[week 49] Did Mambo became too commercial?

[eyezberg]

Sure, some website hobbiests may cry foul because they want to spend only 10 bucks for a 300 dollar program. I've often balked at paying 50 dollars US and waited until it went 'on sale' to buy a license because it was something I wanted for my own personal site.

Yeah, I'd like to see a reduced price for non-commercial use, but that's not really in the cards, is it?

I have highlighted the important points in the quote: if a component (module..) is sold commercially, maybe try to come up with two price schemes, personal/community/non-profit site vs client work..

[newart]

The Problem is not how much it costs... The right Problem is to make poor a good project like Mambo. If all it is "on sale", Where can we find for free sw and why trying to make it better? The spirit of an Open Source is destroyed!! And without a Open Source target... I think there are al lot of CMS out there. I am very sorry but the the problem is not if the sw is buggy or not. The problem is to have a free community and NOT a commercial one.

I understand the right answer must be a balance of com & free. But no-one helps to grow a free-developer community. We need much tips & tricks.

Mambo is excellent, and I dream for the 5.0 version, but There are a very few free stuffs for us and without any variety.

Moreover I am very sorry for what happened to R.Castley (many many thanks to you) and even about "The ako-form vs. Phil-a-form accident" I was very impressioned.

My question is: what type of community is this?

[Jannie]

As a newbie\hobiest to Mambo and all that is web I'm using Mambo to teach myself webdevelopment. I think it great to get the free coms, mods and bots. I use mamboportal alot because it has the greatest sellection of free stuff to play with. I would however on the otherhand like to see a portal that focuses on the true commercial script implementations in Mambo. To really see what Mambo can do. At present it is everyone for himself and it takes alot of surfing to get to see the actual commercial implementations within Mambo sites. A comercial portal could also be a better way to keep commercial pricing inline and relevant.

Arthur, this could be something to look into.

[Jannie]

My bad, he's allready looking into it!

Quote from www.mamboportal.com:

Short timeout and upcoming project
Written by Arthur Konze

Monday, 29 November 2004

During the last week Mamboportal.com wasn't updated that regulary. This was due to a small timeout I took. My 10 month old daughter was baptized (I hope this is the right word) this weekend. I had to organize a lot things and therefore had lesser time for Mamboportal.com.

I also have kicked off a new project today, which will start end december, early january. I will build up a large Mambo shopping mall, where developers and designer can sell their products. This system will be open to everyone interested. I hope to make Mambo more attractive this way for people searching for commercial solutions and also give even developers with only 1 or 2 products a professional shop. If you are interested to become a vendor, please contact me.

[Admin]

Originally Posted by Jannie

At present it is everyone for himself and it takes alot of surfing to get to see the actual commercial implementations within Mambo sites. A comercial portal could also be a better way to keep commercial pricing inline and relevant.

Arthur, this could be something to look into.

I already did this. We are currently building up MamboShop.com. It will be a professional, multi-vendor shopping mall for Mambo. Every vendor can edit his products for himself (add new, change prices, etc.) and follow his sales. We will take over the billing (credit card handling, invoices, etc.) and handling (server space, instant download, etc.).

Testing and Finetuning of the system will be done in December. The GoLive is planed for end December, early January. Some developers already agreed to sell at MamboShop.com in the future. I hope some more will follow.

Besides our free efforts at project like Mamboportal.com or Mamble.com, we at Konze Webdesign hope to also provide a professional platform for people interested in commercial products and services.

[absalom]

Originally Posted by eyezberg

I have highlighted the important points in the quote: if a component (module..) is sold commercially, maybe try to come up with two price schemes, personal/community/non-profit site vs client work..

This is one of the reasons I love Creative Commons. Personal / community / non-profit sites can happily co-exist using the same work that commercial enterprise pays a licencing fee for. I will be releasing more templates under CC licence once I feel I've finished my GPL "quota"

Regarding the "Ako-form vs Phil-a-form" debarcle, I was also left with a bad taste in my mouth, due to the way the nature of competitive products was handled. Since PAF is now "off the books" as it were, perhaps Akoforms could make a comeback?

It's good to hear that Arthur is looking (again) at ways to increase the commercial visibility and viability for Mambo work. Hopefully, the level of supprt for commercial work will rise to the occassion..

[baby.doc]

So, my opinion to this topic is like some others said before, that $20-30 is in proportion to what most commercial components output to much. For this price for example i can go to a local shop and get a antivirus softwarwe in a nice paperbox, with a printed manual and 24/7 update support.

But i think the main reason why the prices are so high is that some users, take mambo components use them theirselfs in a commercial way, but never click on any donate button. So i can understand the developers who spend their time to develope a great compontent without getting any financial tribute. Why isn´t it possible to charge the software for commercial customers in an other way then non commercial uers?

Anyway, all in all its great that mambo is an open source plattform with rising number of free tutorials, so that everyone can develope the components, modules and templates he needs, spending his time for himself, and then share it with all other members of the community.

[ChaosNo1]

mhh, bacame mambo too comercial?

YES IT DID!

Where will Mambo be in about one or two years?

There will it be if more and more comercial componets, modules and mambots are springing up like mushrooms?

There will it be, if you have to pay for the most addons?

Ok, there are still many free projects, but what happens, if some of them also want to grab a piece of the cake? I think, some already did!

And to offer a Service for this "small offerer" of only "a few commercial addons" is an invitation to all to build their own commercial stuff. And of course, its to make money with, becaus i don't think that you will offer this service for free. Why you are asking if Mambo bacame to commercial when you become it more and more?

To offer remmitance work for custom-tailored addons, template and services is the only thing, that legitimate commercial work.

This is my opninion about it. I know i can not change the evolution of the mambo-environment, but i can change the cms and i will it do betimes.

regards

Sascha

[demito]

mmm... i think every commercial stuff will eliminate with same function component created by new mambo comer with the real open source spirit.
So... no matter with all that

[toemik]

I started using mambo becuase it was free, and coming from a background of developing conventional html websites the ease of a CMS based system was awesome. The components and modules were awesome and FREE. As my experience grew I began to consider the commercial apsects of delivering this as a solution to a number of 'cash strapped' organisations who just needed something more than HTML only but couldn't afford thousands of pounds for (least of all risk it on my one/two man band rather than a large commercial house). So FREE mambo gave me the way in.

If there is a commercial offering that brings some required functionality that I require or provides a solution to a problem in a much easier, clearer and straight forward manner to my end users (who by definition are users and not programmers) then I will pay for it and put it on their bill. A price of $20 - $30 makes me think "Yep that looks like it will do the job nicely" and I will go for it and take the slight risk of it not being right for this task (my loss). Any higher, then the decision is much harder, but delvelopers can seriously help themselves on this one by offering 'Lite' versions for free. If I am paying for something though, I would want some initial support, or at least the comfort of knowing that it would be forthcoming, sometimes this can be determined by asking a pre-sales question (a well known developer took 10 days to answer my pre-sales question, and then didn't answer the main points, so what chance of support after purchase, I went for his competitor).

Other topics that get me are the use of Ion encoders and domain specific licenses, Yes, I can see the point but I would like the option of using these purchased items and testing them on my own linux box, before running them against a client's live system.

My Closing shot is that if it is worth it and it does the job better than a free version or it makes my client's life easier (and hence mine) then I am up for it. But I wouldn't always say commercial is better than free, I have used the Miro CMS and here I am using mambo all the time.