Steve Borsch over at Connecting the Dots has put together an extensive look at a common challenge faced by companies trying to pick a platform (or platforms) for their online businesses. His example looks at the challenge of building a…

With some custom development, it could do it most any way you wanted. But even with the currently available modules, you could do pretty well. I’m sure many of the other content management systems could do the same, I’m just not as familiar with them.

Agreed…to a point. An open source project’s intrinsic value is in the volume of adopters. The more people that use it, the more traction it gets on the business side. The more its adopted, the faster other developers come to the project to become involved. And so on and so on and so on until it’s a WordPress clearly taking a leadership position as a blogging tool.

If the intent of a WordPress is as a blogging *engine* suited only for integration into a content management system or site, why the easy WordPress.com hosting? Curiously, one of the key initiatives Matt Mullenweg has fostered is to make the admin UI so easy that a click-n-configure, power user-centric use of the project could occur. Why would those both happen? TO INCREASE ADOPTION.

If the intent of a Drupal is as a developer platform, why templates? Civicspace as a higher level implementation? Or other Drupal tools and newbie training?

“If you – a business guy – think that there is a market for a suite like you discuss in your post, make it happen. Compete on ease of use with OSS and price with fully commercial software.”

There is a suite like this…almost. Expression Engine from Ellis Labs (http://ellislabs.com/), though they’re not yet out with their commerce engine which — once it is out — would most likely hit what “Joe” wants.

I’m open source’s biggest fanboy. Like you, anyone who criticizes should get off their ass and do something about it. Like Teddy Roosevelt once said in a speech:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

But having YACSP (yet another commercial software package) is missing the point of the entire post. The point is that if Joe wants *any* of these projects discretely, not a big deal. If he wants them as a coordinated group of software offerings that look (and run) like any sort of seamless whole, good luck. Hope his budget is huge and he’s willing to employ alot of people with, as you describe, “a job”.

That said, ‘Joe’ is unlikely to invest tens of thousands of dollars developing a comprehensive Web asset using a myriad of open source tools that would break the cobbled together Web asset every time one of the individual projects has a dot release…nor trying to train his people on five or more completely different admin and presentation layers. That’s the cold, hard truth.

I think you expect too much from OSS (free software) and open source developers (volunteers). Anyone qualified to develop for an open source project of the sort you mention can manage the integration of these different projects in a custom, “one off” manner. This is not missing functionality, this is called “a job”.

Remember that most open source tools are just that: tools to help a techie do his job. It is pretty hard to find OSS software that is not created for users who don’t very closely resemble in knowledge and skill the creators of that software.

The great thing about open source is that the…source is open. If you – a business guy – think that there is a market for a suite like you discuss in your post, make it happen. Define the product, select your component systems, assemble some tech talent and integrate away. Sell it to small businesses at the price point (fairly low) that they can/will pay. Compete on ease of use with OSS and price with fully commercial software.

Finally, I wonder why Joe is so reluctant to dig into the technology that he thinks will essentially _be_ his product. Surely he didn’t try to stay above the minutia of book publishing and multi-media production back when that was what he sold.

Kevin

Completely agree with the post above…

But things are getting a little better…

Check out Blogtronix (www.blogtronix.com) and Lotus Connections for nice ‘out-of-the-box’ suites that are completely integrated and user-friendly. They might focus more on ‘internal’ rather than ‘external’ Enterprise 2.0, but they are a start.

Adam

I’ve thought a lot about this problem. Each of the projects I listed in my post I’ve downloaded and installed myself. Clients have (and are) actively using them. Each has their own approach and — since the project teams are working on these in their spare time — even *thinking* about coordinating and orchestrating them with other packages is unthinkable.

It’s all about leadership and someone, some group, some alliance (and I’m hoping the OSA I mentioned *is* the alliance that pulls this off) needs to point out the benefits NOT to the developers….but to the USERS of the projects.

The objective of effort in open source isn’t to play around…it’s to get adoption. The more adoption, the faster that other developers will climb on board as the project gains momentum. Being parochial in ones view and approach — without understanding that there is a huge pentup demand in the user community — means that adoption of a project is stunted.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked with people about WordPress and how they want *it* to morph into a content management system with all the attributes of a CMS. But why? Why not coordinate and orchestrate with Drupal and Joomla? Let *them* do what they do best and let Matt and crew make WordPress the be-all, end-all of blogging software.

It’s why the analysts for years in the enterprise software space promoted suites. Forget “point” solutions that did one thing and did it well….it was all about coordination and orchestration. Software vendors LOVED this advice given to customers since THEY wanted to build suites so as to offensively capture a customer and plant a “maximum footprint” in the account. It was also a great defensive posture since it kept out smaller point solutions from playing.

That’s why alot of companies bought portals. Then THEY were in charge of selection of best-of-breed solutions and could access the functionality of each solution through portlets in one coordinated and orchestrated view. With that came its own set of problems (interportlet communication, single sign-on) that much of the enterprise world has solved…though at great expense and time.

So here we are in the small to midsize business (SMB) space with a tremendous number of great solutions….but getting them to sing-off-the-same-songsheet is as hard as an enterprise doing it for themselves.

Sigh…

You are absolutely correct, it is still WAY too hard to do this.

Last summer I was exploring the same thing. I wanted an integrated system that would handle commerce, membership, blogging, and content management tasks. I have yet to find the perfect solution and I’m wondering why this is so difficult.

I’m surprised a programmer hasn’t done this yet. Leveraging an open source solution like WordPress and building some password management/membership components into it would be a start. I suggest WP because the open API lets all sorts of front-end client writers. This keeps it easy for the contributors. The password management is key. This might be done with different directories utilizing the same theme but I’m not a programmer. I looked at ways to protect certain directories but it was overly complex with all the scripts and WP integration.

In the end, I ended up going with a membership application. It’s not perfect, but for about $4k it’s pretty solid. I wish I had more design flexibility and that it leveraged WP though. It also came down to support. I felt the company would be behind it and with all the moving parts, that was really important.

There is a need out there for this. I hope the programmers out there are listening.