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The tide may be turning in favor of open source software for content management. Last month Computer Associates (CA) announced it was establishing partnerships with Zope and Plone, two open source content management organizations. CA is also releasing its Ingres database, which will be available as a repository for Zope and Plone, as open source. We asked Zope and Plone what the new partnerships mean for the open source community.

 From Zope's point of view, the integration with CA's Ingres database will be "a big win for customers," Zope Corp. CEO Rob Page said in an email response to NewsForge.

"While our flat-file object database performs very well, it still requires a reasonable amount of explanation and referencing to make enterprise customers comfortable. On some operating systems, there are file-size limitations that our current object database can run up against. Integrating with CA's Ingres database will remove the theoretical objections to our flat-file database, remove the file size limitations, and add a full suite of tools from CA that will aid with real-time backup and restore, replication, etc."

Zope said its new open source relational database management module, which relies on its Adaptable Persistence Engine (APE), will facilitate support with other RDBMSes, although the company is focused now primarily on the CA initiative.

"Since the resulting work between CA and Zope Corp. will be open sourced, anyone else will be able to use the same framework and adapt and tune that code for whatever relational database they choose," Page said in the email. "Zope can already read data from any relational database and can even persist its own objects to a relational database, but the latter is a highly inefficient persistence mechanism at the moment. The work with CA will make relational persistence a first tier choice for Zope objects."

Not all things to all companies

Zope, which provides software ranging from free to enterprise-class products that still come with all of the source code, said any-sized company with a content management problem may benefit from a Zope-based product in one way or another.

"There are three dimensions that people must evaluate when considering a CMS: cost, time, and complexity -- both of building and of maintaining the system. You can download Zope and the Content Management Framework and build it yourself. If you are already a Zope expert, then you will likely be able to get the system running pretty quickly. If you aren't, and time is an issue, there are hundreds of companies offering Zope services, including Zope Corp."

"You can also start with a commercial product (horizontal or vertical) from Zope Corp., and customize it further if needed," Page said. "This solves [the time issue] by allowing companies to get up and running, and [the third issue], where the complexity might already be factored correctly in one of our commercial vertical applications like Zope4Media or Zope4Edu, etc."

While CA senior vice president and chief architect of CA's Linux Technology Group Sam Greenblatt indicated the collaboration was the first of many to come, Page said Zope was not prepared to announce additional initiatives yet.

"But suffice it to say that there are a lot of initiatives underway at CA that make a lot of sense to us at Zope Corp., and to the extent that collaboration can get useful products into customers' hands more quickly, both companies are committed to making that happen," Page said.

"Having a system, at least the broadest base of the code, in the open ensures that it can run on the maximum number of systems and solve the maximum number of problems out there," Page said. "As feedback returns from the community, the base evolves, making it that much more attractive."

However, Page added, even competitive companies in the same industry often organize their content management systems and workflows in dramatically different ways, meaning that there is rarely a one-size-fits- all, out-of-the-box system.

"Open source solutions permit customers to spend their dollars on the specific customizations that make strategic or tactical sense to them, without spending tons of money on features they don't need, or can't change even if they want or need to," Page added.

Foundation for framework

While Zope is looking to make its technology compatible with relational databases to meet enterprise needs, open source CMS provider Plone has announced it has established a foundation as a support organization aimed at promoting Plone while protecting its open source roots. The foundation, funded by Computer Associates, will have its "primary focus on marketing, evangelism, and legal issues."

"Plone has passed through a growth point and is clearly an attractive place for new kinds of developers and companies," said Plone's Paul Everitt and Joel Burton in an email to NewsForge. "We have to preserve what made Plone successful in the first place. We also need to advocate Plone in the mainstream, thus growing the Plone economy for the independent consultants that made Plone successful."

The Plone pair said that with a foundation the community will get a sustainable, long-term owner of "the commons" as well as a shared voice for internal decision-making and for external advocacy.

"From this, we expect Plone to grow as a product and gain the presence and features needed to scale upwards and outwards into the new and larger markets," they said.

Everitt and Burton said the content management market is "more dysfunctional than other markets," explaining that while people do not write their own Web servers, the market leader in CMS is the do-it-yourself system.

"Open source CMS helps scratch that same itch, while avoiding the downsides of build instead of buy," they said.

Plone's people said that although an open source project can provide a strong developer base, it is difficult to provide equally strong marketing and "commercially acceptable support mechanisms."

"The Plone community has work to do in gaining credibility in the market against commercial competitors, and providing support plans that meet the needs of larger businesses," they said.

There are advantages to open source, however, and Plone's representatives argued that open source solutions lower the risk of evaluation -- "you can download it and try it, you can subscribe to mailing lists and see the good and bad in all its naked glory" -- and also ease accessibility.

"These are organizations that are being directed to support open source, such as public administrations, education, health care and non-government organizations," the pair said. "Since these are large institutions with complex needs, they are a good fit for content management, and philosophically favor open source content management. They also can't justify big capital expenses."

At the same time, according to Plone, there is a big "in-between" market in content management, Everitt and Burton said.

"These are projects that are too small for the big boys, but too big for the small boys," they said. "This is the sweet spot for open source CMS, in our opinion. Over time, the upper bound on this will rise as open source attracts more enterprise CMS features and more upper-scale integrators and consultants. For Plone, CA's involvement in Plone and the Plone Foundation is evidence of the upper bound moving up."