My colleague Jerry Brito and I are attending the annual meeting of the State Policy Network in Asheville, NC. In the process, we’ve heard a lot of things said about open-source software that we don’t agree with, and some things that are just plain wrong.
The reasons for this are obvious. There are a lot of folks who have an interest in talking down open-source CMS solutions—namely because they sell proprietary, closed-source systems. But, there are non-interested parties out there who have given rave reviews to open-source solutions. For example, Drupal and WordPress have consistently won CNET’s Webware Awards. The White House now runs on Drupal, the New York Times runs its blogs on WordPress, and sites that we have built, including those for CEI, the Mercatus Center, America’s Future Foundation, Stimulus Watch, and OpenRegs.com, are built using open source tools, and they have been very successful. Bottom line, one can’t say that using open-source software is never the answer.
So how do you decide what to use? What you have to consider are the relative merits of each approach. Some web projects may be so unique that you’ll want to have a developer build a custom solution for you. You might also find a proprietary solutions that fits your needs perfectly. However, most public policy groups have very similar needs—publishing and promoting papers and press releases, creating profiles of their experts, highlighting past and future events, etc. For these cases, it’s very likely that there is an open-source solution available at a no cost, and with a large pool of independent developers who can implement it for you. And it’s certainly the case that open-source solutions can be infinitely customized to meet unique needs.
The main difference we want to point out, however, is that when you choose a proprietary solution, you’re not just tied to that solution, but to a vendor as well. Look carefully at their contracts, it will be quite clear that they own the software that runs your website. If you need to change or add functionality to your site, you need to go to that particular vendor. With an open-source solution, there are hundreds of developers you can turn to. You can keep your site exactly as it is, and simply change your contractor. Your platform is not tied to any vendor.
In the event you wanted to move to a new platform, open-source systems have the advantage that they operate with standard technologies with which all developers are familiar, making it very easy for a developer to transfer your content to a new platform. To move from a proprietary platform means your new developer has a steep learning curve ahead of him.
A great place to start thinking about open-source CMS solutions is the annual Open Source CMS Market Share report released by Water & Stone, a PR firm that analyzes the state of the open-source community. It outlines what various open-source solutions can do, the size of their community, the number of sites running the CMS and various other facets of the software. For example, the report shows that thousands of sites have been deployed using Drupal and WordPress. These are thousands of users putting these platforms to the test and as a result improving them. How many thousands of sites are deployed using your proprietary vendor’s solution?
These thousands of users create countless add-ons and plugins that can alter or expand the core functionality of the basic CMS. This means that when new technologies or services become popular—think Facebook or Twitter—add-ons are quickly available for expanding the functionality of your site. Add-ons for WordPress even make it possible to turn turn a WordPress site into a podcasting platform, bulletin board, research database, or even a social networking site. These are just a handful of examples of the literally thousands of similar easy-to-implement add-ons for open-source platforms. Why reinvent the wheel when these solutions are available for free?
Certainly open-source isn’t always the right choice—proprietary solutions have their applications—but when considering relationships with vendors, customization, future flexibility, and the incredible cost savings, open-source is likely the best solution for most public policy groups.
If you’d like to learn more about open-source solutions and how they might be used for your public policy group, feel free email me at cord.blomquist@gmail.com.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.