Shaun,

You are right, being mature is kind of subjective, but then again this is a subjective question.  
I was mainly using the term to signify the culmination of effort put into the project over time (including Mambo time of course).
From reading your comparisions, it sounds like you are trying to make an argument that DotNetNuke is as mature as Joomla, although you said it wouldn't matter what you thought because you are biased. 

To be clear, my answer to the question was based on the actual question(s).

You had a couple questions in your post that may have been rhetorical in your mind, but I'd like to answer anyway, afterall no one ever accused me of not having an opinion.

Shaun questions:
So there does seem to be a little bit more download activity on the Joomla! project. But does this indicate maturity?

John answers:
No, this mostly indicates popularity.  But if you do several releases over a specific time frame I can see where that number as it relates to popularity could be skewed.

Shaun questions:
But does marketing indicate maturity?

John answers:
No, but I believe your paragraph with it's ending question was written as an excuse to why Joomla is more popular.

Shaun questions:
So does the quantity of free add-ons indicate maturity?

John answers:
It could be part of the measurement, but I would not put much weight in that.  Again, I think it is more a measure of popularity, but this time it is popularity in the PHP open source developer market.
We have a long way to go as Microsoft developers to even begin to compare in that market, but I do feel that the DotNetNuke project is the most popular Microsoft open source project. 
That is something for us all to be proud of.

Again, my answer was aimed at the real question(s) and I don't think the term maturity was misleading in any way. 

It's ok if we admit another project is more mature and try to emulate those who have "been there and done that".  
We don't always have to come across as DotNetNuke worshipers to show we truly stand behind our product.
I truly believe that people will respect the candor of an honest answer over a biased one.

First off: I know next to nothing about PHP, Joomla or any related technology... I'd think that one of the reasons for PHP based frameworks have more free addons available is the type of license. As far as I understand GPL, it means that your solution needs to be truly unique before you can sell it for money. If development for Joomla is similar too DNN (with developers taking core modules, adding their own code and sell the complete package), that would be against GPL, but not against BSD. I would be truly interested to know whether there are really companies creatin joomla addons, or whether those are primarily created by hobbiests. ... please correct me if i am wrong ;)

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Good thing you know me better ;). I am just truly interested how a small company such as my own could make money in a GPL world. And yes, my lack of knowledge of the GPL license is evident, so i'm sure there is some way there is to be made money using GPL-ed code (AFAIK it is only allowed to charge for redistributing the code, not for the code itself)

Your count is slightly off, there are only 194 commercial addons... . ATM the snowcovered count for DNN 4 modules is 2319. For a framework that is more popular by other counts, the number of commercial addons is far less than those for DNN. My hunch is that that is because of the license....

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