Same here. 5k/year as a quote.
If you compare all sorts of monitoring solutions, and you get almost only a subscription for packages for the aforementioned cost, ultimately that raises some questions.
Unfortunately, this makes Icinga2 from a TCO standpoint of view not a viable solution anymore if you compare other monitoring solutions, especially those with a paid model (even those with an open-core business model).
Either one plays around with a build system for RPM-based distros, which by the way is kind of nasty.
Replicating the build system of Icinga2 is simply too time-consuming and exhausting.
Even if so, the move to provide packages for 5k/year is worthy of a Rick and Morty comment like “in bird culture this is considered…”. This decision leaves a specific after-taste and a question, what other changes like that one possibly may come up, because the reason for this change will probably still be there, even with the changed business model. Also, this leaves room for questions like “why does providing packages for OpenNMS, Zabbix and maybe others works for either one of them, as it seems to, but doesn’t work for Icinga”?
IMHO, restricting access to packages will come with a decline of usage of Icinga (especially from those quiet people having to tell management, that it should allocate another 5k/y for some prebuilt packages). Where there is less usage, there is less inclination for asking for support. I agree, that open source doesn’t always have to be free as free beer. But I don’t agree, that charging for packages serves any increase of Icinga2 usage. Folks at Icinga beg to differ, I suppose.
I also agree that from experience, nothing good is to be expected when a “contact sales” pops up somewhere.
In-house, we were considering Icinga2 as a replacement for an outdated monitoring solution we use at the moment. It seems that we have to evaluate other viable solutions again, of which there are some.
Icinga2 would have been nice, because of some knowledge already present and the distance from my office in the area next to where Netways/Icinga is located. But it’s the year 2022 and distances seem to lose any importance as for any (paid) support we might have needed, have we gone through with the plan to use Icinga2. For us, it is a “not bad, not terrible” situation, since no final decision has been made.
P.S. one of the comments from my colleagues in the office was: “We make our own Icinga packages and sell them for 4,5k/year”. But then we brainstormed on how to build the packages given the publicly available resources from Icinga and decided, that this effort was not worth our attention, at least anymore.