What Happens When It's No Longer "Free As In Beer"

Kudos to the DocMan Team, Indeed!

Tue, 25 May 2010 17:39:15 +0100

The laborer is worth his (her) due. Joomla is free. Developers are a goldmine. Thank you, DocMan! - Gary Kopycinski

...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:58:48 +0100

I am with Matt. I have worked on sites that were 5,6 and yes even one 7 digit website project. I just talked with someone I used to work with and they are having their site rebuilt and they are paying $60,000! I could easily do it for WAY less and get the same functionality. And anyone at the company could update it with very little training. Matt, I too often feel like I'm getting away with something. The simple answer is what are you getting in value? I have paid hundreds and even thousands for document library solutions. for $25? It's work 10 times that. The person that said they were taking it off the 10 sites they had? LOL.. are you kidding? Like that is going to 'teach them a lesson"? They didn't pay for it in the first place so no lost revenue or anything there. And the time it will take them to find a new solution and put it in place on 10 sites? More that $250 in my opinion.. Oh well. nice post.. - Dean Brady

Commercial? A dose of perspective...

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:11:09 +0100

What folks need is a dose of perspective - to get near the functionality of a Joomla site when I was out in the consulting world, a company would have paid upwards of $100,000.00 and more to design, build and maintain the hardware, software and database. They still do so today - been there, saw that, got the "free" t-shirt from the salesguy (with the iron-on that says "Oracle", "Sun", "Websphere", "Plumtree", "Interwoven", "Stellent", etc.). With Joomla, the same site costs me under $500.00 (materials) including hosting, commercial template design, robust and scalable software and all the database I need. I feel like I am getting away with something naughty every time I build a Joomla site! The bottom line is that everyone has to make a living and open source folks are just the same. The thing I love about open source is that the people involved often have such passion! How do I know? Because they are putting in tons of time and sweat for free! They deserve that payoff and they deserve to make money following their passion. - Matt Mansfield

mantra: did you talk to someone about TCO today?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:52:07 +0100

"Free" so "totally" misses the point. We need to think "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) - and help our clients get their minds around it. That enables us to put the "cost" (i.e. the license fee) in the proper perspective, i.e. the TOTAL cost of acquiring, installing, configuring, training, maintaining . . . . . . . . . Thanks for the great post, John. J - Joe Scarry

Send Up a Flare, Someone Gets It.

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:48:35 +0100

@ Mathias Verraes, "Who knows, we just might hire him" < Finally, a realist in the crowd. Thanks for commenting MV. Great work you're doing. - John Coonen

The rapidshare kid

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:28:54 +0100

Hi, thanks for the support guys :-) @Steve The GPL offers a certain level of protection: for example, it's not allowed to strip out copyright information, or re-license it as something else. There have been forks of DOCman, and so far none of them have been successful. Forking is more than copying code, you also need to know how to improve it and support it, and have the credibility so people will trust your version over the original. If some kid forks it and does something really great with it... who knows we might just hire him ;-) - Mathias Verraes

...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:51:57 +0100

Nice post. Interesting perspectives... If anyone else in the community deserves to charge for his application - that would be Nicholas (from JoomlaPack) Just like Coca Cola, FREE doesn't do the justice she enjoys (i'm just saying..) - Neil

I don't use DocMan but...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:51:38 +0100

As indignant as the comment may make developers feel, it's a valid perspective. I don't use DocMan personally but I do use a few pay extensions (ChronoForm and Acajoom if yer curious) and their feature set make it worth the money. The good products justify the cost and, for site developers like me, you roll it into the price of the build and everybody's happy. That said, I also use a ton of free extensions that have pay versions and don't think twice about it. - miles baltrusaitis

@ Teeman - Stupid English

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:51:26 +0100

@Brian - Agree. Stupid English. Free / Freedom = very annoying to even address, let alone try to explain. - John Coonen

...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:49:08 +0100

@Steve - Nobody enjoys having to pay for stuff, but at the day, sometimes when stuff is "no-charge" it tosses projects into an unpredictable situation - like lack of judgment at the end of the night, operating heavy machinery, etc. ;) - John Coonen

...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:30:00 +0100

@forgetso - Damn, you're right about that. That's actually why I didn't like the analogy. And not only that, I never got a free beer in my life. Even when it was given to me, I always paid for it in the end...somehow. Heh, heh. - John Coonen

It's called open source not free extensions

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:20:39 +0100

While I am not 100% happy with the change to having to pay for docman 1.5 I will gladly do it. Doc has to be one of if not the best (IMO) document handler extensions for joomla. Now that being said I think the Joomlatools changing docman to a paid might be a very bad thing for them. What I see might happen is some kid will download it from rapidshare, stripout the joomlatools info add his own and then upload it somewhere saying "hey look I made a doc handler and im giving it away free. I hope that doesent happen, but it wont shock me if it does. that being said, I support a few client that have this extension and i will now be buying the 1.5 upgrade and installing it on the sites. Steve - Steve Trullinger

You have to pay $12 - cheek.... NO

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:19:19 +0100

Give the developers a break! $12 is nothing for a superb application - well done Joomlatools, you have earnt it. For all those wanting something for nothing - go get some fresh air :) - Fastnet

Confusion of english

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:17:59 +0100

This is all because we stupid english use one word for two different things. The french on the other hand have it much better and easier to understand as they have a different word for "free" as in no cost and "free" as in freedom. The word libre is just so much better and that is why many of us in the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) world now refer to it as FLOSS (Free/Libre). Makes much more sense. Now if only we were inuit then we would probably have 300 words and not just two ;D - Brian Teeman.

...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:13:34 +0100

€12 is nothing for a license to use it on any site! I spend way more than that on beer when I go out! You have to look at things in perspective. - forgetso