully it isn’t my business.