[week 49] Did Mambo became too commercial?

[prj]

Originally Posted by 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?

I could see how that could be onerous but I have had no problems with it and you could say offer a here are the links to support issues and pay for pro support basis. You must have mainly recuring issues and people don't read.

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? !

Nope!

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!

I havent seen any make me an offer deals yet.

[prj]

Originally Posted by eyezberg

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.

I think the acepted term is Not For Profit (NFP) but the trouble with that is there are businesses, even masive ones that are NFP (charities and others) but still operate very commercialy. Also the IT manager might get paid $50k PA and have a $500k PA IT budget and a small club with $0 IT budget.

They might both be customers that I would have to charge something or might charge $0 how would that fit.

I might be commercial in doing the above but run at a loss or just break even for such projects as part of our community program!

Are you saying NFP as organisation or a site or just not in any way commercial or money taking?

I could give more examples.

[absalom]

Originally Posted by 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

As a template designer

1) I only change sale prices on predesigned layouts for Mambo - the work is done and it's just a matter of finding a price point to syndicate them correctly.
2) The only commercial component I'm working on at the moment will be "ransomed" for a predetermined fee and then released to the community free once that fee has been met.
3) Look at what other people are charging for the same kind of work. Market rates are market rates.

[thinguy]

I, like most people hear probably, have worked with serveral different CMSs including the Nukes, Drupals, Typos, and all the other popular and up-and-coming solutions. Mambo is by far the best. And it's the best all around. If that means I have to pay a few dollars for some add-ons to get some more refined features so be it. I think it only makes Mambo that much stronger.

And off topic. Nice idea regarding the Topic of the Week.

[mikedeboer]

Originally Posted by Dragon4678

And the editor is like the main part of the cms that makes it either user friendly... or not....

Just try the FCKEditor then from the Mamboportal.com filebase! It's cross-browser (unlike HTMLArea3) and completele free (for now ) !!! If you don't like paying for a piece of software of which the author is entitled to charge a price for OR can't pay for it for some reason, you should settle for the next-best solution!

By the way: FCKEditor 2.0 isn't a next-best solution anymore, in my humble opinion; it's on its way of replacing HTMLArea for good!

Originally Posted by absalom

3) Look at what other people are charging for the same kind of work. Market rates are market rates.

--> I agree with Absolom here...the market has yet to take it's real shape yet, because developers have just started to release commercial Mambo soft on a large scale...only prerequisite of fairness is that it stays as transparent as it is now!

[ChaosNo1]

I would like to know, what the developers of commercial stuff thought, when they starded with mambo.

Did you all planned to get commercial from beginnig? What did you thought, when you released you first free product? Did you do it for the community or did you do it to get known for better selling your products later?

And what about them, who has moved their free products to not free products? What was the reason to change from a free developer to a "money maker"?

Sorry, but i can not understand the why. Why more and more of you want to make money with mambo? What happens?

And you can not tell me, that you decided to to this, because you had sooooo much work with supporting your free products. Of course you did, but you will have this work ever and it doesn't matter if your product is free oder commercial. I also get many support-requests for my stuff, but i never never never thought about to get a commercial way.

I very sad about this, and if this will be the future of mambo i will not stay with it.

[Admin]

Originally Posted by ChaosNo1

I would like to know, what the developers of commercial stuff thought, when they starded with mambo. Did you all planned to get commercial from beginnig? What did you thought, when you released you first free product? Did you do it for the community or did you do it to get known for better selling your products later?

Of course I can only speak for myself, but I think many other commercial developers did it the same way.

Personally I started to code for Mambo, as I needed solutions, which did not exist or because I was unsatsfied with the available solutions. I needed a gallery and coded AkoGallery, I needed a comment system and coded AkoComment, etc.

Like many others I of course shared it for free with the community. Please don't forget this! Take a look at Phil Taylor, who released a bunch of things for free, or take a look at Pedro Goncalves, which released a new free component right today. I guess everyone of us does this for the community.

Besides the dozens of free products I also offer commercial products. These commercial products were started, because people asked me to do so. Yes, it was not my intention! It started with a few jobs here and there. "Arthur, could you code this for me? I am willing to pay for it". This showed me, that there in fact is a market for commercial solutions.

So I started to release commercial products, which are supported better and do come with extra's like a manual or ready-2-run header images. Many people bought these products, because they wanted it...

Originally Posted by ChaosNo1

Sorry, but i can not understand the why. Why more and more of you want to make money with mambo? What happens?

I very sad about this, and if this will be the future of mambo i will not stay with it.

Well, if you ask me what happened, I only can tell you, that the Mambo community has grown. 1-2 years ago there were only a few freaks, who discovered the potential of Mambo. With the 4.5 release a year ago many, even larger, companies discovered Mambo. They are willing to pay for solutions, if they are tailored to their needs, fully supported and of high quality.

The Mambo community now has to face this challenge. If we are able to provide these solutions, then Mambo surely will establish it's place between the great, well known CMS like typo3, reddot and others...

[ChaosNo1]

Hi,
thank you for your statement!

But i do not think, that the support of some commercial products is better than for free products

They are willing to pay for solutions, if they are tailored to their needs, fully supported and of high quality.

I agree and i think that its ok to do or to offer commercial services like this. And of course, commercial products are not bad at all.
You said, the community has grown. Of course it did, but i fear that the community and mambo grows in the wrong way.

The problem are not the commercial products themselves, the problem is that more and more developers become commercial. Who is the next? What happens, if simpleboard becomes a commercial product? What happens, if mamblefish, mambo phpshop or other existing free products become commercial,?

Of course the community has grown, but i also think this trend will slow down the growing of mambo

Regards
Sascha

[eyezberg]

Originally Posted by ChaosNo1

What happens, if simpleboard becomes a commercial product? What happens, if mamblefish, mambo phpshop or other existing free products become commercial,?

Then we all leave.

A forum, ecommerce solution, internationalization/multi-language support, picture gallery, download manager and a few other community -building CMTs are necessary parts of a CMS and should be (made) part of the core install.
Mambo (team) needs to establish which direction it intends to head towards, community or business..

Thanks, Arthur and Absalom, for your "commercial" lights on this. And of course, for your free releases

[robbie]

I started like a year ago with mambo (maybe longer, i don't know anymore). I got introduced by it by a mate of mine, who has his own server and installed mambo on it. I was really searching for some system to control my website with, and tried phpnuke, but i couldn't find out how to install. So i asked him 'bout another cms and he told me try this man, it's awesome, i said ok let's give it a try. Since then i never used another system then mambo, on none of my sites is a normal system which i coded myself. In the time i started almost all components were free to use, and also very good. Now the time has come that many people need other features then are included in the free components / modules or whatever. And since many of them can't make any decent code, or have no idea how to do this they just want to buy it. It's just a growing marked imho.

Giving an example; My dads boss wants a website, completely. He hires a webdesign-company and they ask roundabout 12000 euro! This are really stupid amounts of money for such websites! It's just a blowed up business.

Maybe this example was a bit of off-topic, i'm not saying people are asking too much money for their components / modules / templates.

Mambo became in my opinion somewhat too commercial, maybe as said before a price-system is better, make some seperated part of particulars (people who make their site for fun) and companies (who earn money with it). Since the last group can afford more money then the first ones, and are also willing to pay more.