Re: Will your chosen CMS vendor go bust?

At 05:52 PM 6/10/2005, Boris Kraft wrote:
 > Escrow is a bad choice in my opinion.

On 06.10.2005, at 06:29, David Warwick replied:
 > > Well put. Thats all there is to say to the
 > > topic. It should go to some (open source) FAQ

On Oct 6, 2005, at 5:17 AM, James Robertson replied:
 > > > Of course, open source is potentially no better a
 > > > solution.

I disagree (with James) though he did use the word
"potentially"  :^)

For most people the value in open source is *NOT* in
the source code!!

Most people don't want the source in any event/case.
If you get source from a released escrow -- you're
having a bad day.

An open source community offers you a collective body
of talent for system maintenance, enhancement, support,
and customization.  More importantly, there are
established legal and social patterns for amortizing
these tasks over a distributed community making the
burden on any individual company manageable (even for
small companies).

In this context the big difference between proprietary
software and open source is the time period over which
support and momentum decay.

James is right to point out that open source projects
lose momentum.  When this happens (presuming the
project had momentum to begin with) it rarely (never?)
happens with the suddenness of a corporate failure or
product end-of-life.

Finally, the notion of development self-sufficiency in
all but the very largest/most-mission-critical CMS
deployments is, imo, unrealistic.  CMS software is
complex requires an investment of time and expertise
that is, in most places, better invested elsewhere.

Regards,
Rob

P.S. - Good thread James!

--
Rob Page               V: 540 361 1710
Zope Corporation       F: 703 995 0412