Vector1 Media runs on a platform of open source technologies. We use WordPress for blogging and Joomla for our content management. The experience overall has been a positive one, but there are some limitations. In some sense, it’s “you get what you pay for” in terms of these limitations, but it’s also a factor of getting benefit based on the time you put into it, which is true of any software. And it’s also been our experience that the pain points iron themselves out over time, but sometimes at a glacial pace that depends on other users feeling your own pain, like any software.
Overall, both platforms provides incredible flexibility and there are a cadre of professional developers on a global scale that work to specialize the software and add value through plugins and modules. There are often too many choices to choose from to address specific problems or our wishes to extend the technology. This results into some false starts when realizing that the software doesn’t do exactly what you wanted, and some frustration when you can’t find what it is that you’re after. Custom development is always an option to address this, and there are good developers, but again it’s sometime hard to find the right ones with the necessary expertise and motivation.
The constant updates of foundational technology are generally a boon for better security and functionality. Not all updates are great though, with serious issues sometimes cropping up that undermines productivity, like all software. But generally the updates have been really good, and there’s increasing attention being paid to easing the update process with quick and easy patches rather than disruptive foundational changes, like all software.
We’ve certainly had a need for guidance on both platforms, but our knowledge has increased over time and we’re gaining greater confidence with making changes ourselves. This is possible due to the incredible amount of documentation and forums that can give you a detailed walkthrough of how to address any troubles that you encounter along the way. We’ve used a wide variety of different consultants to help us extend the technology, mostly with a modicum of success. As with all software integration projects, there are different interpretations of objectives and different levels of skill sets that can hamper progress.
Given the open ended nature of the software, open source does provide a wider platform for the imagination to play. There are endless amounts of options for flexibility in how we delivery information. That’s both a good thing in terms of “the sky’s the limit” and a bad thing in terms of staying focused and providing a coherent information portal.
Overall, I’d say that I wouldn’t care to go a different route at the stage that we now operate. The low pain and scalability of the solution at our size makes good sense. As our business expands and larger teams are assembled, I can see that there are benefits of a more managed approach. It’s a great thing to have multiple entry points in terms of software cost and complexity.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Matt, “you get what you pay for”? Really? What were the limitations you ran into, and do you really think that, had you paid for something, you would not have run into limitations? Given that you paid nothing, did you get nothing?
Now that you’ve moved from “using” to “extending” you didn’t mention the #1 benefit of open source, which is that you are not on a black box. The internals are not only instructive as to how things work, but also as to best practices in developing extensions. I’ve learned more from reading open source code than I have from any textbook. Smart people write this stuff.
As you might guess, that application of that particular phrase to open source really rubs me the wrong way, because there’s so much screwed up backasswards connotation embedded into it.
Paul, I think you’ll see that I kept comparing Open Source favorably to other software. Much of the limitations are the same with closed-source commercial products. I don’t look down on the “get what you paid for” element, because the low barrier to entry means that we got more functionality than we could have afforded, but also faced some learning curves that hampered our productivity. That is a real tradeoff, but what’s also real is that our decision not to borrow a lot of capital to start our business meant that there was no real alternative other than a really crappy mid-90s system if open source didn’t exist.
I hope I alluded to the lack of black box in my comment that we’re now able to do much of what we had to cry out for help on when we started. I’m definitely a fan of the flexibility and increasing quality of the software. Much like in the Geo space, the platforms that we’re using are being used by more and more organizations and getting much better over time. The much larger development teams in the Blog and CMS camps leads to an issue of perhaps too many developers, and some with questionable talent or poorly supported extensions. The issue of wading through a lot of these developers is addressed somewhat by various freelance guilds that have risen up. I’d wager that the Geo community of Open Source developers is a tighter nit group that’s easier to navigate to find good help.
I can understand being defensive about the “get what you pay for” statement, but I really think it holds true as a motivational factor for a large percentage of those that choose open source. To me that term means a low barrier that makes open source a choice that needs little deliberation. It can be tried and tested without considerable cost or pain, but ultimately you’ll want to invest in order to get more out of it. The more you invest and customize the more likely you are to be pleased with the platform, which means that you get more when you pay more. Again, something true to all software, but of consideration when you pay nothing but get something, and maybe need to pay just a bit more to get a lot.
As the toolset evolves and becomes better over time, it will become more of a first choice than a test choice. Perhaps we’re rapidly nearing that inflection point.
Paul,
We do actually pay for almost all of our open source modules and software – if it works, we pay. If it doesn’t, we don’t.
Contrary to your thought that all open source works, it does not. Some is poor quality, not tested. I have one WordPress plugin I cannot even delete from my directory now without crashing the whole system, for example.
The black box is not so black, for example, moving from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5 was a major change, necessitating that all modules had to work with the new version (which they did not) and required a major shift in SEO.
We are not small, serving well over a million pages monthly. I’m impressed by what we accomplish through open source. We’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, the right questions to ask. There is a difference between one application working and a collection of open source applications working together (which is what we need). I think this gets easier over time and like Matt said the learning curve is easier.
On price alone I see no relationship to quality. Some things that are really inexpensive work exceedingly well. Alternatively, some things more expensive do not meet expectations.
What would be interesting is an article that explains workflows by comparing open source to non-open source. I would bet (Matt’s money) that is where the issues lie, not in individual applications.