Hi all, I'm very interested on this subject too. Much more then I was
ever.
>- if you want to start building a truly open source CMS, how can you
>build the community etc... that's needed to make it really work.
I'm note sure if I understand the issue. What do you mean by community?
Better still, what kind of ROI you want as return of investing in
forming the community that you want?
There are two things although that I believe are fundamental to form
open source community that is different from the commercial arena.
You can't have a community (as it is in open source) around a project
that is not pitched as the counter part of software considered expensive
within the commercial arena by developers (not necessarily true in
reality) and that is not acknowledged well from the point of view of
architecture and innovation.
It is also my opinion that usually developers ride the open source
efforts not end user's and that can be a big drawback if you want to
maintain the community driving and still meet deliverables to end
user's.
The rest is pretty much as tuff as in commercial world. Further more IMO
you also need to assume that the community is lazy, but that also happen
in the commercial arena. If in 1000 members of a community (registered
users) you have 10 that actually contribute to the project in a
constructive manner rather then just stating an opinion then you can get
yourself satisfied (this is just a guess, please if the ratio is better
please say the contrary I would be delighted, I using source forge to
find out).
There is another problem also that open source projects share with
commercial counter parts, and that is funding.
So bottom line, one needs to really bring a new value proposition that
outstands from the rest.
>Well, yes. But let's face it, you have open-ended costs with standard
CMS's >too, if you run your project correctly, i.e. the agile
"step-by-step" way.
Quite true. I also think that the main benefit of adopting an open
source "solution" is that adopting the wrong solution for a given
problem domain can be less costly due inexistent fixed front end costs
on licensing. But this can also run against open source consultant or
vendor due to lack of customer commitment to the project. There is more
the danger of client ownership fading due lack of vendor signed
commitment. Commitment is most often shown with blood, and in business
terms blood is money in one way or another (no money no clowns :).
I've used open source before, and I'll use it again for sure but one
thing I believe that most open source software providers ("communities")
in the CMS field do not get it still, things are changing.
Most developers and open source CMS's proponents want their value
proposition to be considered against commercial counter parts (so do
customers), but where is the feature matrix comparing what they offer
against Interwoven, Vignette, Devine, etc , etc? I can always think that
I can't get the matrix because the open source proposition in a face to
face feature battle would loose (that is how the commercial side plays
with customer minds and in further ways). You can't blame the decision
maker for that because quite honestly generally speaking I also think so
but I'm ready to change any time. Furthermore most often "products" are
chosen too early in the process.
Open source supporter's always say - oh they are closed so they must be
hiding something, we don't, here it is, just compare by your self - this
is really a naive approach to say the least.
In the end, who saves the day is honest people with technical expertise
(they can be PM's, Developer's, Analysts, Field Experts etc) that work
and work for the client and that are not stakeholders within the
process. For these persons open source or not is irrelevant, the "thing"
must be the solution for the problem domain at hand otherwise someone
has not made their job well and that person cannot blame anyone but
him/herself unfortunately.
Best regards,
Nuno Lopes
Independent Consultant.
--
http://cms-list.org/
more signal, less noise.
