[week 49] Did Mambo became too commercial?

[Admin]

Hi everybody,

welcome to the second topic of the week. This week I would like to talk the growing commercial products and services for Mambo.

Many of the older Mambers, who know Mambo for many years now, fell in love with Mambo because it was a simple and powerfull freak CMS. No commercial products existed and only a small group of 3rd party developers shared their free components and modules.

It started with Mambook, which was the first commercial product for Mambo Open Source. I remember myself pretty well, how angry I got about Emir's 5$ guestbook component. It was the day I started AkoBook, Mambo's No. 1 guestbook at the moment...

Many month later there are dozens of commercial components, modules, templates and Mambots today. At the moment a lot developers have started to split up there once free components in a free and a more powerfull commercial branch.

Is this good or is this bad for Mambo? And why do you think so? Is Mambo moving away from the Open Source base it came from? Do you feel cut off from the powerfull software? Or do you like the commercial products, as they are more reliable and do come with support?

I'm looking forward to see your posts...

[alterego]

Well, I think Mambo has a good balance of free, simple products and powerful, commercial products. If anything, there are not enough commercial grade, high quality products, IMO. I would never have even considered Mambo if there had not been some commercial grade, professionally supported addons. If I need to offer someone a very low-cost CMS with only free addons, Mambo can do nicely. If I need to offer someone a competitively priced CMS with some supported and custom development, Mambo also does nicely. I like the flexibility this gives me.

I have used some other popular CMS products that have literally hundreds of free modules to add; and in every case I found the quality to be too poor to recommend to my commercial customers and too buggy to satisfy my budget-conscious customers for very long. The quality of the free Mambo components is probably higher because of the competition with low-cost commercial components. The better the quality of the commercial components, the better will be, hopefully, the free products available.

As for the commercial products, there are still many glaring holes in the product lines available.

[eyezberg]

I have nothing against spending some money on add-ons which fullfill a specific need.
The only complaint I have is the price asked.

I would buy lots of things (and I'm sure most of us would) very easily for $5
(example: I got everything this guy sells: http://www.tufat.com/), but around $20 (or worse now, 20€ !) it's starting to become a lot.
Maybe not a lot in some people's ratios, but still a lot for a personal hobby website to add a feature, specially if there's 2 or 3 or 4 to add..

Check this out:
buy domain ~ 20$ cheapo..
get so-so ok hosting $100 to start of for a year
get a nice commercial template $20
sef advance 40€ (was it..?)
etc etc, it adds up quickly!

So ok, make commercial stuff, but sell a lot cheap and not some for high prices!
With all the talk about SEF/SEO these days (what was last weeks topic about again..?), how many users out there would instantly buy SEF Advance if it was selling $5 (or maybe even $10)? For 5 bucks, I bet hundreds of users a day.. now do your math on that..

[infra-greg]

I reckon eyezberg makes a good point...to set a web site up can get very costly very quickly...if everyone charged big money for a component, mambo will become the CMS of the rich...

often there are company costs too...set up, taxes, this, that...

i agree with eyezberg that the components should be in the lower range regarding price...more would buy them then...

which would then also make it worthwhile for the developer and s/he won't feel s/he's not being paid his/her worth...

i'm very aware of the commercial world we live in...but if you take a stand to be Open Source...its not a light matter...its a pretty strong ideological point you're making....

i'm not saying Mambo and ALL 3rd party components should be free...but just that some should be a bit cheaper...

[Baal]

$20-30 bucks is not a lot for a commercial grade component that would cost thousands to develop if you hired a bunch of programmers. Fortunately many of the free components are very powerfull too. I try to use free as much as possible, but there are times you need something special. Also you don't always want a developers name and url at the bottom of the page, more developers should offer a name/link free license for a nominal fee.

[zorkhh]

Hi,

i agree with the posts before. A good choice of free and commercial makes mambo more valuable.

The price is often a problem. I agree, that cheaper products (hopefully) sell more often. But i recognized, that if somebody needs a special thing (on a commercial basis), the price is not the real problem. A special mambot or module, which has a special function for a customer, can easily cost up to € 200 - and i have several modules / mambots sold. If you would offer each of these scripts to a large audience, none would be "worth" more than € 5 - 10.

But i think, it's important for mambo, that professional developers offer their service to customers, so that mambo gets more popular for companies. If more companies use mambo, more professionals will develop for mambo.

Greetings, Thomas

[spacemonkey]

Excellent topic!

The reasons I chose Mambo were the ease of use and great 3rd party community - both free and commercial. Without this diverse mix of people and tools, Mambo would be just another CMS! I would be devastated were this 3rd party community to pick up and go somewhere else, that is for sure!

This decision should be easy for all of us, as the bigger the Mambo family, the better it is for everyone.

However, on an individual (project) basis, I cannot make up my mind over commercial versus F/OSS, or expensive versus cheap. Here is what is going through my mind:

1) Commercial versus F/OSS: How do you determine if a product should be commercial or F/OSS? And if it is F/OSS, how do you decide it if belongs in the core or not?

2) Cheap versus expensive: Cheap is a great entry point, but for $5 you cannot expect any kind of support more than an email or two... And if I was trying to sell something for only $5, then I would be mad for promising stellar support for such a low cost - after all, I am but one man, and have a family to feed... My belief has always been to give everything away and charge for support, training and customization. That model is very common in today's world. Is there a better way to do it?

-- Mitch, Mambo Core Developer

[faoronin]

You would be amazed at the type of support you get for the $5 or so that you spend at sites like tufats (mentioned above).. I've seen it from others as well in this community. These tend to be people who not only make some money on their talents, but also love doing it.
free & commercial versions of the same product from the same dev is a little more touchy though. I'd prefer to see a free product with paid support available over that.
I love that mambo has a very very nice mixture of open source components/modules etc and commercial.

[thethepapapa]

Great topic Arthur! I simply have to step out and say my piece. I may end up stepping on my d!nk too.... (for those of the international scene, its a common phrase used here in Canada for saying something that gets you in trouble)....but what the heck! No risk, no reward.

I've been doing the mambo thing for almost four years now (3 solid fer sure). I've grown as Mambo has grown. For the first three years, a lot of folks in the local web community thought I was nuts. Fine with me, I liked what I got into.

Recently, I was able to land some nice jobs simply because of my mambo given ability to weave assorted bits of scripts into a single cohesive web site that met or exceeded the needs of the client. I managed to weave proprietary third party stand alone scripts, along with the opensource core of Mambo, and a few opensource components and modules, into one easy to navigate web site. The client was thrilled that his site went from empty space to full blown, fully functional site in less than 48 hours.

There is a company in this town that charges $35,000 per domain name to use their proprietary asp code based CMS. If you need extra functionality, like 'user name and password' login, or a poll component...that's extra, at $150 to $300 per hour. Want to add on a 'questionnaire', that will be another 2 thousand to 20 thousand dollars please. And, if you want the sitte replicated...you have to pay to redevelop what they just supplied because they don't use the same code...they are always building functionality from the ground up. With MAmbo, and a few extras, I can deliver the same or more functionality, and a much more competitve rate.

I don't feel too bad buying a 200 dollar script in the clients name and installing it into Mambo usig the URL menu feature to add functionality. I don't mind shelling out 20 to 30 Euro for a template or a component from a fellow Mambo geek using the client's paypal account and adding it to the client's website. The client is still getting incredible value with functionality compared to paying out big cash to the local developer(s).

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'm firmly for a mixed bag of free, lite, lite commercial, and full blown commercial templates, components and modules within the Mambo community. If I have to work my *** off and make some sales to buy what I want, well, I guess that's the way it is. But, when I make a buck or two in consulting fees, I really don't mind sharing the revnue, steering a sale towards a 'pay for tool', or clicking the donate button after the fact on the designers/component or module contributor's website. From the surplus, or from the specs and budget of the job, I buy custom converted or tweaked templates, commercial scripts, components and mods, and if a opensource template is used....click a donate button. If only more would be willing to click or buy when they make a dollar extra in revenue.

In case you are wondering, NO, I don't charge 25,999.00 to upload a Mambo site. Like a golf pro who gives you a golf club.....the club is free...teaching you how to swing it costs so much per hour. I get great satisfaction making life hard for the other guy to justify his $35,000 price tag and charge a reasonable amount (there is a long story behind this that centers around the fact that they wouldn't hire a self taught programmer.....me....so I enjoy it when the company I formed with my unemployment cheques wins business away from them).

Oh, and if you think Mambo is drving down programming employment....not really. My Clients have reduced their prices to their clients, and they are creating more work for more people, for the same money. Good deeds seem to be spreading. More work! Who would have thought........

Mambo on folks, mambo on!

thethe papapa party of four, your table is ready.

[mamboguy.com]

I think it is all good for mambo, free and/or commercial products. I do, however, agree that components should be reasonably priced. If I have a need for a commercial component, and it is affordable, I will buy it.

Case in point:
Had a client who needed multiple forms on his site. Went out and bought Akoforms... can't even remember the price 20 euro?? The client doesn't care, I charged him $40, saved me 3 hrs of my time ($231) - money my client would have had to pay me.

Bring it all on, the more the merrier.