Open Source benefits
Because our software is open source, that means you as a business can engage with us to create a website for you and you will benefit from a significant amount of freedom, security, and lack of vendor lock-in.
There are currently over 100,000 copies of the SilverStripe platform in circulation world-wide. Many of those copies were downloaded by developers who actively contribute new features and bug fixes back into the open source product which is used as the "base" when we build a website for you.
The SilverStripe CMS has seen eight years of development, and was “opened up” recently when we removed our proprietary licensing model in favour of an open source license. This open sourcing of our software has led to support from Google and Sun/MySQL, public global software awards, and a vibrant developer community that is quickly growing in size and skillset. Our experience building the tool and the community becomes your business benefit.
Our software has no license fees, and doesn't rely on software with license fees. This allows on-going cost-effectiveness and removes vendor lock-in. However, with our documentation and code repositories being public, and with developers around the world familiar with the software, overall support for prior versions of SilverStripe 2.x look likely to continue for a very long time.
Our CMS and application framework are being translated into dozens of languages thanks to the efforts of developers all over the planet. If we had a closed-source model, that means we at SilverStripe would have to provide the translations and we currently don't have people on staff who can speak all those languages! Please see translate.silverstripe.com for more details.
By virtue of the fact that our base product is open source, we have received numerous notifications and patches relating to security issues and potential attack vectors from our active community of developers. Areas of focus include SQL injection and XSS. The source code to our project has been freely available since 2006, and with tens of thousands of copies in circulation so far, this has led to the identification and solving of issues that would be very difficult to solve with closed, proprietary software.
And because the SilverStripe platform is open source, you are not locked into a particular vendor, should you decide at some point to continue development of your site in-house after we develop your initial site. There are website development companies all over the planet who are able to service your needs should you require local development resources. Of course, we are happy to continue to enhance your site after the initial build, but you can feel safe in the knowledge that because our software is open source, you can get support from other organisations should you wish to.
Places you may also like to visit:
- Silverstripe.org
This is the home for our open source CMS and Sapphire application framework. If you you want to learn about or get involved in our developer community, or learn more about how to develop with our tools then this is the place for you. - Understanding the BSD License
Here you'll find more information about our chosen open source license, BSD, and what it means for you.
