Ethical SEO company - Web Designer - Emarketing Consultant - Connecticut: NYC : New Jersey

Yet another vote for Open Source

As you may or may not know, Serr.biz advocates open source technology. We love that hundreds, if not thousands of developers of an open source project like Joomla make the product better and better through use and continual development.  We love that Serr.biz, and our clients, are NOT beholden to any one developer. Our clients appreciate this as well. 

Today, we had another example of why Open Source, such as Joomla, is the smart business solution.  It's not because of all the great things we already know.  It's not because Joomla launched something new and exciting.  No, the reason is because of a new pricing structure a proprietary web development company initiated. The company in question has decided to start charging for updates and customization based on the "Value" they think the customization will bring to the client.  So instead of charging $75hr for a 2 hour job such as adding XML feeds to Google Base, the company will charge $1,500.00 because they think adding this feature to their proprietary web solution will bring in that much more traffic and business for the client.  Can you believe?  That's like Disneyland charging extra for how much of a good time you had.  It's $100 for the entrance fee, and if you have a good time, it's another $1,000.00. If you have "the time of your life", that's easily worth $100,000.00.  What amazing arrogance!

We suspect the propriety web development company will start loosing business soon and adjust their pricing back to a normal structure.  In the mean time, anyone using their system will be forced to pay their ridiculous prices, move to another propriety solution, create their own propriety system (Not a bad idea if you've got the investment capital and time) or move to an Open Source solution.

As for Serr.biz we give yet another vote for Open Source.

Note: Open source has its flaws and should be carefully considered in relationship to all available solutions.  Some proprietary solutions are NOT all bad.  Some out-of-the-box solutions are technically proprietary, but they provide full source code access.  If you start redeveloping the core applications the developer may simply stop supporting you, but you have the right and ability to move your site, core applications and scripting any time you like as well as work with any developer you like.