I had the displeasure of reading a sorry excuse for a story on Open Source Content Management Packages for Enterprises. The sad part is, Alfresco wasn’t even mentioned. Drupal, Mambo/Joomla, several Wiki packages and even WordPress where mentioned, again, for Enterprise level CMS - otherwise known as ECM. Someone didn’t do their homework, at all.
I know about Alfresco due to research about 8 months ago for a job. I started a SharePoint vs Alfresco story that stirred the pot on both sides (Yes, I know I haven’t finished it yet). I got to talk with people from both sides, but ultimately, the bosses said “no OSS” (speaking of which, thats another story for another day). I got to play with Alfresco, and while back then, I didn’t consider it as powerful as SharePoint, it’s still OSS.
Perhaps the worst part is, the people commenting on the story didn’t even point out that Alfresco was missing. They pointed out that a smaller, Web2.0 Wiki was missing.
It really seems like people are throwing around terms and starting smaller than they can feel. We almost implemented MediaWiki (what runs Wikipedia) since we knew it would be able to handle the load, until we found out that SharePoint 2007 had a built in Wiki and Blog plugin (web part…) Now, I’ll admit that, when I first started, I was all ready making plans to assimilate my employer and turn them into an OSS shop, but ultimately, I don’t think that would have worked. I don’t think a lot of the packages out there are ready for Enterprise yet (seriously). I think the community needs to pull together and stop arguing over stupid features and get more bugs squashed. I think more people need to learn how to program than beg for features on a forum somewhere then get mad at the programmers when their feature wasn’t implemented their way.
So, if InformationWeek just happens to read this, you all really need to do your homework more. I didn’t learn “Everything you needed to know to get started with Content Management Systems”. That was a slap in the face to any self respecting system admin that has spent time setting anything up for the Enterprise.
