What is crippleware? Why aren’t all add-ons free?
by Franz
Okay, we’ve been through this enough times that it deserves a clear position from the CEO….
concrete5 core is free and open source. When we say free, we mean “free beer.” Our belief is that content management is a human right, and we are committed to making it easy for everyone in the world to run a website.
However, not every add-on in our marketplace is free. All of them are open source – meaning once you buy it you are “free” to do what you want to it for that site, and you can get “under the hood” completely.
Why do we do this?
A lot of time and money has gone into concrete5. Anyone who doesn’t think we’re generous has vastly underestimated the amount of energy that goes into making a powerful CMS that makes sense and doesn’t require an expert to configure. We are people too however and not only do we need to provide for our families, we also need to continue to put the level of coherent leadership into the project that it benefited from when we were strictly commercial software for 5 years.
A huge part (IMHO – most) of what makes concrete5 so compelling over other projects like Drupal and Joomla is the fact that it does take the risk of saying “this is the right solution” to many problems. No, we don’t believe you really need 300 results for “permissions” when searching for add-ons to a project. How about manning up and just getting the core solution right? That’s our philosophy. We don’t always hit the mark because we’re human, but we’ve done pretty well so far, and that’s the goal for the future as well.
Same deal with the marketplace. Other projects seem to have a pretty low barrier of entry for add-ons. I’m not entirely sure if there even is any barrier, but if it exists, surely the question is “does this add-on work with a clean install of our app? Didn’t break? Okay give them a project area – goooo Open Source!” Well bravo for Free Love and everyone being Super Duper, but I see that as unfair to the next schmoe who is trying to figure out how to solve their own problem. If I download a weather widget and my whole site breaks because it uses the same table as some image gallery I already had running, everyone fails. The weather widget developer looks like an ass, and so does the image gallery developer. Both end up doing way more individualized support than they should to keep their customers happy. Moreover, the overall project fails because now no one can trust any add-on to do anything easily. This is where Drupal certainly is today, just look at Acquia’s business model. This is unacceptable to us.
At concrete5.org you will only find things that work. If they don’t work, we’re gonna make them work for you. $15, $55, or even a couple hundred bucks is a small price to pay for something that solves a real business need for you and is going to work in a seamless, happy, healthy way. When we evaluate a new add-on, the question will be “does it work on an install with EVERYTHING added?” This is a huge challenge, but we think it’s going to be critical to the success of our project in the big picture.
How do we decide what is in core?
Anything that will make a fundamental change to the way concrete5 works which would impact all add-ons and benefits the community/project is free. So recent additions that fall in that category include things like:
- A My Profile section that various add-ons like forums or ecommerce would depend on.
- An advanced file system that all add-ons can use.
- A better way to create shared central blocks.
The reality is that with other projects like Drupal, once you’ve installed one modification to the way core permissions work you’ve effectively rendered their massive marketplace to you. How can the huge community really even help when everyone’s configuration is a unique one off? We’re going to do everything we can to keep this project from splintering into core pieces that don’t work with one another and render all subsequent add-ons a crap shoot.
Anything that we think is a basic building block to 80% of the websites out there in the world, we’ll make either part of the core or free in the marketplace. So things around embedding most types of content, some interaction like guestbooks and forums..etc.. We’re not asking “would everyone benefit” – because who doesn’t want free stuff, but rather “do you /need/ this to get your point across with the software.” Some examples:
- You can place banner ads using the Content Block, the HTML block or the Image block and your site visitors will never know the difference. Want to track click-throughs, impressions, and pull from centralized ad groups that randomize choices? You can do that, you can have it TONIGHT! That costs $55.
- You can assign a date to any page in concrete5, so it’s possible to make many different type of chronilogical interfaces with the core. You can also just include a Google Calendar with the HTML block. Want a month view, list view, and ajax driven agenda view to a multiple calendar system that makes event pages spread across your site? Want that working NOW? You need to pay something too.
How do we price things?
We make it up. We don’t frankly care how long it took us to write it, we don’t care how much the competition sells it for, we’re guessing how much you’re willing to pay to have it “just work.” No lie. This is business 101.
But wait, what about the Community??!?
Here’s some promises to our community we’ve always kept and always will:
- Your stuff can go in our marketplace. We don’t care if you’re selling it or giving it away, if your able to give us a stable, solid, correctly packaged add-on for concrete5 and we don’t think it’s malware, we’ll stick it in the marketplace. I can’t promise you we’ll feature it above our own in every interface view, but we’ll gladly post your free image gallery block right up there next to our own $15 per site one. If yours is better and you can make the community happy using it, so much the better for everyone.
- We will help you sell your own stuff. Software is about support as much as creation. If you’re making something and giving it away, you might consider selling it and making a buck. Getting out of the purely hourly revenue model is the dream of almost every developer out there, and we think we’re gonna make a lot of dreams come true with this awesome marketplace. If you’re making stuff that people want, you should want to help them install and use it safely. You should want to add to it over time. You should be compenstated for your efforts. If you’d like to sell something you’ve built in our marketplace, all we ask is 25% cut of the price. This is less than Apple’s iPhone App store and from what I can tell comperable to Dot Net Nuke’s system if not better.
- This stuff is not going to be super expensive. I’ve seen libraries that take this approach where solutions cost many thousands of dollars. Crap, I remember buying a Digital Asset Management system from the Cold Fusion marketplace back in the day for 8k and still shoveling out 30k to the developers to customize it to our client’s needs. This isn’t the model here. The highest price we’ve even debated setting a product at so far is $255. That’s what most targeted consumer software is priced at today. There’s no five figure recurring yearly license fees here.
What does this mean for the project?
It means a lot of great stuff. It means we’re going to end up building a community that is not only passionate, but is actually making a better life for themselves and their families out of their contributions. It means when you go shopping for add-ons for your site, you’ll be able to do it with a smile on your face and try stuff out without fear.
Is it open source? Absolutely yes. Open source as a term is really just a catch all for any number of different license types from the 80’s and early 90’s when we were cutting our teeth in the BBS scene, and this idea honors them all quite well.
If you’re still not sold, ponder this:
THE MAN is actually just A Man.
Thanks for making it though this rant, hope you agree – I’m sure you all won’t. If you don’t I’m all ears on constructive suggestions. If the reply is “it should be free because I want it to be, and it’s not my problem how you or the project succeeed in the big picture…”… the door is that-a way. <grin>
Thanks for that Franz. It’s good to see it laid out like that.
I feel that if an add on solves an business problem, then be it free or not i’m going to grab it. If I do pay for it then i’m safe in the knowledge that there will be some support behind it.
In the end if someone wants to charge for an add-on they have put hours of work into, then they should be able to. It can only enhance the quality of Concrete5.
chunksmurray
3 May 09 at 10:43 pm
True true true… But whatever you write Franz, some people will never understand that I think.
If some people can publish all their work for free – nice..
What annoys me is the fact that as soon as you give something away for free, people expect everything and even more to get for free. How difficult is it to understand that even someone who released a software for free, also needs to make a couple of bucks?
Remo
3 May 09 at 11:47 pm
Hi Franz,
(and all of the c5 developers) Keep doing what you’re doing, it will always be unpopular to some but you can’t run a business on free downloads alone…
keep up the good work.
Nathan
4 May 09 at 2:54 am
I absolutely agree! I create websites, using all kinds of Open Source software and technology. When even I meet the customer I say tree things:
1. The software IS free and here is the URL…
2. I’m charging your for my *time* and *effort*
3. You can do whatever you want with it and use it forever.
That’s it and I’m happy this way.
You have my voice, please keep it this way.
Ossama Khayat
4 May 09 at 4:46 am
We wouldn’t have a lot of good open-source software if there wasn’t money coming from somewhere to support it. Look at MySQL, critical chunks of the Linux kernel, all the stuff Novell is doing, etc.
The money has to come from somewhere. A lot is done through services. And in reality, the paid add-ons are similar to services rendered. It’s almost a contract job to add additional features to an open-source project. At least that’s the way I look at it.
killroyboy
4 May 09 at 10:45 am
I am new in this CMS, but my question is, is it possible to put in marketplace also some concrete5 ready templates, because the templting system is very simply, but still powerfull – multiple layouts.
Wieshka
5 May 09 at 3:38 pm
I’m absolutely impressed with C5 as a whole so far and the more I research into it, I’m liking what I see. No joke, after this long (12 years of selling and managing web sites), I’m prepared to pull the credit card out for mods for this contraption. I like the overall picture. I like the fact that SOMEONE for once is offering a free CMS that was actually logically built. If an add-on works and has the potential to make ME money, then I say pay the artist. Let’s face it, developer/programmer are just new terms for artist
Neo.W128
13 May 09 at 3:48 pm
I agree.. Thanks Franz for typing this all up it really gives us a good look on how things will be! C5 is doing a great job
b-lew
20 May 09 at 8:34 am
Yes, there already are themes in the marketplace. You can browse them from the design tab of your concrete5 install or at http://concrete5.org/marketplace
Franz
16 Jun 09 at 9:57 am
Thanks for the insight Franz.
I just installed C5 on a test site and am quite impressed thus far.
James
28 Jul 09 at 9:46 am
I agree with you fully here. Both the main article and the commentators. The problems we have been facing with the Joomla projects we have running tells a very clear story: open source should not be free as in no cost – but free as in freedom. I have a number of times stubled by extensions for Joomla that has actually broke the site compelety. Poor quality control is the main reason I think.
Bjorn Solstad
29 Jul 09 at 3:47 am
sorry to be the voice of dissent, but I broke concrete5 within 5 minutes by turning on pretty/clean urls and attempting to navigate to the search page. I had followed the readme to the letter so i’m sure its not a personal issue! The other semi- bothersome thing is when I registered as a dev on concrete5, my session was maintained but it continued to ask me to log in when I tried to navigate to the SVN link here: http://www.concrete5.org/developers/beta/. Just diminishes the credibility of the project overall.
Those issues aside, it looks like Concrete5 took all the foibles of the other CMSes like wordpress, joomla and specifically Drupal and combined them into a highly usable interface. Once Concrete5 becomes more of a stable product, I’d definitely switch from drupal as it will be easier to train clients (people who live and breathe on ms word/excel) on how to use it. I don’t like paying for modules, but i’m willing to do so if I they provably save me time because I can just predictably charge the client I’m developing for.
chris neglia
20 Oct 09 at 11:28 am
I’m somewhat interested in trying your CMS here, but one gets the impression that you are standing far far behind it considering that this site is made with WordPress.
James Ross
2 Nov 09 at 9:19 pm
I enjoy reading your rant.
Bottom line: People need money to survive, at least I do. There are lots of things I do for free, but I do need to get some money from somewhere.
Might I offer a semantic change. Instead of stating that you are charging $55 for the module, change it to a $55 development fee or consultancy fee. It changes the feeling from purchasing something that is opensource and should therefore cost $0, to getting something for $0 but paying the development time.
I am just getting into Concrete and I am enjoying it. Thanks for your time.
Ian
17 Nov 09 at 1:36 pm
I totally agree with everything you said Franz, and I like concrete5 particularly because you offer ‘one solution’ to a need. After years of installing and customising different CMS’, believe me I’ve been there, trying to fix someone else’s code, or trying to contact long gone developers who once put together something half baked.
long live Concrete5!
Nathan
5 Jan 10 at 4:38 am
we actually set this blog up a long time before the developers who built a blog in concrete5 had done so. At the time it was the right decision to make. Wordpress is a great blog, and all we wanted this to be was a blog. If you need a CMS to actually power a more complex website, concrete5 is a much better choice..
I don’t use a hammer to drive screws either.
-frz
Franz
12 Feb 10 at 11:00 pm
pretty urls do require some server specific settings to happen in an .htaccess file so it’s not entirely shocking you had issues getting it to work. And our subversion hosting isn’t through our own cms, so you do have to connect to it on it’s own. This is a pretty old comment I’m just getting to replying to anyway – so I hope you’ve managed to get those issues and spend some more time with the project. We’re working on improving documentation now so that should help with the learning curve as well.
best wishes.
-frz
Franz
12 Feb 10 at 11:04 pm
I’ve been using C5 for just a few weeks now and really love what I’ve found so far, and I seem to find something new every day. (today I found a cool Twitter block).
Anyway, keep up the great work, can’t wait to see what’s to come!
Fayetteville Video
14 Feb 10 at 11:18 am
Great write-up on your philosophy regarding add-ons. Many a time I’ve been investigating Drupal modules and WordPress plugins, trying to find the one worth depending on to solve the specific problem. Often, there will be many many options; some recently updated, some not recently updated but highly rated, etc, which makes it very difficult to choose. And then, as you mention: The next thing you install might break the previous, putting your back to square one.
So, I’m very happy to have found Concrete5, and will no doubt base my next client projects on it, and blissfully choose from a select, stable bunch of add-ons, that play nicely with each other.
Thanks for being different!
Oliver
Oliver
1 Mar 10 at 10:57 am
[...] An article I found particularly interesting can be found here: What is crippleware? Why aren’t all add-ons free? [...]
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