Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, linked to a blog post someone wrote up about a Google ad we ran for Graffiti CMS targeting WordPress.
The gist of the ad "WordPress is not a CMS" is targeting the audience that is looking for blog-like functionality but with CMS capabilities. Beyond the ad (which is meant to get your attention) the only real negative thing we said about WordPress was that Graffiti was easier to install. Although there is now plenty of other "spin" in the blogosphere and it's fun to watch how the conversations errode into the good old platform and/or commercial software debates:
"...takes a swipe at PHP and claims that somehow Microsoft’s .NET and IIS technology is better than *nix and PHP."
"...Luckily, no one uses ASP/IIS any more…."
"...the fact that you HAVE to have an IIS/.net server is going to sway a lot of people away from it..."
"...I’d rather slit my wrists than use IIS, ASP.NET, or SQL Server, for example..."
Needless to say, this has been fun to watch!
The two biggest criticisms:
Complaint #1 - Graffiti runs on Microsoft technology (GASP!) and isn't PHP!
Well, yes. So what?
As we said in our marketing:
Of course Graffiti is built on .NET and truth be told any good
developer can make either PHP or ASP.NET code perform. However, we
think there are more long-term advantages in Microsoft's platform and
better tools. So for developers familiar with ASP.NET its full power
and capability are available to you.
It's also worth pointing out that Graffiti is going to also support Linux and Mac OS X using Mono.
As Arpit pointed out, "It's not a religion people its just technologies.". Arpit's post also has some graphs that shows why the technology debate is just dumb. The first being that there are a substantial number of servers running IIS. No, not as many as Apache but IIS is growing fast.
Our audience target for Graffiti is people that want to publish content.
We want people to choose Graffiti because it's the right solution for their problem, not because of the underlying technology.
Complaint #2 - Graffiti costs money.
Yes and no. The Graffiti Express Edition is free (as in $0). The Commercial Edition is $99 to buy now and will eventually be more. Guess what? WordPress costs money too.
If you think WordPress is 100% free then I would suggest enrolling in your local community college and taking Finance 101.
WordPress is made available for free because investors and backers of the business are making the captial contribution to bring the consumer cost to $0. In fact TechCrunch reported a recent capital contribution (investment) in Automattic to be as high as $50,000,000.
This is the biggest frustration I have when people talk about software being free. In the past 10 years venture funded businesses have created the perception that an economy shouldn't exist for software, but instead a nirvana exists where all software is free.
Guess what: I don't agree.
Yes, companies that want to rapidly acquire customers can offer their products for free and they will have lots of takers as the biggest barrier to entry is removed. However, at some point the business needs to figure out how to return the investment capital with hefty interest. In other words: all businesses need to create both revenue and profit or they will cease to exist.
I'd don't mean to pick on Newsgator (and love their products) but this article on TechCrunch is bookmarked because of a quote.
The article is about Newsgator taking a $12mm round of investment (bringing the total business capital contribution to $30mm) and how they intend to invest the money. The very last sentence is what stuck out:
"...investment will go towards strengthening its position “in the
enterprise RSS space,” and he expects this will get the company to a
breakeven point on profits."
Translated: Newsgator had previously taken $18,000,000 in funding (zeros added purposefully) and the amount of income generated by the business was less than the expenses created by the business. The additional $12,000,000 will help them get to break-even (where revenue = expenses). That's break-even as in "no profit" ... you know that stuff that is created when revenue exceeds expenses?
So yes, Graffiti is commercial software and no we don't have any investors.
I have nothing but respect for Matt and the rest of the team at Automattic; WordPress is a phenomenally successful offering. Graffiti is aimed squarely at a market that we feel is under-served: a simple and easy to use CMS.
Edit / Update
Toni, from WordPress, correctly points out that I failed to mention one of the means by which WordPress creates revenue: selling add-ons and other value-added services for WordPress (and others). We in-fact recommend Automattic's Akismet product.