Relinquish Koken to Opensource

NetObjects have now abandoned Koken and the unofficial support forum is currently (permanently?) offline too. That makes the Redit group (https://www.reddit.com/r/koken) and here about the only places to post on the topic - so here goes.

I've just come across a petition that has been started (https://www.change.org/p/netobjects-...-to-opensource) calling on NetObjects to publish the code to Opensource. It's such a great product that it would be unforgivable for it to remain abandoned, so please do consider signing...

FWIW, the person who started the petition has been in contact with Todd Dominey, one of the creators of Koken, and you can see a summary of the conversation here: https://www.change.org/p/netobjects-...rce/u/24998242

Give the source code to who? Koken flopped because not enough users would pay for templates or what ever they were selling. It is a sorry fact that a lot of computer users think software should be free. I have talked to too many of them over 35 years to want to argue the point. The reason they win in the end is because even though Koken was well liked so is some free stuff they don't have to pay for and there is a lot of free stuff out there and some of it is pretty good. So why buy software??????? I personally like free software but I also buy a lot of software too. The free stuff saves me a little money.

So if Koken goes into the public domain, who is going to do all the free work to get it running again??????? The pay model flopped once, it will probably flop again if tried now.

I rarely say this in public but there are a lot of Capitalists who are really closet Socialists.

There's need to give the source code to anyone - there is no separate source code. It's all written in PHP, Javascript + lens files so is already 100% readable by anyone who has a copy.

And no additional work is required to get it running again - it already works, albeit it may require patches to fix particular issues. Before it was sold to NetObjects there were several companies promoting it and writing both paid and free skins & addons.

However it currently remains the property of NetObjects so, unless it is released to the public domain with a suitable opensource licence, it can't legally be modified & made publicly available for download.

It's no longer available for download from NetObjects either - it's just been abandoned, so there really is nothing to loose by releasing it as opensource.

Since someone still owns it, why don't one of you FREE spirits offer to buy it? Now that's a shocking idea! And your logic is BS. The only group that would gain is you who want something for nothing with everybody else.

Steve Raubenstine ran NOF for about 20 years and Koken for a couple of years. I don't know him personally at all but I think it's safe to assume he has better than average skills running a tech company. He decided to stop development of NOF and he could not make the Koken business model work. What do any of the rest of you think you are going to do that's successful when someone with way better business skills could not?

Many tech companies are put out of business by a paradigm shift they did not see coming. I was at 3Com when the shift from NIC cards to networking embedded on the motherboard occurred. While 3Com had a number of other products, the NIC card was the cash cow. Almost overnight that market dried up, and 3Com did not have another mass market product ready to go. The result is history. The paradigm shift that killed NOF was responsive design. 3Com was unable to make a program which was brilliant at site management and flow-through design modifications also do all that it does AS WELL as having responsive output. Just too darn hard. The Koken model is widespread on the internet - Wordpress, Joomla, and a number of other database driven apps work essentially on that principle, and there are quite a lot of companies supplying templates, widgets, etc to that market successfully. Also it's not that difficult to code your own templates in Koken - it has its own language for doing just that. I think it was just a lack of will that allowed Koken to die.

Steve Raubenstein et alacquired Netobjects from Website Pros in 2009, so less than 10 years from acquisition to demise. In fact, closer to 6 since the last version was 2015. Koken took even less. Hardly a glowing example of business acument, I'd suggest. Reminds me of 3Com all over again.

I thought Raubenstine ran NOF for quite awhile (since 2001)before he bought it???? Although I have little proof, I think the problem with this whole Koken and NOF business was that Steve bought Koken by putting up NOF as collateral. When he let NOF die and gave up on Koken, both companies reverted back to the guy who sold him Koken.

From Wikipedia:

In terms of management and staff, there are no overlapping between the old and new companies with the same name. Steve Raubenstine, who was vice president of the NetObjects Fusion division at Web.com (former Website Pros), serves as President and CEO of the new NetObjects Inc.

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Originally Posted by richs

Since someone still owns it, why don't one of you FREE spirits offer to buy it?

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Because, as you yourself said, the business model doesn't work! It presumably doesn't even bring in enough to cover the hosting costs, or it wouldn't be dead.

Most non-professional photographers users use Squarespace / Zenfolio / Instagram / 500px / other sites that don't involve the hassle of having to buy & configure their own website hosting

For pros there are much more comprehensive options such as Sytist.

Koken is in a niche market competing against free products such as Wordpress and Joomla. If it is to be resurrected from the dead then I can't see anyone except community-minded volunteers working on it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by richs

The only group that would gain is you who want something for nothing with everybody else.

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Fortunately not everyone does things for profit; if they did you'd be paying license fees to use the Web right now, instead of getting it for nothing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by richs

When [Raubenstine] let NOF die and gave up on Koken, both companies reverted back to the guy who sold him Koken.

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That appears to be entirely false. See my link to Todd Dominey's comment, which suggests nothing of the sort.

You can cook up all the rationalized mumbo jumbo you want, but until the owner of this software decides to give it up, you ain't getting squat!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by richs

You can cook up all the rationalized mumbo jumbo you want, but until the owner of this software decides to give it up, you ain't getting squat!

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Which is the entire point of this thread :)