Tony Henrich wrote:
Maybe it's their "Exit Strategy".. to be acquired and cash out.
I have a few questions:
1- Does the current DNN license permit forking it by taking all the current open source code, calling the CMS something else and continue developing it totally independent of the corp? I assume this might happen when the open DNN is taken off the market, for whatever reason.
2- Can the corp change the current license any time so that #1 can't happen.
3- What's the sentiment for the current commercial module developers? Is their business shrinking? Is it still a good time to create new commercial modules? (assume it's a module better than anything that exists now or there's no competing modules). Is it worth it? Whenever I hear a developer stops selling modules, I wonder if it's a reflection of the DNN market. One comes to mind is Gumbosoft. I purchased modules from them but they disappeared. Always wondered what happened.
If it's their exit strategy or not to be acquired, is not the point here. One day they will receive an offer that will be very hard to refuse. And if the business is successful, these offers will keep coming until they finally cave in and cash out.
The DNN license will permit a fork. But, the branding will need to be changed. Without the branding and the "home" site, it will be almost impossible to rebuild a new community with critical mass to sustain itself. When "the corp" is bought it will be too late to start a fork. The horrible Teleriks are also a problem. It is unclear if a fork can still use the them, because the permission to use and distribute these proprietary trojan horses was granted with a contract between "the corp" and Telerik.
The corp can change the license whenever they want. They can't take back what has been given and released, but all their future effort can be placed into a proprietary version. The open source version will then rot and die without patches and contributions. Since "the corp" now controls the third party extension market they have all the power to decide the future of DNN.
Developing proprietary extension modules for DNN has never been a very profitable business. In the past, the only company making real money from DNN were the marketplace (Snowcovered) and companies providing consultancy work. Selling software for $100 +/- a pop where customers run into several installations problems and bugs stemming from their past failed DNN upgrades is just hard work. There is so much that can go wrong with a DNN-site that selling extensions and providing support is a nightmare. If you can charge by the hour, you are alright. If you get $100 upfront for some licensed module, you're in big trouble.
Buying proprietary modules and becoming dependent on them is a bad business decision. They will eventually go away. If they are useful, "the corp" will buy it and take it off the market (#2). Or they will give up and disappear (#1).