Matthew Bull

MySource Matrix and Squiz

I’ve been looking recently at an open source enterprise CMS called MySource Matrix. It’s written in PHP5, and unusually for open source CMS actually seems to be able to cope well at enterprise level.

It’s built from the ground up on an asset basis. Everything is an asset: users, content, permissions, workflow. The whole lot. This allows for a great deal of flexibility and power.

Who?

It is not particularly well-known, at least outside Australia - where the core development has taken place. No one I’ve mentioned it to has heard of it before. It has been adopted by a few organizations (mainly local government and universities) in the UK. In Australia is has a wide user-base, having been originally adopted by the Australian government a few years ago.

This means that there is a good amount of independent support and development from a growing community of users. Being open source anyone can look at the code, make their own improvements, etc. However it’s a complicated system, so any tinkering on a full-on live system would be pretty scary.

Squized

That’s where Squiz come in. Basically this Australian-based company developed the system with grants from the government a few years ago, and released it as open source. It’s been evolving under their guidance ever since, and they’ve added in about a dozen (not open source) plugins. The plugins is one of the ways they make their money.

The other is to provide support for the system. Even though it’s open source, few people would be brave enough to take it on and tame it. Apparently they are beginning to encourage other companies to offer some support services, such as website design. But they are understandably pretty protective about being the sole company to offer full support.

It costs a bit

This is where one might reasonably have some concerns about MySource Matrix. It may be free, but the support and setup isn’t. And because no one else (apart from the wider user community) can offer support, you are in some senses just as locked in to this CMS as a traditional licensed CMS. Of course, the difference is that you might be locked in, but at least you haven’t spent £50k or more on a license. Money that would just rub salt in the wound should things start to go wrong.

Not that other open source CMS leave you any less locked in. For example Plone, a hugely popular CMS, is notoriously nightmarish to configure to your needs. Companies offer assistance, and once again you can end up tied into their particular solution or version of the core.

Not all open

Not everything in MySource Matrix is free. The extra modules (which are pretty crucial) are provided by Squiz under an SSV licence. Anything you do with them is their property. Does this matter? Well, I don’t think so. How often would you really want to tinker with the source code of someone else’s plugins. I guess it just encourages you to make your suggestions to them, and let them do the hard work. Of course, you have to pay for this. But you’d probably not want the development hassle anyway.

Summary

As a summary, I’d say the MySource Matrix/Squiz ticket looks promising. It has some obvious concerns, but they don’t seem to be concerns that are unique or particular to this CMS.