For transparency, I post here the reply I just sent to Arjuniet:
Hi Arjuniet,
I could spend hours replying to the points you wrote in that post but I don't think it's productive for me to do that, let me summarize it in one paragraph: the polling (1 HTTPS request every 5 minutes by default) is really not an issue (it's being used by thousands of organizations all over the world and nobody is complaining) and has allowed us to get it working with minimum effort and start working on other fronts while leaving optimizations for a future phase (and some of these optimizations are already in the pipeline and going to be released in 2019).
The difference between OpenWISP and what you are building is that OpenWISP aims at creating a foundation, a set of tools, an ecosystem, something like a framework, to build really powerful and customizable network management solutions with the aim of offering power, freedom from lock-in, ease of access and lower costs of management.
We haven't achieved all our goals but we are progressing. To achieve for those long-term goals, given my limited resources I decided to compromise some aspects that are usually emphasized by those who want to build commercial products.
I understand where your concerns come from although I have decided to go on a different path: build a solid foundation and once that is ready refine the system and make it easier to use. Doing the latter first would not have allowed me to have enough room for building a strong foundation later: once you build a skyscraper, you can't change its foundations. I believe building software is similar.
Since there's demand for this kind of product you are building, I think it's good that you help those who don't want to choose OpenWISP because they need something different and I wish you good luck.
Federico
lol
