Plone: What's in a name...

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:15:00 -0400

Earlier this month at the annual Plone Conference 2007, the consulting firm "Plone Solutions" announced it would change its name to "Jarn." Plone Solutions / Jarn has been among the most experienced Plone system integrators, in particular since one of its founders was also a founder of Plone.

So why change such an esteemed name? The company cites "commitment to the community, to the Plone Foundation, and to a fair and open marketplace around Plone." This certainly makes sense and is a smart community-relations move, but still a step that many other open source firms have not taken, e.g., Alfresco, Magnolia, or eXo. If you're an Alfresco (the tool) integrator, it kind of sucks to compete against Alfresco (the company).

So I think avoiding having a commercial firm by the same name represents an important measure of a true community-oriented project. Remember that the community around your product of choice can make a significant difference to your project, in particular for open source tools.

Magnolia's new enterprise edition is more of a departmental tool

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:26:00 -0400

We've now started coverage of Magnolia as a part of the Web CMS Report. Like many open source Web content management tools, Magnolia has seen growing exposure in recent years. In recent news, the product now also supports IBM WebSphere Application Server, building on its J2EE technology base. With this move and a new enterprise licensing model, Magnolia is clearly trying to position itself with larger enterprises, much like open source competitors Alfresco and eZ Publish.

Magnolia has some modest strengths in this vein (e.g. usability, localization, well-regarded support and community), but for implementation at an enterprise level, the platform's weaknesses (e.g. limited staging and deployment, small community, spotty documentation) still stand out. As we conclude in our review: for a departmental setup, with a handful of super-users as the only contributors, Magnolia might offer a good fit.

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Plone: What's in a name...

Magnolia's new enterprise edition is more of a departmental tool