In my session at
OpenForce Connections ‘09, I said that one of the things we have to get back in DotNetNuke, the product, is the ‘
cool factor’. ‘
Cool’ to me is something that enthralls you; something that is great to look at; something that captivates you. For a software product it is defined by how the user interface looks, how easy the software is to use, and how enjoyable the process of using the software is. How do you ‘
feel’ when you are in the midst of using the product and how do you feel upon finishing your specific task and accomplishing your purpose with the product?
One way to get the cool factor back is for
DotNetNuke Corp. and the core team to do something about it. Another way to get back the cool factor is to empower the ecosystem to build ‘cool’ things with DotNetNuke.
We chose the latter.
As you may by now be aware, DotNetNuke 5.2, which officially launched last week, incorporates
Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX in the product. We believe the richness of the modules and skins in the DotNetNuke platform will increase dramatically with the incorporation of RadControls in the DotNetNuke web application framework. In our arrangement with Telerik, we took care to ensure the run-time version of the software is available with our core which means it is available to all DotNetNuke users. In addition, users and developers using the Community Edition can access Telerik RadControls using our wrappers. The commercial editions of DotNetNuke including the
Professional,
Elite, and
Elite Premier Editions provider developers within that instance of DotNetNuke with a full development license for the RadControls toolkit.
Shaun and I were able to structure the above arrangement because we were clear on our goals when we embarked on this initiative 5 or 6 months ago. No matter what business arrangement we entered into, we had to ensure there were sufficient benefits and no harm for the large number of DotNetNuke users and developers (both community and commercial editions). This arrangement was also made possible because of
Telerik, the company, and its CEOs (Svetozar and Vassil). They understand open source and were willing to structure an arrangement that takes care of both Yin (Community) and Yang (Commerce).
On that note, I would like to welcome Svetozar, Vassil and Telerik into the DotNetNuke ecosystem and community. Working with them on this arrangement has been a pleasure. I look forward to our continued work together.
This is the second strategic move we made in the past few months (the first being our acquisition of
SnowCovered.com). You can be sure there will be more to come!