What would hurt the project even more though is if the core team can’t support itself comfortably or have time to devote to the project to continue it’s development. I don’t think anyone has a clue how many thousands of hours have been freely donated to this project by a great pool of people for a variety of reasons.
And that ladies and gentlemen is the most important point in this topic for me. Eveyone understands the benefits of Open Source, but as Ryan points out there has to be an income somewhere along the line and who is really going to spend 100’s of hours writing commercial level products and then make them freely available to everyone else without ever getting any reward.
I for one want to see Ryan and everyone who is contributing 1000;s of hours to MODx to be justifyably rewarded. I think its essential long term and can be done through additional services that will actually ensure MOdx as a free Open source product continues to be stronger. I don’t think there is any suggestion that MODx would be anything other than free Open source software that will continue to get better, but the additional value add services of maybe hosting, higher level support services etc etc will provide the funding to ensure the core team will continue to work on MODx. No one can reasonably expect these founders and key developers to keep doing this for nothing. Donations are one route but how many of the 4000+ members have ever made any sort of donation, yet how many use the software to generate revenue by selling MODx as part of their CMS solution to clients. Who would work for their clients for nothing and roll out a MODx solution free. Even if you wanted to you cannot, bills have to be paid. And most successful Open Source projects have some mechanism of generating revenue for the large user base.
The commercial add-ons is something separate that could be bolted in, project management, eCommerce, full document management suite etc. As commercial add-ons they would have to be very well developed products, fully documented and supported. These would take a significant time to develop and would be much more than a new snippet. Overall I don’t think such commercial level add-ons would stop developers adding new features etc to the core code, indeed these people would have a greater vested interest in helping to ensure MODx was adopted and used by as many people as possible as that increases the market share and therefore the opportunity to sell more commercial add-ons etc.
If there were a handful of commercial add-ons, reasonably priced and fully integrated that would mean I could offer my clients a wider range of solutions I could sell more systems, and of course that means another MODx client also. If someone using MODx was not prepared to buy these, they have lost nothing and what’s their alternative then? Would you spend 1000’s of hours writing the module your client wants, will they pay for all your time and will they then be happy to say "Although its cost me £5000, you can add this to MODx so others customers, maybe our competitors, can have it for nothing, I really don’t think so.
Duane make a valid point with IM, but if you can get more than one sale, then software that costs $2500 should be say $399 for each customer on a commercial basis and that a win win. If they were gready, some else will spot the opportuntity and sell it commercially for $399, providing there is market demand, competition in this way is healthy for everyone and keeps prices down and functionality up . Of course, if something then comes along that is Open Source, free and better, then everyone will use that... until there is something better...
I love that this topic is debated in open on the forum and I hope that it will lead a working out a satisfactory and beneficial model for everyone involved in this great product in the near future.
MODX Staff
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