Hi everyone,
As you may recall, ansible-commander was an idea I started on my couch over 6 months ago. Super extensive REST API, minimal elegant UI, the whole nine yards. However, it was too much to do alone (while also juggling Ansible), so I shelved it. Then AnsibleWorks happened! This was exciting!
Upon forming AnsibleWorks, one of the major things I wanted to do was fund this project. It turns out, commander was something of an involved effort still and lots of people wanted to use it! I think we knew that though, and quickly we were up to 3 people working on it from the company! Wow, exciting stuff. It didn’t get a lot of contributions as we were building it then lately, but it was something everyone wanted to use! Work continued, and I’m very happy with what has been done so far.
I’m writing for two reasons:
(A) we’re gearing up for a public beta this June, we are super excited about what we’ve built, and I’d like you to be thinking about helping test it.
(B) I want to let you know that, because we are funding so many developers on the project, we’ve decided we need to charge for the software. It is going to be free for small deployments, but larger installations are going to have to purchase a license.
We are doing this is because we want to make it the best it can possibly be, and to continue to fund developers on the project. We’re knocking this one out of the park here. And by offering it free to smaller installations, I think we’re putting it at a price where everyone who needs it can afford it.
We’re also changing the name, the full suite of software is going to be called (simply enough), AnsibleWorks.
AnsibleWorks 1.2 is all about enabling workflow around inventory, playbooks, teams, and servers – and exposes Ansible in all the ways you would want to.
We are going to add more features over time, but also continue to hire more and more developers to work on Ansible as well, and continue to support those things.
**We hope you understand our direction on this, and we hope you’ll be very interested in trying out the first release of Ansible Works when it becomes available for beta testing this June. And of course, your feedback is always welcome.**