Andy Miller wrote:
Secondly, the worst part about this is they are neglecting their customers and treating them with this kind of disrespect and support is really despicable. I would stay away from people who do business like this.. (jots down a note of projects/developers to steer clear of)
Treating them with disrespect how? They can't stay without modifying their business model into a potentially unsustainable model. Staying alive is better for their customers than dieing.
Most of them from what I can see are continuing to support 1.0.x just not moving to 1.5
Andy Miller wrote:
Thirdly, these developers are partly riding the success of joomla to make their businesses viable. I will concede that a portion of joomla's success can be attributed to commercial developers, there's no denying it, but on the other hand, it's the very success of joomla that brought these developers to joomla, and led them to create products for it etc. Joomla itself is developed with thousands of hours of donated time, and walking away from joomla also shows the project a great deal of disrespect, imho.
The project dealt them a fair hand of disrespect first though... They didn't ask to be told to change their licenses go away or potentially be sued. They haven't been left a lot of choice if they want to stay in business.
Joomla isn't really that much different from any other Big CMS though. Especially not it's own forks! Why is joomla more successful than the forks? Why has Joomla outgrown other more mature and more full featured CMS like Drupal?
Joomla certainly doesn't have more features than Drupal....
As for joomla's success, entire vertical markets will now disappear from the list of Joomla customers. Not because Joomla got worse, but because what they need to run a business is no longer provided on Joomla. These people couldn't care less if it's Joomla, mambo or my Mom's Roast Chicken as long it keeps their business website going and is a free cms they will use it.
Hotel Reservations (and any type I think) are now gone from J1.5
There will be no more Real Estate Sites.
Directory sites are dubious as the only remaining GPL directory - sobi2 is supported by a commercial developer
Ip sales sites are also no longer going to be available.
No more job sites
The list goes on..
Wherever there was a small niche that only had one or two extensions to cater to it, but that brought hundreds or even thousands of people to Joomla there is now a risk of that market taking off.
Andy Miller wrote:
I was planning on creating a commercial venture selling components, so the discussions and decision regarding the GPL statement had a direct effect on me also, but i'm not going to walk away from my plan, i'm just going to regroup and come up with another solution to the problem. But heh, that's just me.
With these developers leaving, i guess it leaves the playing field open for others...
Except that the playing field has always been open... There never was people stopping GPL extensions from being developed. The existence of commercial proprietary projects never hampered anyone from doing their own stuff. Why do people suddenly think that a massive bunch of experienced GPL programmers with 2 or so years of Joomla/mambo experience, and a enough free time on their hands to make stuff and provide support at the same rate as person who works full time on it, are going to materialise out of thin air?
I wouldn't be surprised if a few hard core GPL purists were attracted by the new stance. But I think it's just insane to try to imply that there is a magical army of GPL Joomla programmers prepared to come in and take the place of the commercial 3pd's at the drop of a hat.
If there was, where have they been hiding for the last couple of years???
Yes some people can regroup and come back with other plans because some models work under GPL but not all.
When the GPL heroes start pounding out examples of commercially viable GPL they always bring up frameworks like Linux or operating systems. The problem with is that extensions are not frameworks. Everyone can't build linux just to keep their family fed.
Joomla pulled the income and viability for their business out of these guys pockets, so why are they being disrespectful by pulling out of Joomla? If your boss told you he was going to stop paying you, would you feel obligated to continue working?