Anyone remembers Community Server software? It used to be open source. Then Telligent offered a commercial version while keeping a free community version. Then the community version went away then it was renamed Telligent Community. Telligent is now Zimbra and things have changed a lot.

I hope DNN doesn't have a similar story in the future. A company acquires DNNSoftware and decides to make it commercial only.

 Tony, sorry for being not precise. I haven't been a member of DNN Corp., I am not and I never will be. But I have been a member of DNN core team for a couple of years, trying to improve the product and community and am still working to provide the best product and services for all community users.

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Cheers from Germany,
Sebastian Leupold

   

Speed up your DNN Websites with TurboDNN

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Don't get your hopes up. The rule for commercial software is exactly this. There are three possible outcomes of a commercial prorietary software project:

1.  It fails and the software gets taken off the market.
2. It becomes succesful and gets bought by a bigger company with a grand plan. The software gets taken off the market, at least from it's previous customers.
3. A constant struggle for the vendor to keep alive. They earn enough money to keep going, but not enough to attract other investors. 

If you are depending on proprietary software and do not have the financial resources to migrate your data to another platform, outcome number 3 is what you hope for. In the DNN ecosystem you will see all of these outcomes. DNN itself is currently risking of falling victim for number 2. 

If you can't afford to pay thousands of dollars a year for Evoq Social, you certainly cannot afford to pay 50 bucks for it either. You will need to stay with the open core or some other open source system. Using proprietary software is like giving away the keys to your house. Sooner than later you will need to cough up the dollars to buy another house. That is not a problem for large corporations that can afford to buy other systems and hire consultants to shift their data.