Thoughtful post, thanks Greg.
You hit on several things, so I'm going to offer a few more comments. I'm going to use quotes just to make sure the comments are in context.
Greg Brown wrote
I think there are a large amount of people, including myself, who sincerely hope your vision is the direction DNN goes. I think many of us, having had experience with other open source projects that turned commercial, are leery of the same things that happened in those projects happening with DotNetNuke. I.e. The open source versions of the projects get turned into Crippleware (as one Drupal blogger called DNN CE in a recent blog shared in the DNN Twitterverse) in order to drive sales to the commercial version.
In my role as Director of Community Relations, I can say without hesitation that our Board of Directors and corporate management are committed to the open source project and community. I personally have been pretty vocal about those kinds of things myself, having followed Community Server down this path. To call Community Edition "crippleware" is just plain crazy... there are no limits on anything in DNN, no artificial boundaries of any kind. Having said that, it is entirely fair to say that we have engineers working on proprietary extensions just like every other vendor and service provider who uses DotNetNuke. Because we remain customers of the open source software ourselves... it has to be rock solid and continuously improving.
Greg Brown wrote
The initial Uh-Oh moment was when DNN Corp was formed, then executives from other open source projects who turned their open source versions into Crippleware were hired, and then the Venture Capital money got involved, etc. While none of those developments necessarily mean that CE will be Crippleware they don't make community members feel real warm and fuzzy either.
It helps me to know how concerns arise... so let me dig into this a little more. DotNetNuke Corporation was formed in 2006, I did a lot of the paperwork myself *grin*. We had to do that because the project was already at risk of imploding... too much work (benefiting others) and not enough revenue. So Shaun, myself, Joe and Nik threw ourselves into this full time. I can't think who you might be referring to as executives who turned things into crippleware, no executives were hired until after we were funded. But Larry Augustine (of VA Linux, SourceForge, etc. fame) has been a good friend and adviser for a long time and we started working with Navin Nagiah, a successful CEO doing open source implementation at Cygnex. We were very selective about our venture capital, accepting investment from two highly reputable firms August Capital and Sierra Ventures, both with open source backgrounds.
If we got all "crazy" and did shoot ourselves in the foot and allow the Community Edition to languish... I can't even imagine how fast a new "fork" would replace DotNetNuke, since every version has been shipped with a BSD license that would make that possible. Of course the trademarks would make that more difficult, but the point is that all of us (community, team, management, board, investors) know that our success rises and falls with the success of Community Edition.
Greg Brown wrote
On that note let's take a look at the latest release - 5.2. The inclusion of Telerik controls was a big announcement - a HUGE advantage for DotNetNuke (and a smart move for Telerik in my opinion). Making the full development license PE only was a good move - a nice value add. But I don't understand making the RADEditor PE only. Especially since the Telerik .dll you included in CE (I am very grateful that you didn't make all of Telerik PE only) contains the whole library of asp.net ajax controls including the RADEditor. So all one needs to do is download the Telerik built DNN provider and they have the RADEditor in CE. Since I would guess the majority of the DNN community aren't aware of this many of them are probably seeing the the inclusion of Telerik as widening the gap between PE and CE significantly. To me this was a very large missed opportunity to dispel some of the fears listed above.
I completely understand this concern. Ironically sometimes things seem very deliberate when, in fact, they are not. The most challenging aspect of making the telerik components useful in CE is the fact that we must provide wrappers for things to make them usable under the license terms (this does not apply to developers with telerik licenses). It took a long time to work out the legal aspects of this and rather than make a release wait for months while worked on wrappers, we opted to get it into people's hands right away... this is part of what an OS project does (or tries to do), be more nimble. Over the next several releases (minor and major), you'll be seeing design patterns and wrappers, components, etc. introduced which leverage telerik for users and developers. Having spent several months, lots of money in legal reviews and enormous mental investment in getting this done... I hope you won't begrudge us a short "first mover" advantage from our own efforts?
Greg Brown wrote
So you're taking features that would have been part of the core pre-DNN Corp and calling them "extensions". It's important to remember that there are many community members who have been around a long time (which is a very good thing and a testament to the value of DNN) and to us everything was "core" (pre-DNN Corp) . Permissions system = core, text/html module=core, control panel=core, repository module=core, etc. (hence the term core module).
I understand. We (the founders) have been around as long as anyone *grin*. Its important to remember that "pre-DNN Corp", we were all doing this in our spare time. I managed the first release that Shaun did not handle personally, 1.0.10, implemented source code control, issue tracking, etc. I've done most of our team management since late 2003. While there are many contributions (both small and large), the actual coding, testing, packaging, distribution, etc. of DotNetNuke has always been done by a very small group, funded either by our day jobs or by Shaun himself. I understand how hard it is to adjust to this mindset, but what this means is that we were constantly giving away everything we could produce, with no dependable revenue to justify it. What the community noticed when we formed the corporation was a huge drop in activity because 4 of its major contributors had changed focus (trying to ensure the longevity of the project). Since investment (1 year ago), we've cranked out the releases, improved the testing, etc... and we're just starting to get into a groove.
Having said all that... the changes are actually good ones, allow me to elaborate. One of my goals for our Forge this year is to change the notion of "core modules" to include any Forge module that is "worthy" of inclusion. It has always been a travesty that some really good free modules didn't get visibility and some tired, (*I have to say*) crappy "core modules" got promoted in distribution. Its a non-trivial issue to solve, but I am working on this with our Engineering department and the Forge Community Team which includes the likes of Chris Paterra, Stefan Cullmann, Bill Severence, etc. Steve Fabian, the guy who contributed and still manages the Repository module, is also working on this (as part of the Quality Community Team)... considering how we can include the entire community in making the "worthy" decision with respect to Forge modules. This stuff all takes time, but this is part of why we need corporate backing to strategize, plan, mobilize, build, deliver and operate these programs. None of this would happen without Professional Edition.
Greg Brown wrote
I also don't think any community members begrudge the corp/core team members the opportunity of making money. Personally I hope the corp/core team members get filthy stinking rich from their efforts. Just not at the expense of the community. I'd much prefer the team members got filthy stinking rich BECAUSE of the community - then everybody wins.
Thank you... *grin*, we completely agree. There will probably always be a little bit of healthy tension (ying / yang, quid-pro-quo, choose your phrase) with respect to Professional Edition. But what I think is easily forgotten is that we have chosen a much higher road to pursue. By virtue of making CE the foundation of our commercial offerings, without using proprietary hooks, etc. we have put ourselves in the middle of the same open source playing field that every other vendor, partner and provider participates in. Of course we enjoy certain advantages as the steward of the project... but we take NO technical liberties with the application at all. And at the same time, we invest substantially in growing the grass roots, open source, free side of DotNetNuke.
I understand tiring of the message about the Open Core... but as we grow the project, its an important message for newcomers / industry types / researchers / etc. to understand right from the very beginning. And its also important that for those already in the community to see us promoting more contribution of Forge components by others. Isn't the strength of open source (after all) the notion that there are myriad contributors? DotNetNuke Corporation must both develop the Professional Edition without unrelenting zeal and cultivate a more participative environment for the Community Edition and extensions which are the basis of our success. And we'll rely on conscientious community members (like yourself) to always remember that.
So... thank you, Greg *grin*