Very late in the conversation, and some very interesting points put in above. But now for my 2 cents.
Firstly, let me say I understand completely the need to either drop CE, or limit it. I also understand from a development and maintenance point of view the expense that comes with releasing more than one version. So I understand why telerik would be looking at making just the STD version available.
I have believed for a long time, well ever since I started using SiteFinity as my core business offering a year ago, that there needs be be a product between community and standard. As some people have pointed out, there is a market out there for the $1,200 - $1,500 website, where the $900 standard price just doesn't fit with the need for design and customization, and these sorts of clients really do not care about versioning and workflow (as nice as it would be). However if there was a product in the middle, that only offered the removal of the logo above the community version (so exactly the same as CE, but no logo requirement) for around $400, then this can fit in the pricing module
You could limit the numbers of content pages (excluding forum, blogs etc as I would imagine that this would be a technical nightmare, and in reality, blogs do not replace the need for content pages) and this would fit nicely in SMB requirements as most sites in this bracket only have 5-15 pages anyway. More than this and it falls into a higher price bracket due to development costs anyway.
Custom Modules MUST be allowed in all versions. This is my, and many developers, core business levelage. I have developed a suite of modules that can be plugged in when required, and this really can not be removed from the SMB version (the CE, if it even existed, could have this limitation as lets face it, it's free).
The long and the short of it, I can live without the CE version, and have been watching the SiteFinity site intently for the last year for a licence that took the CE version, allowed the removal of the logo, but offered no STD features. Most SMB clients really do not care about the STD feature set, so convincing them to upgrade has been a uphill fight. I want these customers who are using CE to pay Telerik of the fantastic product they are using. But getting these SMB to basicily double the price of the website has lost me business (yes I have tried, and yes I have used sales people). The fact of the matter is web development is a high competition market, and the end customers really do not have a clue. Steve's post hits this on the head "I ran into this problem last week trying to get a bid..."why pay $900 when we can use wordpress for free...it's a 'CMS' "", Why because wordpres
$#@$s, and SiteFinity ROCKS, but these SMB managers only see the $$$ and think apples are apples.
I have no desire to develop in any other system other than SiteFinity. I love every (well almost every) part of the system, and developing for the system is one of the easiest, and cleanest platforms I have developed for. However at the end of the day it does not matter what I want, my target business sector is what makes the decisions, and if I can not continue to offer entry level CMS systems at $1,200 then they will go to the DotNetNuke developer across the road who can.
I hope that internally the SiteFinity staff can come to a decision that both keeps the product maintainable, as the industry needs SiteFinity, but offers solutions to all sectors of the market, from SMB to large corporations.
Just some quick stats, in my local region 80% of business employee less than 5 people, 17% employee up to 50 people and 3% employee more than 50. So lets keep the 80% of the market space in our sights.
Regards