>So, did anyone attend these sessions at DevCon? Could someone post a >summary!?
I did attend. Unfortunately, I did not get the names or companies of everyone involved. Athough, I wouldn't want to quote people inappropriately either! So I'll give what I came away with. This is my opinion, my interpretation. We had a group of about 10-12 in attendance. Ray Camden and a MM sales director from Europe (apologies that I did not get his name) were the only two formally connected with MM. Both fellows were helpful and gave us the information they could. We'd hoped to have Tim Buntel present to give more "official" comments but he was not available. MOVING TO 1.5.2 Initial questions were technical in nature and focused on the upcoming 1.5.2 release (compatability, upgrade paths, etc.). Most of those questions should be answerable if you're in the beta or will be included in the release notes. So I won't go into it here. Though I did understand that 1.5.2 will only be an upgrade from 1.5.1. If you want to move to MX, you'll upgrade to 1.5.1 first then to 1.5.2 then upgrade your CF to MX. (Someone correct me if I am wrong.) OPEN SOURCE The show is definitely over for MM and Spectra come December 31, 2003. What is unknown is the status of the code itself. Many minds in the room seemed to intuitively come to the question, "Why shouldn't MM release Spectra as open source?" And I agree. If the product is abandoned, what is there to lose from releasing the code to the public domain? (Minus licensing fees between now and the end of 2003, of course.) The point was made that open source does no good if someone is not tending to that "source". Bottom line, the "open source" question is an open issue. No word, official or otherwise, could be given if this was a possiblilty or if it had been ruled out. These long-term licensing issues are something I would like to see an official answer on. WHAT TO DO NOW? Everyone supporting a Spectra site has tough decisions to make in the near future. Some in the group were looking to replace Spectra with another CMS in the near term. Others have Spectra implementations (even running 1.0.1) that have served their needs and there is not a strong reason to change. Still others were determined to stick with the Spectra code, rewrite it as needed and essentially make it the basis for their own custom solution. Outside of the "Birds of a Feather" meeting, I did note a number of ColdFusion-based CMS solutions at the DevCon. http://www.paperthin.com/ http://www.nqcontent.com/ http://www.siteexecutive.com/ http://www.ektron.com/ I'd definitely recommend investigating the top three listed above. Each has a comparable feature set from the demos I saw. I've not dug into the technical specifications yet but on the surface they accomplish what I've been depending on Spectra for. Tom Briscoe Web Developer Compass Bank PS: Watch the MM site on 11/11. I can say no more. ______________________________________________________________________ Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To Unsubscribe visit http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=lists/spectra_talk or send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with 'unsubscribe' in the body.
