[week 49] Did Mambo became too commercial?

[klasika]

Of course it is good to have both free and commercial addons for Mambo, but still paying significant amount of money for some product that you know doesn't worth that much is not so nice. Price of 20£+ for some basic component is a example of overcharging. Beside that, for most of the components I've purchased there is NO support. So if something doesn't work, you're on your own. I've purchased f. ex. Phil-a-form ... nice script, now the guy has stopped further development, and there is still sentence on his web site "lifetime updates" lol ... probably he will come up with next generation of form processing component for the next generation of Mambo (v5) ... Anyway if you want to extend functionality of your Mambo site, you have to add some commercial addons, but at the end it will cost you just as much as you have purchased a commercial CMS with built in functionalisties. I've seen some post where is mentioned some 35.000 $ charge for CMS ... anyway I think 35K $ is enough for your own server, 1 year of Internet access and pay for 6 months for excellent programer to develop you very own CMS so if you can find me some of the customers for 35K $ I would be very happy

[thethepapapa]

I too have purchased the Miro version. It didn't work with the opensource contributions, so eventually I became immersed in the opensource version.

This local company that charges $35,000 for their ASP based CMS is rather interesting. They have also charged similar amounts for their shopping cart and e-commerce solution. They are charging clients huge dollars for skinning OS commerce and stripping off the OScommerce credits on the page (but leaving them intact in the php code). I laugh when I read thier ads stating they have spent years 'developing' this solution.....more like years reading oscommerce's forums.

I like the idea of a forum where one can discuss commercial application of Mambo. There is a few folks here in this thread who are endorsing Mambo to their clients, and in some cases (like mine) it forms the core of the web site. It might be interesting to form an 'opensource' collective of commercial users to discuss how to better serve our clients. In fact, it might be an interesting brain trust and pooling of talent so each of us can take on bigger corporate entities locally. Like you said, its hard to compete against the corporate shop when you are just a one or two man shop. Who knows, it even may have helped head off a 'Furthermor' situation had it existed.

Hmmm, I've got a spare domain name registered...and its perfect for this application.......Don't want to hijack this thread,

[klasika]

I know exactly what you mean by that. No so long ago I've found a interesting company that offers "professional" CMS for free. If you want to type in some content you have to use administration tool they've "developed". And that admin tool is not free, it costs 399$ ...

[rg66]

Hi,

I find this to be a very interesting topic. The one major question I have is what license are the commercialized add-ons sold at? Mambo is OS under the GNU Public License which I can say does not give much room for commercialized add-on, menaing I have the hand on the script. You can not control your product as it is freely available for the community.

We have gone into this matter very much, as I am very fond of the API from Mambo and we are writing a CRM on the basis of the Mambo API (Beta release hopefully before X-Mas). We would like to change the Public License to the Morzilla version but do not know yet if that is possible. Further we will establish an Opensource CRM and yes, we will try to make money from it. But not for the basic SW itself but on very sophisticated add-on and on a yearly maintenance fees.

I believe that asking for a license fee for a OS product is a joke and many companies can not afford high capital investment. SO why not say you charge a small amount per user on a yearly basis and this expense is lower then the implementation and investement cost or the annual ammortization expenses. This will lead to a better Cashflow and sound much better. Further all updates should be for free!!

The community drives through the Opensource and man we can be really happy still that the OS is where it stands. If what the EU wants to allow programmers to patent their scripts, or algorism which are currently avaialble to download on the internet, the OS community will stop existing right away.

So I am saying that it is good to have a free mambo and also a commercialzed add-on. The cake is big enough and if you find the customer to pay, much better.

Bob

[eyezberg]

The discussion started to get slightly off-topic with my post I think, more "how much should be charged" opinions than about the original subject.. mea culpa.

Let me sum up my opinion once more:
Mambo can be used in two ways: for smaller, personal, community sites which are self-developped and have no/very small resources to buy stuff (commercial CMTs). For these sites, I believe there should be a "non-profit" licence of the CMTs.

Used for commercial sites, it's the clients budget.
The developper has to consider if
a) he can code the requiered functionality into the CMS,
b) a free CMT (component/module/template, just in case..) exists and is bug-free/stable/advanced/... enough to do the job
c) he'll save time and efforts and buy a commercial CMT which fullfills the requierements, if there is one..
d) he commissions a commercial CMT which is custom-made for the specific clients needs

If a), will this then be a new commercial component (more $ for the dev')?
If b), will there be an investment by donating to support it and stimulate the future developement..?
If c), how good will support be? What happens if the client later demands feature changes/additions to this part of the site?
If d), what will be the licence of this CMT?

There's no need to discuss licensing details, as there are many threads both here and over at the official forums about this..

[prj]

I think the idea of not for profit licencing is a great idea, I do a lots of free community stuff and that would help as some times I buy it out of my own pocket with the hope I can recoup later.

I mean I pay for the name, host and mambo add ins, but if its to pricey I dont buy commercial mambo.

But what really bugs me more than anything else is not paying for a good mambo add in, but being restricted not just to one server but to just one website with some commercial products, thats worse than M$, that I consider more exploitative than anything else.

If I buy a car I can use it on more than one road, with restricted licences that cost the same or just a bit less for repeats, I might buy once but never again unless I have to, on the other hand if I paid say $80 for a really good component and then was asked $5 or $10 for repeats and it was really good I would not think twice about donating to a community project if there was not a not for profit option. I might think once but not twice.

I would probobly buy much more if everything was $5-$10 though. In fact I would buy all competing products to compare and use where they most fit and so I suspect lots of others would too!

I would prefer a server licences though for commercial restricted more pricey products.

Unlike some even with a single licence I wont break a licence and just use it again and again. Just my concience but there you go.

[prj]

I do think that OpenSource & Commercial work well together and benefit mambo all round in the longer term.

I said the same in the early days of the UK community wireless ISPs and nobody liked it, I said unless you incorporate good business and community models the big boys will walk all over the potential for what can be achied and and you will not survive let alone be able to offer what we all knew then was the best for the end user. Guess what happened, the movement got highjacked by BT etal.

If mambo is to be THE CMS it must touch and be useful to the widest possible audiance, sure we would all like it all FREE but thats not going to engender the widest possible use.

Mambo has the chance to be the M$ of CMS's without the monopolistic down side of Gatesism as long as the balance is kept. How is that done? Right here by keeping the community open and with people each doing thier bit, we are Mambo and abit of peer presure does wonders as long as it don't get personal.

Personally I would love to work with a few coders on a few community & commercial mambo add ins, I am very creative but I cant code for toffee. The best way I would think is a broader colaberative development but the last time i made some moves I got slammed

[mikedeboer]

I, as the developer of the zOOm Media Gallery CMT, hasn't become too commercial YET!
I have given some serious thought on the future of my component and other future projects I might get involved in; currently I cannot keep up with the current number of forum posts and service requests - it's just too damn much! This is when one has to start thinking commercial: what if you start asking money for your services? The CMT should stay free, GPL licensed as it was, but installation services and specific feature requests are easy to ask money for. The users who want your service REALLY bad will buy it from you.
In addition, if I choose to release zOOm as a stand-alone version (eg. a 'totally' new product), then I CAN charge for it, because it is the result of a long, time consuming development process. No moral objections whatsoever, right?
Fact is, that the most important (core?) CMT's - SimpleBoard, akoBook, DocMan, zOOm, etc. - won't go commercial all of a sudden! Open Source still has its advantages: faster development, development/ project groups, faster bugtracking, users-help-users, etc.
On the height of CMT/ module prices: this is how the market works! First you charge too much (optimistic), then lower the price (realistic) and finally get at a price level everybody's happy with (balanced prices). If this process takes up too much of your time, then you could always negotiate!

[eyezberg]

This is what is missing in this conversation:
opinions from dev's who have commercial CMTs on the market!! please!

=> Did you ever change the price/make promotional offers because of to few sales/ did that improve sales?
=> WHY did you make your component commercial (apart from the $$ of course), why not open source..?
=> how did you set the initial price for your component?

I'd like to from the folks at HotProperty, Phil, all of you template designers who sell your layouts, Saka, Arthur... thanks

[Dragon4678]

I am especially not pleased with HTML Area 3 going commercial.

I don't have access to paypal, and so I am stuck with this half useless, half broken version of HTMLArea3.

The developer basically left the free version completely bug prone and requiring a lot of fixing and debugging.

But now he has found the fixes to most of the problems, but not only is he not sharing them with the open source community, he is also charging for the product... *Sigh*... And the editor is like the main part of the cms that makes it either user friendly... or not....