I am sorry - I'm not a developer but I have to disagree.
I've been running on a clean compiled version of DNN since earlier this year, 4.41 perhaps. I can't remember the exact date, it has been around Feb or March this year, so we're talking nearly a full year of use without a single performance glitch once sites are running. A couple of us were sick of the bloat, errors and lack of testing on builds. The impact on businesses when your sites you deliver don't work and you have to wait for weeks for a fix simply took it's toll. I didn't create the compiled version, it was done by someone else and while people may say it's a fork, I prefer to call it a pure clean error free build. My clients are thrilled, particularly those who I've upgraded from DNN 3 environment, they can't believe the difference, particularly when editing their sites.
This vanilla install comprises of 12 DLLs, and I have successfully deployed sites running every module except those require the App_Code folder - as developers creating a WSP module require this folder, non of those vb files sitting in the folder, lightweight and suits me to a tee. It's light, fast, all the extra touches to the db which DNN does are not there and I believe I can double, maybe at a pinch, triple, the amount of single install dnn sites I run on a hosted environment.
I would call it a commercial version of DNN, as it's not free, but it has run every single dnn module as per normal, except those falling into the WSP development class, which need to be compiled to use.
I love it, it has some of the extra 'must have features' like no default skins, use a css based dynamic menu and if there is a quirky problem that we often have to wait weeks and weeks for it's patched. It made pure commercial sense for it to be written.
Now that I've got my 4.7 running with the features I'm looking - including Page Import / Export, I'll be working on this build to make up my customised install so I can focus on moving ahead with business rather that wondering when that bug will be written out of the core build. Once this build is tested and perfected, I'm going to run with this for quite some time and have several resellers and commercial developers waiting to use something for their business.
And it's fast.. did I tell you that? DNN is great, I so much wished the visionary developers would have spent more time making a really kick butt error free build so we could make great commerical decisions with DNN but they have their own vision and I understand that, however, for me running a business centred around DNN I need to have better control and I've been on the razors edge for too long and this precomiled, error free build has made a big difference to me. Waiting for bugs to be written out of DNN severely impacted on my business before this, as I am running DNN as a complete non developer, I just need it to work.
No it's not free or open source, it's not taking away from this wonderful project. I support the DNN project by having community sites that allow newcomers to experience a few things and it's great for the guys to come up with these amazing ideas we're seeing for the future so keep them coming, but for me, a precompiled version of DNN has been the best decision I made.
Some of the modules I can think of offhand that run on it include - Catalook, Sigmapro help desk, Active Forums, active compare, 3d carousel, mandeeps live products, xmod, listx, dynamic registrationa, h20 forms, property agent, simple gallery, news articles, mediant reviews, dotnetjedi modules, RAD components, Ultravideo gallery, Open DNN - and I couldn't run DMX but that was because of our SQL environment, not the build it's on. You can see even by this list of modules that these are complex, popular modules and I wouldn't think twice about installing them, but yes - we do install locally on dev environment to check how they work, just as we do with our standard DNN builds.
The only modules I ran into challenges with were the silverlight module here which requires app_code folder and the cutesoft chat and live help which required the source version to be installed.
I can't disclose any more about it, as once word got around that there was a 'compiled' build, the terms and conditions changed on the DNN site, and we are not allowed to talk about it, even though it's a commercial product. This post may be deleted, but I wanted to let developers who ask about compiling capabilities, that yes - it is possible. And no I don't write it, nor do I write any code and NO it's not free or going to be part of any other open source project, so please don't ask me for a free copy.
But yes - it is possible and developers who prefer this environment should be happy to know that DNN can support compiled builds.
Nina Meiers
Lots of free Skins..