When checking other solutions a basic search feature is always included.
Not necessarily speaking about content indexing.
Seafile lacks this basic function in the CE. This rules out Seafile nearby instantly as a solution when companies have to validate those. - Speaking from experience.
If you want Seafile to be taken more seriously in the big pool of cloud storage software it might be time to change the business model.
E.g.
Give most features for free and keep only business features to the professional version.
Sell support and the stable version release channel to paying customers.
Stop releasing not fully tested version to paying customers! This is not just bad for your reputation but also for all of your customers!
Why not sell a rock solit solution work properly defined and uphold release processes instead of a good solutions with startup-like release circles.
I really would like to see Seafile as one of the leaders on the marked here. But this won’t happen if the business model stays like this and you treat paying customers like the testers that you don’t want to hire or even do proper testing yourself.
The community can not do more than offer its time.
I think that there is already good community group which testing a helping debug (may we can all share our know-how to debug) and there is no reason to put paying users to bleeding edge. It’s same as I wrote about SeaDrive. There have to be big optical difference between Stable(Tested not “looks working”) and Unstable. I have three seafile servers and testing every release in daily usage.
There is only one problem. How to help testing new PRO releases if we don’t have it. As I said, I have three CE servers so can’t test PRO only features.
I also reports every thing that I thinks is a bug and I’m trying to update the manual at Seafile’s webbpage as often I’m noticing anything that’s off.
As @DerDanilo say, stable should not be updated ASAP it should be tested, why not role out the futures to CE version first and then when you know it works there you should add those to the PRO version.
And exclude businesses functions from the CE version, Paying customers are for sure businesses so they are not interesting in CE version I guess as it’s missing some killing functions for businesses.
And also, add some kind of donation to the CE version if you doing that you will receive donations for sure and then you have more money to add to the project.
Edit:
I have started to recommend Seafile to Swedish people and businesses also and they like it, in Sweden the businesses are using Share point and OneDrive to store cloud data in to there own servers (excluding Microsoft servers) but as you know Share point server license are not free so here is a market for Seafile.
So I installed SeaDrive and then using windows explorer or a free tools like Agent Ransack and FileSeek I can search all the libraries that are available to me (even those shared to me).