Simon Willison’s Weblog

High end CMS vendors in trouble

Licenses Down, Services Up is a fascinating article discussing the commoditising effect of open source software which uses the high-end Content Management market (such as Interwoven, BroadVision and Vignette) to demonstrate how open source is causing real problems for companies that rely on ludicrously high license fees as their main revenue stream. The conclusion?

I like to speak in absolutes when I can, it’s easier that way, so if you ask me, I’d say these companies are already dead.

The article also looks at Oracle and the inroads being made by popular open source database packages such as PostgreSQL and mySQL.