(Cross-posting the comments I left in Navin's blog, as they are related to this discussion)
As much as it may appear to some that DNN Corp was totally clueless in regards to the acquisition of the Xepient modules, I have to admit that there was a lot of careful thought and deliberation which went into this announcement..
From the moment that DNN Corp announced Professional Edition, we made it very clear that our goal was to sell a "complete solution". This approach conformed to the "open core" business model and was comprised of the DotNetNuke core framework, some proprietary extensions ( we take advantage of the same extensibility points which are available to the community ), and professional support. And alhough we knew that some of the proprietary extensions we created would have business value on their own, we deliberately made a decision to NOT offer them independently from the complete solution. We imposed this restriction on ourselves because we wanted to absolutely avoid a situation where we would be competing with module vendors.
If DNN Corp offered Open Document Library as a stand-alone module on Snowcovered, would it not send a message that we are now in the "module business"? Would this not set a precedent which would make other module vendors worried in terms what other types of modules we would introduce in the future? If developers feel there is unfair competition in a market, they will go elsewhere for opportunities. This would be devestating for the DotNetNuke ecosystem, as the module vendors provide a tremendous amount of professionalism, innovation, and value to the platform.
From a consumer perspective, we did realize that the Open Document Library acquisition would cause some discomfort. However, the fact that a comparably priced document management solution is still available ( DMX by Bring2Mind ) does provide a suitable alternative for those using Community Edition. Not to mention that in the DNN ecosystem we have seen time and again how the laws of supply and demand instill healthy competition amongst module developers, so I would not be surprised to see some other offerings emerge in the near future.
Document management was a special case based on the fact we had received enough demand for it that we concluded we needed to include the feature in our Professional Edition. This was identified ~ 9 months ago and since there were already a few options available, we then needed to make the build vs. buy decision. Clearly, a lot of work was required to build a robust document management system so it became clear that an acquisition would be the best option, so long as as we could find a suitable partner and the economic conditions were agreeable. We analyzed the 2 leading document systems and opened negotiations with their owners. Ultimately, when all factors were weighed against one another ( ie. legal, financial, product , etc...) we felt Xepient had a slight advantage and we were very pleased that their management team was interested in working with us.
At this time we have no plans for additional module acquisitions. So to interpret this isolated event as a trend is certainly the wrong conclusion. We recognize the value of the extension ecosystem and it would be illogical ( if not fatal ) for us to disrupt it by removing all of the most popular modules from circulation.