Flattering, but...

I got this message from my site’s contact form today:

Name: Jeff Wong
Email: [email protected]
Message: Hi Susan, I was looking at your Mod-X demo online at your site, and noticed you had a Mod-X admin theme that was quite different both visually and structurally from the default Mod-X admin design. Did you create that? The reason I ask is because I have a CMS that we are creating a major upgrade for and are considering basing it on Mod-X since there is much we like about this CMS. I think one of the strengths of our current version is it’s usability for non-technical users and it’s UI. I would like to retain elements of that if we did decide to use Mod-X to base our upgrade on and would therefore need either modify the UI (while still making it easy to utilize Mod-X upgrades in the future) or create another UI and some feature that interfaces between our new UI and the Mod-X one. Two questions for you: 1. Is this possible? 2. Are you available as a freelance contractor to take on such a project? If not, can you refer me to a capable Mod-X guru who could do a good job with such a project (an offshore developer at lower cost would be ideal)? Thanks for your help. Cheers, Jeff Wong

The CMS in question appears to be a commercial package:

http://comeleon.com/webcontrol.htm

I’ve asked him what license his new CMS will be released under; since MODx is GPL anything they use our code in and distribute also has to be GPL. I’m not interested in working for this company, but I thought I’d post this in case anybody else here is.

I’m bemused by

"I’m thrilled with it. It’s great. If it got ripped off tonight, I’d replace it by tomorrow afternoon."
Mike Peterson, Sales
Vancouver Glass

But there’s more at http://www.comeleonwebcontrol.com

I’m intrigued by their Innovative "WYSIWYG HTML Editor"

that that looks and feels like you’re actually editing on your actual Web page rather than a form field. The editor allows you to format text, images, hyperlinks, buttons, tables and video. Bold and italics, copy and paste, undo and redo, find and replace, drag and drop, and more are all there as well...and once again, no need to learn HTML programming!

They also have a revisioning system.

If they used the MODx core and then added their own plugins and changed the UI, they could easily end up with a package that had GPL *and* commercial parts. Also, charging for training and installation isn’t a problem.

Their contact form provides the only hint as to cost - the "Budget Including Training:" dropdown starts at $3-4,000 and stops at $25,000+.

Care if I send this guy an email asking for support back to the project?

That’s why I posted this here, so that you core guys could be aware of it and do whatever you felt best.