Established Danish CMS-vendor Composite goes Open Source with CMS based on Microsoft .NET 4.0.
Until recently, Danish developer Composite have been distributing the company’s professional content management system – Composite C1 – on commercial terms. But now Composite has decided to go open source and allow anyone to download and use the complete product for free.
Composite C1 allow website builders to get a user friendly CMS up and running fast and allow for customizations via free and commercial packages as well as tools targeting both frontend and backend developers. .NET developers can use technologies like .NET 4, LINQ, ASP.NET Controls and MVC while frontend developers are capable of completing many more tasks than they usually can in a CMS.
– The whole mindset behind Composite C1 as a .NET-based product was originally to make it successful on the commercial marketplace – which it is on a regional basis. This background bring a much more intuitive and user-friendly experience to market than other Open Source based CMS-alternatives. Actually, I think we’re one of the very first companies worldwide to convert a fully-featured, commercial .NET-based CMS into an Open Source project, says partner Oskar Lauritzen, Composite.
– Our Open Source initiative aims at making Composite C1 accessible worldwide to a significantly larger population of companies and organizations. At the same time, it gives us a tremendous opportunity to widen the base of developers working to strengthen the product as well as to develop C1 add-ons of their own, he continues.
With a history spanning the last decade, Composite is already regarded as a proven and experienced commercially focused developing house, “so it’s perfectly understandable if our venture into Open Source will raise a few eyebrows out there,” says Oskar Lauritzen.
But not so amongst the company’s existing paying customers, who backs the initiative unanimously. Even Microsoft, who has lent significant developing support to the C1-project during the last three years, feels that the initiative is a pretty good idea.
– Composite’s Open Source initiative is really remarkable and exciting. First and foremost because it makes good sense to open up the code of a .NET-based product, as there’s simply so many gifted developers out there who’s already familiar with the platform, says Ole Kjeldsen, Enterprise & Platforms Director, Microsoft Denmark.
– Actually, I think that Composite is one of the really interesting developing houses to follow right now, concludes Ole Kjeldsen.
In the near future, Composite will establish a marketplace where professional developers can cooperate on Composite C1 add-ons and make them commercially or freely available, depending on which model makes the best sense from the developer’s perspective.