Remember everybody favorite PHP CMS “PHP-Nuke” (Wikipedia)? Well, it looks like the maintainer has sold it last autumn/fall to an unknown seller for an unknown price. And today I got this email:
I’m writting to you because you were or you are user of PHP-Nuke and for me is important to inform the community that PHP-Nuke has been sold on past October 2007. I need to inform you about this because the new owner failed to meet the agreement we had to inform the public at a certain date and this is starting to negatively affect me.
After receiving this message I’ve sent an email to Francisco Burzi, the former developer of PHP-Nuke. He actually planned to stop programming on a CMS but he launched Smeego a while back.
He wrote:
I want to give to Smeego another focus. The first version is already available for download and I fixed lot of stuff, did some code cleanup and changed all the default themes including some that are very nice.
Smeego open a new market if you are a developer. You can code modules, themes and blocks for it and offer them to the users community.
The system and the website itself are more open that PHP-Nuke. For example, the commercial license is gone, the sell of the latest version is gone as well and the software is totally free of any charge. The site isn’t overloaded with ads, comments are open for registered users… etc…
In a follow up Francisco continued:
I feel that I left some stuff abandoned on PHP-Nuke, so I think that with another CMS project I can feel more confortable doing some parts that I consider important. at this time I’m looking and evaluating the community’s response about my announce and about Smeego. If I see that the community grows, then I’ll develop some nice ideas I have in mind.
I have also asked him if users of PHP-Nuke should change to Smeego. He respond very neutral and fair, saying he is not the one making this decision. People can try Smeego and decide afterwards. Francisco also said the new Smeego version will become different from PHP-Nuke 8.1, the current base of Smeego.
Your Opinion?
Are you a PHP-Nuke user? Will you stick with it or will you give Smeego a try? Myself, I have quiet some troubles with the name Smeego. PHP-Nuke is actually a well established brand and it could get hard to grow Smeego as an “alternative” to PHP-Nuke.
Was Francisco right to announce the sale of PHP-Nuke? The buyer should actually made an announcement by February 29, 2008.