When you want to build a website, there are many options available to you. Can you can hire someone who can build something in straight HTML or program a database driven website for you. You can use a number of different programming languages and database systems.
The largest debate that I hear, however, is whether or not to use an Open Source web platform or not.
First, I think we need to discuss for a minute what open source means.
Open Source doesn’t mean free… although there are many systems, applications and platforms available that are free. Open Source does not mean unsupported. Open Source means that the code is available for all developers to see. Usually the goal of Open Source is that a community of developers can contribute improvements to the system, application or web platform and everyone in the community can benefit.
Personally, I like to think of Open Source as an open standard. It allows for many people to understand how something works and make it better. In the internet world, Open Source is far more wide spread than most people think.
Let’s compare.
Market Share
Open Source Web Server = Apache
Proprietary Web Server = Microsoft, Sun, etc.
Source: Netcraft.com
Sure, the data is two years old, but it was a pretty graph. Numbers indicate that Apache (Open Source) still is much more used than any other.
In web development, you have the same considerations. So, the server can be Open Source or Proprietary and so is true for the platform you build on. Now, I am not talking about some programming language like PHP, .NET, etc. I am not talking about a database that you don’t care about like MSSQL, Oracle or MySQL. I am talking about how a website is built.
Let’s consider two different ways a site can be built.
Proprietary
- You hire someone to build a site for you from scratch (custom site development).
- You pick a provider that has developed his own system. (most will be like Bizzuka or NeoReef).
Open Source
I am not saying that proprietary is bad. I have a good relationship with other developers that build in proprietary systems. There are plenty out there. I can only share the reason why I think that Open Source is a critical consideration for anyone building a website.
The decision comes down to the simple question of, “What happens if I don’t like your service and support? Can I take the site that you build for me and find my own hosting and support on it?”
There are two ways that this can be answered for a proprietary system.
- If you hired someone to build something custom for you, the answer will likely be yes, but finding someone else that can jump in and support you is going to be hard because the new developer will have to get up to speed, fix problems and start many components anew.
- If you found a developer that has built his own platform, then the answer will almost always be no. They will not want their code to be out in the open. You’ll need to build something new and hope that your data can transfer.
When working in Open Source, there will be many people that are trained on working in that platform. If you choose a well used platform you may have more choices than you know what to do with it.
This is the reason we chose to work with Drupal. We believe that if our customers aren’t happy with us, we don’t want to force them to stay with us. We don’t want to prevent them from doing what is best for them. We don’t want to “lock” anyone into our services. If they want to find another developer to support them, we’ll give them all their files and even give them a list of developers that might be willing to take on their project.
