Greg Brown: I don't see where you stated any real facts!

Crippleware? 1- Is there any functionality or option in the CE version that you can see but doesn't work? 2- Is there any functionality that was in the CE version (or before the split) that was taken out and placed in the PE version? That's crippleware. Does that Drupal blogger know what he's talking about? I wonder if he actually used DNN inside and out. I would be more interested in knowing why he prefers Drupal.

As for Telerik's RadEditor, do we need a Rolls Royce HTML editor to do real  content editing. The editor is nice to have. It's not necessary to have. AFAIK, the corp is working on writing a wrapper for the new CKEditor which is a very capable editor. RadEditor is just an alternative editor. Telerik is a commercial company selling commercial products. No one should be expecting it to offer its products for free. People should be thankful for whatever the corp/Telerik is throwing at them for free. Let's not get too greedy and selfish. When a commercial for-profit company offers something for free, it's a way to get you to learn more about the company and eventuall buy something. I am OK with that.

All the extra stuff that's provided in the PE edition, I can do without. The CE version is very capabale and it's getting better and growing and no one is paying a penny for it. So far I am happy with the CE version. Actually unless the user interface gets more streamlined and easier to use, I can say it's pretty complete. If I need extra functionality for it, I can just get it as a module from the free or commerical ones.

We have been through this CE vs PE concerns before. Unless I see CE uselfuless' shrinking or see snail growth, I have very little worry.

I haven't seen the report. I am expecting it to be a report on the different CMS; features and not about the technologies behind them.

Greg,

I can appreciate that you don't like the "PE and CE share the same code" statement, but we (the development team) feel it's important - perhaps we haven't done a good enough job explaining why it's key. Essentially what it means is that there is no seperate PE codebase - all PE extras are just extensions such as providers, skins, modules etc. i.e. they simply upgrade CE (the opencore) to become PE. This means that anyone could make their CE version work identically to PE by either buying or building similar extensions. By it's very nature this means CE is not crippleware - it would be crippleware if we built code into the core that only PE could use. Instead by using this model, everyone shares a common base, and everyone benefits from any (paid) time DNN Corp staff spend on this i.e. fixing bugs, adding enhancements, adding additional extension points etc. This means we share a similar model to say MySQL which has a free version, but if you pay for the enterprise version you get some extensions why can be ran against the free version. The alternative would be something like Redhat which creates 2 versions - fedora (free) and red hat enterprise licence (RHEL) - in effect 2 seperate products. This means that their devs have to work on both and often if a bug is found have to detect if it's in both versions anc can't easily migrate the fixes across. W e strongly feel that this model doesn't work - and if fact means all the effort goes to the commercial version rather than to both.

We also feel that there must always be a free, opensource version of DotNetNuke, and that it's vital that it improves constantly. Whilst many people will find it suits their needs, others will find that they want the intergrated extensions or support of PE - this also allows people to start a business with minimal overhead, and in time if the business succeeds they may want to spend money on PE - in effect some CE installs act as a sales funnel for future PE upgrades. A lot of people have commented that they want other options , and this is definately something we're listening to - at openforce US we discussed a new proposed product ("PE express") which would have a lower cost and different terms that PE/PE elite/PE premiere. Please be aware we're still a young company and constantly evolving, so what you see today is not the final options - things will change.

Finally, I find the drupal complaints interesting, for a start they clearly don't understand the DotNetNuke or it's extension model, again this is something we probably need to work more on clarifying.  Secondly drupal has a commercial entity called acquia started by the original drupal developers. Whilst acquia does not provide custom extensions, they do provide support and additional documentation that is only available to paid subscribers e.g you have to purchase acquia to get a log in to post to their forums, and . http://acquia.com/products-services/drupal-technical-support lists a number of pieces of additional documentation that are only available to their premium subscribers

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Cathal

I'll cry UNCLE! now and step off my soap box.

From the lack of other people I know in the community commenting in this thread I would say I'm barking up the wrong tree. Apparently it is only I who has not adjusted well in the switch from a community backed project to a corporate backed project. I will just have to get used to the fact that potential new features down the road will be called "extensions" rather than "core".

Thanks to Scott and Cathal for their comments. And a special thanks to Telerik and DNN Corp. for allowing the use of Telerik controls in CE!!  I am excited to see these controls used in the core, forge, projects, extension modules.  UDT Lists and forms should be really cool with RADGrid. In fact the use of Telerik controls could really help set DNN further apart from the other CMS's.