The new website showcases the platform even more than before.  There is an entire 'top level' menu item dedicated to it, and that gives all the download links and places to go.  The new community features on the new site are better than ever before.  Another top-level menu item concentrating around the community.  A new leaderboard, new ways of earning points - the community features are exactly what was needed to invigorate participation. 

Splitting a site into two is not a good idea in my opinion because it dilutes the effort, SEO rankings, traffic and everything else.  The DNN platform needs to have impact, and having the Evoq Solutions on the same site only strengthens this.  This is not a unique situation in the open-source content management space, and all successful projects ultimately need some type of commercial reality to keep them bubbling along.

As Erik mentioned already, development will be open to community members for core contributions and bug fixes which is probably more important to community members than many other things.

In terms of the Url Master product- the core of the module is now included in the DNN platform and gives a great opportunity to expand.  It gives the platform a much more functional URL scheme and gives developers of all kinds a stronger platform to work on.   You don't have to switch over - you can continue to use the Url Master module if you don't want to leverage the new features in DNN 7.1.

As for developers leaving - this does and has happened in the DNN community as it does in all industries; companies come and go.  But many new developers have entered and appear to be successful in recent years by concentrating on good products and support.    The platform itself is evolving at a rapid pace and keeping modules up to that is not easy.  Some of the more recent entrants have impressed me with their design and features.

So while things can always get better than they are, I think things are heading in the right direction.  Even taking a minute to compare DNN 7.1 with DNN 6, which isn't that old, shows how far things have come along. 

Hi Shai,

I've been a commercial DNN module developer since the beginning, first selling my modules back in 2004.  I have lived through every trial and tumult in this community (does anyone remember Flatburger?). I've survived many ups and downs in the economy and marketplace.  I cannot count the number of times that "the community" sounded the death knell for DNN.   Granted, DNN Corp has made a few bad decisions in the past. Every company and person is fallible. 

I've also had moments where I was not happy with DNN Corp's decisions and have felt the energy ebb from the community. The recent re-branding, however, is one decision I can get fully behind. 

First, removing "DotNetNuke" from the moniker is a huge leap forward in terms of making our platform sound like a grown-up platform.  I have likened it to a child that has turned 18, left his/her parents house, and decided to be called John instead of Johnny. 

Second, re-branding the commercial products to be called "Evoq" makes a lot of sense too. This enables the commercial side of the product to be distinguished and marketed more easily going forward. Try walking into the offices of a Fortune 500 company and pitching "DotNetNuke". It's an unnecessary hurdle you have to jump. 

In the end, the revenue of DNN Corp funds development and infrastructure of the community.  Companies do this all the time. Adobe recently forked the open source project "Code Mirror" and called it Brackets - another open source project. Then they pulled that into their own commercial product Adobe Code. Evoq Content and Evoq Social is no different.

Third, if DNN Corp were to drop support for the community edition, it would be like cutting off their legs and trying to run a marathon. It's just not going to happen. Without the open source version, they're just another company trying to market their proprietary wares - a very difficult prospect in this saturated market.

There is merit to your idea of a separate website. After all 10Gen, the company behind the open source MongoDB, has 2 sites for MongoDB - mongodb.com and mongodb.org. The .org goes to the community MongoDB site.  In theory this sounds like a good idea. However, given the reaction to the rebranding, can you imagine the hell-fire that would rain down if DNN actually shunted the community off onto its own website?  What kind of signal would you have taken from that? 

Personally knowing some of the leading personalities at DNN Corp like Erik, Bruce, Will Morgenweck, Joe Brinkman and many others, I know they are deeply committed to the success of the platform - both the commercial side and the community side.

Anyway, change always makes people edgy - understandably so. But it's change that allows people and products to thrive. Otherwise they grow sedentary, slow, and dull-witted and will eventually eaten by a faster, smarter predator/competitor. 

My 2cents,

Kelly
Kelly Ford
Founder and Developer of XMod Pro and DNNDev.com