The Gilbane Report: Volume 11, Number 3

Open Source Content Management Redux

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Read the news for this issue.

We looked at Open Source software and what it meant to the content management market a couple of years ago. Since then there has been a huge amount of both development and implementation. Contributor Bob Doyle helped put together the Third Annual OSCOM (Open Source Content Management System) conference at Harvard Law School a few weeks ago, and also attended the recent Massachusetts Software and Internet Council series of Technology Roundtables on Open Source. Bob provides an update on developments and issues in the Open Source CMS market – some of which may surprise you!

Welcome Sebastian!

Industry veteran Sebastian Holst (who also wrote our earlier article on Open Source as a contributor) has now joined us a Senior Editor. In addition, Sebastian will be heading-up our consulting activity. You can reach him at sebastian@gilbane.com.

The Gilbane Conference on Content Management

Be sure to join us in San Francisco September 9-10 where we are co-locating our CM conference with Seybold as we did last year. For more
information and the latest program updates see www.gilbane.com/gilbane_at_seybold_03.html.

Open Source Content Management Systems Redux

Two years ago Sebastian Holst looked at Open Source CMS as a “Parallel Universe” in these pages [1]. At that time, Holst felt that the benefits of Open Source development, which work so well for the GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache web server, and other core components of leading Internet and networking program, were not obviously applicable to application programs like content management systems. We will see that some of his concerns are indeed major questions in the Open Source Content Management System (OS CMS) market. These include financial viability when license revenue may be non-existent, sustainability of development and innovation, and long-term continuity of technical support from the OS CMS community.

Since then we have had a number of developments in the OS CMS landscape and a few developments in the Open Source community at large which may impact the future of content management. A great deal has been written about Open Source and we have gathered a bibliography [2-7]. The third international OSCOM (Open Source Content Management) conference [8] brought about 200 people to the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet and Society for three days in May 2003, and provided an opportunity for a fresh look at OS issues, including business models for open source, and licensing strategies that support commercial "free" software. We also attended the recent Massachusetts Software and Internet Council series of Technology Roundtables on Open Source. They are expected to result in a white paper on "What every software executive should know about open source." This article provides an update on some of the issues of specific concern to anyone considering including Open Source technology in their content management strategy.

The Open Source Content Managemenrt System Market

The critical definition of an Open Source content management system is that it is licensed under one of a few dozen licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative [9] , including the most common and best known GNU General Public License (GPL) from Richard Stallman’s Free Software Foundation [10]. (For general information on open source, see our list of references at the end of the article.)

It is important to remember that Open Source does not mean free (as in free beer), and does not mean non-commercial. A free software license does not mean a free (no cost) CMS solution, and there is no guarantee that an Open Source CMS will end up being less expensive than a commercial CMS. The transparency of Open Source however, has other advantages. Foreign governments, and even some parts of the U.S. federal and state governments, are considering or already mandating the use of open source software for security reasons, as well as flexibility and the (usually) lower price. Also, led by Microsoft, some companies are responding by opening their code under stringent non-disclosure agreements to some large purchasers. Microsoft calls this "shared source," providing one of the important benefits of open source code, inspection of the code for possible security holes.

The core of all Open Source software - the GNU/Linux operating system - is under attack on two fronts by Microsoft. Microsoft is at least tacitly supporting a legal attack by SCO on IBM’s aggressive use of Linux. And it has been reported that the Microsoft sales force is under orders not to lose contracts to open source. Nonetheless, nobody expects Open Source software, especially Linux to disappear. Linux has had little success in the consumer market, despite a $200 Lindows machine from Walmart that made the New York Times editorial page, but the business market is another story. Linux and Open Source Apache now dominate the web server market. Businesses are increasingly realizing great savings by migrating their data centers to Intel-based Linux boxes.

The OS CMS market is expanding as fast if not faster than the commercial CMS market. If you ask commercial vendors who their main competition is, what you hear most often is “custom home-grown” systems, and what are these home-grown systems built on? Open Source software. Unfortunately, much of the growth in the number of OS CMS products comes from slight variations resulting in multiple product development forks and not by adding the features or especially the system integration that proprietary CMS solutions are adding.

Open Source software is maturing. Today many Open Source companies are successful and profitable. At OSCOM, Boston.com staff described the conversion of Boston.com, perhaps the largest portal in New England, from proprietary software to a Zope-based system. Their $500,000 contract with Zope Corporation indicates clearly that open source does not mean non-commercial, and the overall implementation cost of over $2 million shows that free software is not “free.”

How Many OS CMS players are there?

Dozens, and for better or worse, the numbers are growing. On the DMOZ Open Directory Project [11] there are currently 32 OS CMSs listed. The OSCOM Matrix [12] lists about 40, CMSInfo [13] about 70, and CMS Review [14] about 80. OpenSourceCMS [15] offers free working demonstrations of about 40 different CMS that run on the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) platform. And these lists don’t include tens of thousands of installations of various news-style CMSs based on slash-code (software resembling the slashdot.org technology news site). Note that this compares with around 500 CMS products overall.

Who are the major OS CMS players?

In our last article on Open Source, Sebastian chose three to mention: ArsDigita ACS (now Red Hat CMS), Cofax, and Midgard. Tony Byrne, from CMSWatch (www.cmswatch.com) mentions five OS-CMS in his CMS Report: Cocoon/Axkit, Midgard, OpenCMS, Red Hat CMS, and Zope. Checking Google citations, the clear winner is Zope (3,180,000 citations). Zope also has nine books on Amazon. PostNuke is next (1,450,000), followed distantly by Midguard (265,000), and OpenCMS (213,000).

To calibrate our Google citations, we looked at some commercial CMSs, like Documentum (151,000 citations), BroadVision (99,800), AtomZ (87,600), Merant (81,900), Stellent (19,800), Ektron (12,600), MediaSurface (10,900), and Ingeniux (921). We could not get reliable counts for non-unique names like Vignette (588,000), divine (now FatWire = 9,630), and Interwoven (288,000). But these rough numbers indicate that some OS CMSs have a lot more visibility on the web than proprietary systems. Google citations are fun and interesting, but don’t base too much on them. Remember that Open Source communities are Web developer communities so you would expect to find more references, and of course developers are more likely to be well-versed in search engine optimization techniques. Also, keep in mind that Zope is more than a CMS and not all 3 million plus citations will be CMS-related. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that some OS CMSs have broad and deep penetration.

Making Money with Open Source

Many Open Source products are given away by their creators. Many other developers would like to sell their Open Source work. Commercial free (as in free speech) products are not an oxymoron, insists Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. You can charge anything you want for free software, he says, “even a billion dollars.” In any case, if you are considering using OS as all or part of your CMS solution, you need to understand the suppliers’ business model, and what it entails. Some OS CMS providers don’t have a business model, and this is fine if you want to take over all support and maintenance yourself. But most of you will want some support to be in place, in which case you want to be sure the provider has a plan for being around to provide it.

A few years ago commercial opportunities for OS software seemed limited to packaging, distribution, support, and some customization. This was the canonical Red Hat business model, and remains the common model for most. Although Red Hat lost a large fraction of the $500 million their IPO raised at the height of the dot-com bubble, today they are profitable with a wide array of service and support options and contracts in place with many large organizations moving to Open Source solutions. Red Hat is only one of many profitable OS providers, and most, but not all, make money purely from services and support. However, it is also possible to make money from software license sales. How is that?

A product under a GPL can legally also be sold under a different license if the licensor clearly owns all the intellectual property (IP) being licensed. As a result, one very successful strategy for selling Open Source software is called “dual licensing.” For example, MySQL can sell the same database product under the GPL or under a special “non-GPL” license. MySQL is GPL-licensed and free for non-profits and personal use, but has a “non-GPL” license and a $500 fee for commercial use.
Mike Olson of Sleepycat Software, reported at OSCOM that their embeddable Berkeley DB is used in a million installations of applications where alterations to the code are given back to the community. But when a software vendor wants to hide changes to the Berkeley DB in their product, they purchase a $150,000 dual license for the privilege of keeping their work secret. According to Olson, enough software vendors do this to make Sleepycat very profitable.

So, it seems many different models can support an Open Source business, but there is a tougher question to ask as well.

What to Watch Out For

Can an Open Source business model support innovation?

In the software business you need to keep innovating to survive. This means you need resources and a focused effort on product development.[1] If your business model does not include the margins typical of software license sales it may be difficult to compete with commercial systems. When all the income is directly proportional to labor, how do you generate “surplus capital” that can be plowed into the research and development needed for innovation?

The ratio of service/license revenue is more or less 50/50 when you look across the commercial vendor landscape, and the license percentage continues to decline. In fact, some Open Source folks pointed out at OSCOM that they have competed against commercial vendors who have reduced their license charge to nothing to win the business. Nevertheless, as a rule there is a big difference in terms of margin.

Most OS CMS systems today have taken advantage of the fact that the commercial vendors have already spent the money to find out what features the market is looking for. The free product research is great, but it means you always lag a bit behind. It also means that OS CMSs all start to look the same since they are all using the same feature set defined by incorporating the most common features in the commercial systems.

Open Source CMS developers today are often highly motivated but small groups of individuals with "day jobs." Some may have mild conflicts of interest with employers. Even those whose primary income is support and customization of the CMS are often overwhelmed by their contract work and find it hard to devote long stretches of time to sustained development, let alone basic research. The development model is to gather for a few-day "sprint" of programming teams. Different teams attack known problems and try to develop new code enhancements quickly, then return to their normal work environments.

If Open Source products do not earn significant revenues, what can keep their teams together over the years to insure continued innovation with a comfortable upgrade path for end users? As a customer, apparent, or current profitability may not be enough to provide the assurance that an OS suppliers’ product will keep up with what is available in the commercial CMS world.

Code forking

Open source projects are built by complex communities of highly talented individuals who come together to build something new. When the project has well defined functions and limits, the likelihood of agreement among the developers is much higher than when many optional features and functions might be added, as is the case with content management systems. This has made OS-CMS project teams susceptible to breakup, so that a single concept, like the popular news-style CMS inspired by slashdot.org, has many project teams, working in many programming languages, and producing many products.

The positive side of code forking is the regular refreshment of approaches. The negative side is that users can get left out in the cold, stuck with software that is left behind as competing teams of developers go off in different directions. This is recognized as a problem among OS CMS developers, but there is no way to prevent this. Few Open Source developer teams are concerned as much with end-users as the kudos they win from other developers for neat new ways to code the same functionality. Just as customers have always needed to try and keep their content from becoming captive to a proprietary system, they need to do the same with OS CMSs so they are not left with costly content migration problems.

The incredible recent turnover of brand names and code bases in the commercial CMS market suggests orphaned clients have been just as common in the commercial world when companies are merged or acquired mainly for their customer base. However, commercial vendors don’t just cut support without a transition strategy.

Legal issues

The legal panel at OSCOM noted that the open source community creates, develops, and markets its products in an environment in which the law plays a critical role – not only is OS not cost-free, it is not liability-free either. Technology companies unaware of the legal implications of developing or incorporating Open Source software may risk losing key proprietary assets or may be threatened by third party intellectual property rights.

The panel explored questions of intellectual property law, such as how to avoid infringement of copyrights and patents in pre-existing software, how to prevent closed source competitors from hijacking open source software, and how to protect against potential threats posed by the growing number of software patents. There are also questions about whether the underlying GNU General Public License (GPL) itself is enforceable. There have been a few court skirmishes, but no real tests. Analysis of these issues is outside the scope of this article, but the issue of mixing OS and proprietary code in your product deserves special mention.

Mixing Open Source and Commercial Software

Open Source standard components are increasingly likely to be incorporated in otherwise proprietary Content Management Systems. Although organizations buying a CMS may not think they care whether the CMS includes Open Source code, content management vendors must be very careful about mergers or acquisitions when the intellectual property (IP) acquired may include Open Source code fragments in nominally proprietary software.

Suffice it to say that this is very iffy legal territory, and while the more direct concern is to commercial software companies and their investors, (especially large) customers should at least be aware of this issue.

Conclusions

Open Source CMS technology has a lot to offer, and is being used successfully in many applications, especially in government and academic environments where the benefits of Open Source have especially strong appeal. In general, there is a “spectrum of stability” in Open Source software with, e.g., Linux and Apache at the most stable end of the spectrum to smaller CMS products at the least stable end. There is no reason not to consider OS CMS solutions for many content management needs but, just as with proprietary systems, you need to understand what the pros and cons are of Open Source in general, as well as with specific OS products. And, be sure you understand the business model of the OS provider. With so many issues and options available we recommend hiring a knowledgeable consultant to help you navigate, unless you have the time, resources, and in-house knowledge to devote to a full investigation.

Remember that choosing Open Source or commercially licensed products is not an either/or choice. There are many areas of the technology stack (operating system, application server, database, CMS, editor, etc.) for a CMS solution where you can choose between OS and proprietary components.

Just as with proprietary CMSs, Open Source CMSs are also available from hosting services. OpenSourceCMS.com offers free demos of forty CMSs built on the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) platform, and then will host your choice of a CMS.

If you are a proprietary/commercial CMS vendor

Open Source technology is both friend and foe, and it is here to stay. Lots of OS software can be used to help round out your offerings and get to market quickly with an enhanced solution at a lower cost to your customers. If you manage your business well you should have enough R&D and market research money to keep your products ahead of OS CMS products in terms of new features that are directly tied to what your customers want. OS CMSs will continue to exert downward pressure on license revenues, so it is critical to be able to easily demonstrate superior value based on advanced features, integration functionality, service offerings, and domain expertise.

If you do actually incorporate OS code into your product beware of the issues raised at the Mass Software and Internet Council Technology Roundtables, where lawyers were concerned that Open Source code with an uncertain license status could devalue your intellectual property. Their advice was that commercial vendors should be wary of incorporating any Open Source code if they want their company to be a potential merger/acquisition target.

If you are an Open Source CMS developer

There is a lot of opportunity for OS CMS technology, and as many OS CMS providers have shown, you can make a profit. The first question to ask yourself is whether you care about making money or whether you are content with the rewards of being part of a unique development community and the rewards of peer recognition etc.

If you do want to make money, you need to choose a business model and plan, and make sure everyone: employees, partners, customers, etc. understand it.

From the OSCOM conference, the message for the Open Source CMS development community (they disdain “vendors”) was to try to work together more, build some interoperable tools, and stop forking the same news-style CMS over and over. These are not just important messages for the community to hear, they need to be conveyed to potential customers as well.

Bob Doyle bobdoyle@skybuilders.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

[1] Open Source CMS: A Parallel Universe, Gilbane Report Vol.9, No. 4, May 2001
[2] The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond, O'Reilly, 1999.
[3] Open Sources, Voices from the Open Source Revolution, O'Reilly, 1999
[4] Embracing Insanity, Open Source Software Development, Russell C. Pavlicek, SAMS, 2000.
[5] A Framework for Open Source Projects (Master’s thesis), Gregor J. Rothfuss, 2001
[6] Free Software, Free Society, Richard M. Stallman, GNU Press, 2002
[7] The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source, Martin Fink, Prentice Hall PTR, 2003.

LINKS:

[8] www.oscom.org/Conferences/Cambridge
[9] www.opensource.org
[10] www.fsf.org
[11]http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Content_Management/Open_Source/
[12] www.oscom.org/matrix/index.html
[13] www.cmsinfo.org
[14] www.cmsreview.com/OpenSource
[15] www.opensourcecms.com
[16] www.cmswatch.com

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Tony Byrne has written a very well-thought-out article covering this and other OS issues on CMSWatch (which we will be publishing on gilbane.com soon).