Open Source CMS Market Share Report 2009

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 18, 2009 at 10:33am

Not that I heard of, I did not get a response so I'm not sure. Is the CMSWire Feature still published?

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 18, 2009 at 12:52pm

Brett Hooker's thoughts on the report from his blog. I disagree with Brett's recommendations, although I understand the sentiment. I'm very interested in hearing how people perceive some of his ideas because I think those are really good questions and there is no mathematical answer.

Disagree w "Brett'sThoughts" http://is.gd/4oxMb Joomla! will succeed w better architecture & engaged community not "backing it"

I agree we need more Joomla! buzz - so let's get stuff happening that people tweet about. The logic blames reaction not cause.

We need meaningful metrics, something that measures involvement, collaboration, not downloads, forum users and google searches

A balanced Loyalty Metric is best "religious closed minded" to "engaged and contributing" to "indifferent and disconnected"

If loyalty is lacking, tho suggesting members "pick a CMS and back it" ignores why community is indifferent and disconnected

So, I think you are digging in the right hole but we might want to bounce around ideas about how to best fix it - good stuff

Brett's comments hit me pretty hard because I am very interested in Joomla!'s success. I am also a huge admirer of the Drupal community - they are on fire, and I long for some of that for our community. I learn by watching people who do things well, and there are very successful community building strategies in the Drupal community I hope we are able to transplant into our community.

I do not believe looking at Drupal, and WordPress, and Elgg, and other open source projects as competitors holds any value. I also don't believe comparisons between those groups is helpful - when those comparisons pit one against the other. Good to compare to find things we can do better.

So, I'll toss those very diverse ways of looking at things into this conversation and gladly do so because I know Brett loves to tackle ideas, too, and knows the difference between disagreeing with ideas and not supporting people. I support Brett and count him as one of many very strong leaders in our community. Obviously, his ideas were of great interest to me, and I thank him for sharing.

Permalink Reply by Brett Hooker on October 18, 2009 at 5:52pm

My thoughts on this report:

- Joomla! dominates, as we'd expect given the community metrics known; 10+ million downloads, 300,000+ user community, 3300+ extensions

- The core fundamentals are strong, and we'd expect to see Joomla! continue to grow. Roadmap, community, and installed base is strong and stable, so expect continued success.

- Area of concern 1: "One out of four having a negative opinion" - That comes with being around longer and from Drupal (the key competitor) supporters having often worked with Joomla before to adopting their "new love". Joomla supporters tend to talk positively and openly about Drupal, but the reverse is not necessarily true. Supporters of Joomla! need to decide which platform they'd prefer to see in position number one and BACK IT! This is the antithesis of community and open source, but marketing and brand creation does not follow the same rules as community engagement and the GPL licenses.

- Area of concern 2: "Joomla! lags considerably behind Drupla in today's key buzz metric -- social media prominence" - Again, Joomla supporters blogging and tweeting about Drupal only helps to increase Drupals metrics on the social media space (like this blog does - doh - dammit!). The Joomla community, from a marketing perspective, needs to focus in on discussing uses and futures of Joomla and help make it better and retain its market leading position.

Permalink Reply by Brett Hooker on October 18, 2009 at 6:06pm

I'll start my reply to Amy's points by highlighting that I am using the term "competitor" from the marketplace's perspective. Whether we like the term or not from a "building community" perspective, it's still a reality that newcomers to the Open Source Web Content Management space must decide between Joomla and others. Therefore, for those, it is a competition. Also, writers and researchers (such as the report being discussed here), are regularly comparing Joomla to other CMS's.

Therefore, while it is extremely important for Open Source Project Communities to continue to support and cross-fertilise each other, I believe it's also important to realise that the "external" marketplace is looking for the "best" product for them. Personally, I'd like to see Joomla remain at its number one position for years to come. That will only happen if we compare and contracts ourselves competitively with other commercial and open source web content management systems. The 1.6 project is a great example of competitive marketplace response in addition to adoption of innovations.

If we'd like to increase our score on this particular report next year, then we'd need to address the two areas of concern that they raised in the report. I've popped my ideas for addressing these out there. Amy has made good points as well.

At a summary level, both can be addressed by increasing the number of customer case studies in the marketplace and generating more buzz amongst ourselves about what we're doing. The community showcase at http://www.joomla.org is an excellent raw listing of sites, but we do need to up the ante on expanding those into case studies. The Joomla Magazine would be the perfect vehicle for those case studies. The next vehicle would be for commercial operators to invest in producing case studies for their success stories and publish them to the community for reuse as well.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 18, 2009 at 8:07pm

Where I completely agree, is that we can do a better job of showcasing what is awesome about Joomla!, about how people use Joomla!, and about Joomla!'s future. I have no problem blowing our horn and I agree we can improve. The Outreach group is a good place for us to work on contributing to the project in that area.

Now, what is the marketplace? I'd like to understand that better. In fact, I wonder if we can set realistic, helpful goals.

First of all, there is a huge space where people are not selecting free software solutions. So, instead of cannibalizing one anothers free software communities, we should collaborate across projects with that message in mind. In the end, I think those joint marketing efforts will yield dividends for everyone. I have no problem displaying Joomla! along side WordPress and Drupal and feeling very confident many will choose Joomla! on it's own merits, based on their own needs. But, I do hope they choose WP, Drupal, or Joomla! (for example) over Sitepoint.

I also think we need to step back and think about meaningful metrics. Is dominating really a good goal? In fact, I wonder if it might be a bad goal.

There is a work capacity a community can manage. If all emphasis is on new users, we aren't investing in growing our professional group. I'd dare say I'd prefer 1 good developer who is interested in helping make available quality GPL Extensions over 100 new users who take forum and documentation resources, and leave nothing behind.

Taking it further, too many users can damage a project's reputation if there isn't adequate support available. One unhappy user can cause many to stay away. Too many users can burn out a forum and frustrate volunteers. High volumes of Google search activity might mean people have to search and search to find help. We use those metrics as though it's a clear indication of interest. Part of it is, part of that volume is frustrated people searching for solutions.

Most importantly, we want contributors because it's because of their efforts there is something of value. We want to keep contributors happy and producing and growing, and we want new users to become contributors. For people to focus on contributing something of value for everyone else, we should be concerned that they are earning a good living, that they are proud members of the community, and they feel like they matter, and have friends here, and they feel respected, and believe they can help influence the future.

In the end, people who contribute and have a voice in the future of their free software community are going to be blogging and tweeting and building buzz. So, if that's not what we are seeing, to fix it, we need to build community.

Permalink Reply by HarryB on October 19, 2009 at 2:05pm

An interesting view of the Market Share Report from New Local Media

Permalink Reply by Arlen Walker on October 20, 2009 at 1:42pm

Dan makes some good points:

On the value of popularity: When it comes to development, as opposed to product sales, popularity decreases value. Best example came from a recent contract assignment I accepted. We were talking about various languages and systems to use for it, and the owner stated baldly that he wanted this done in PHP because PHP programmers are cheaper to find and employ than .NET or Ruby developers. It's economics 101, the more people there are chasing after the work, the lower the wages will be.

Also, Joomla has another negative going for it from a developer's point of view. With systems like Drupal or Wordpress, there is always more technical work to be done at first than with Joomla. Joomla's initial ease of installation (create the database and user, then sit back and click the mouse and look at the pictures) and use cuts down on opportunities for developers to make money with it.

The other reason Joomla (the product, not the people) devalues devs comes from the philosophy. Drupal ships a kit that you assemble a CMS from. You produce the required functionality for your customer by putting different pieces together, something the customers fairly certainly cannot do for themselves. Joomla focuses on shipping prepackaged solutions, easily installed by anyone. Less opportunity there for a dev to get meaningfully involved, this side of continuously writing site-specific components.

This last is not something that works against the product itself, in fact it can be seen as a value-added feature by everyone except the dev doing the site building. End customers like it, the business model just doesn't leave a lot of air for the developer.

Maybe I just have a jaundiced view of the whole process. Most of my recent Joomla work has been coming in to clean up messes made by people who worked cheap but got in over their head, fooled by the initial ease of Joomla into thinking what they wanted to do was simple and required little or no programming.

And yes, Joomla folk don't do a lot of current media, social or otherwise. Count the number of Joomla podcasts/screencasts and compare them with Wordpress or Drupal. Depressing.