In my experience I have worked on 4 different CMS' before FarCry (admittedly one was the precursor). One of the things that always made it difficult for a client to adopt a CMS was pricing. The second obvious thing was support.
The CMS market is extremely competitive and my only concern is that putting a price on FarCry may spell its demise, especially if the price is prohibitive when compared to open source or free CMS solutions out there. However I think the GPL is a good move as it makes the CMS practically free for SME's to develop their own sites, and allows vendors and corporations (who should be able to afford reasonable fees) to continue running. From my experience (as noted above), the second killer is support. However, daemon support FarCry very well, and it is one of the selling points that have encouraged our clients to use FarCry, as some competing CMS', even those that require hefty licensing fees, provide little to no support at all. I guess support time costs money too, and Daemon should probably ask for something in return. I only hope that daemon choose a licensing model that is reasonable and does not cripple the feasibility for clients to consider Farcry as a suitable solution when compared to other free / open source CMS solutions. My two cents ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Kruger Sent: Wednesday, 7 May 2008 11:21 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [farcry-dev] Re: FarCry License Changes Geoff, Having read your post I note this at the bottom: Like many things in life, this is not a democracy. Daemon, as the sole copyright holder of the code base for FarCry Core and FarCry CMS, is entitled to make this change at any time. We are looking to our community for feedback in order to help us in making the right decision. Technically I'm sure this is true. However, over the years community members have donated time and effort into the cause including module development, documentation, bug hunting, expert advise. We have all "invested" in Farcry and we all have a stake in the code - that's what open source really means to us and why it works. So while you probably have a right to do this it seems a little underhanded. I'm not saying you intend it that way - but consider the scenario the way it will play out: * 2003 daemon releases FC to open source GPL * Over the next few versions and 5 years various folks get on the band wagon, a large pool of fancy-pants sites are launched in FC including universities, hospitals, corporations etc. * A strong community of developers builds around the project and adds effort to it serving as QA, fixers, feature analysts, and feature developers. * Now, having a full featured and enterprise class product with an established base of developers and sites, Daemon bundles it up and begins to sell commercial licenses. Technically that is just savvy business planning and I applaud you (sort of). But practically it just feels wrong. CF Webtools has a lot invested in FC. We have nearly 35 sites. We recommend it for projects on a monthly basis. We have 5 sites on tap for next month. We can probably purchase commercial licenses (assuming they are reasonable) because we can bundle it into our estimate and cost. In some cases we will be able to contribute back to the project under the dual license model - so this may not affect us too much. But we use FC because we are invested in it as a product... we have a stake in it. Although we acknowledge is is a daemon project - we feel like it belongs to us as well... like we have had a part in it's success. That warm feeling will probably go away if we head down this route :) That's my 2 cents. Mark A. Kruger, CFG, MCSE (402) 408-3733 ext 105 www.cfwebtools.com www.coldfusionmuse.com www.necfug.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of modius Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 4:53 AM To: farcry-dev Subject: [farcry-dev] FarCry License Changes Folks, There has been much debate here at Daemon regarding a change in licensing for FarCry. As a consequence I've put together a discussion document in an effort to explain what we are thinking and get some feedback from the community before we do anything. "The FarCry 5.0 release has been delayed. We're contemplating a significant licensing change and as a consequence we want to make the decision prior to making the release. Once we have resolved whether or not the license change is right for our community, we'll either release 5.0 under the current license, Common Public License 1.0 (CPL), or under the newly proposed dual-licensing scheme." http://blog.daemon.com.au/go/blog-post/farcry-license-changes <http://blog.daemon.com.au/go/blog-post/farcry-license-changes> Please feel free to post here, comment on the blog or contact me directly with any words of support, condemnation or enquiry! Best regards, -- geoff http://www.daemon.com.au/ <http://www.daemon.com.au/> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "farcry-dev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/farcry-dev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
