Today I went to check out if Indoo Grid 3.0 was out. Last time I checked out their site last year, there was an announcement that v3.0 was going to be released soon. I was surprised today to see that the company doesn't exist anymore and the domain name is for sale by a domain names seller. 

That made me think why one of these outcomes didn't happen:

1- Open source the module and donate it to the public and let it keep living and get enhanced. (like what Engage Software did with their modules)

2- Sell the business (at least the domain name, source code plus rights to sell) and let someone else take over. This is a win-win situation. The original owner gets some cash from the business and the interested buyer starts a new business with an already finished product. I have seen several DNN vendors close down and I have not seen an attempt from them to sell the business. Like as simple as announcing in the forum where DNN enthusiasts congregate their intention to close down. Personally I find it unprofessional from such vendors to disappear suddenly without telling their customers of their plans. I am talking about vendors/developers who know ahead of time closing is coming. I used to have my own hosting company and I gave my customer s a 2 months notice that i was closing shop. Enough time for them to find another host. Naturally they would be very unhappy if their site is suddenly offline forever and unable to get their sites' files. Some people do not have backups on them!

But none of that happened. The module is killed, rotting somewhere & no one is benefiting from it anymore. Current owners have no more option for support and upgrades, and probably forced to buy another grid module.

It's a shame.

 

This is one of the great "Catch-22's" of this type of software. For example, the whole social functionality shakeup over the past 2 years really put a halt on my DNN plans. I eventually made the decision to wait it out, as I want to get as much out of the Community edition as possible, rather than 3rd parties (exactly for this reason) - and the price of the Commercial editions were way out of my league. I'd still really like to see group level wiki/blog/forums in Core (which the elimination of Vivo, Smart, and Active all but nullified - so far, and each had that functionality more-or-less), and I wish DNN would focus on Active Forums again - even if they don't use it on this site. Particularly since that ball has been picked up again. They went more for a Facebook type solution, and DID lay the groundwork for other situations, but the group level tools would be extremely useful for some setups. Thankfully, I had the luxury to wait (especially being on a tight budget). Had I gone forward a couple years ago, I would have been in a terribly (expensive) lurch, but I had a feeling this is the direction things would go. I can risk having to rely on a fairly standalone module (such as ecommerce), or a simple one, or one with alternatives (as all can be dealt with), but I hate it when a majorly integrated 3rd party solution goes away like that

Once in a while you will see a post in the forums requesting BETA Testers for OnyakTech modules, but it doesn't happen as often as there are BETA releases to test.   Those posts don't get very many responses and the OnyakTech Subscribers provide an extreme amount of BETA Testing so it's usually not even necessary to find more.

If you are looking to join the BETA Testing of new modules, skins and apps go over to www.OnyakTech.com and join us.  There are a lot of new apps that are in BETA now and more will be released very soon that would love to have you test and provide feedback on.  

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Professional DNN Extensions, custom solutions and mobile apps since 2003.
www.OnyakTech.com