Coming back at Ben Werdmuller
Ben Werdmuller of Elgg has a few claims about his product Elgg - over PeopleAggregator.
First of all - congrats on shipping V .07. We’re hard at work on V 1.2. To respectfully respond:
Elgg is free. So is PeopleAggregator. In every sceanrio and situation that Ben brings up about Elgg, so is PeopleAggregator. Unless you want to use it for commercial purposes. Then we charge you a bit (like beer.) And we’re not GPL - we don’t have to force our customers to contirbute anything back.
Elgg is cutting edge. PeopleAggregator more so. The features Ben says he’s gonna have (Widgets) we already have. Wai! Where are the meta-networks, the external accounts, the network operator controls? Ooooops - sorry Ben.
Elgg is extensible. Yup - got that too. CSS themes, APIs (we got both web servcies calls and internal APIs) - and we’ll be showing networks meshed togetehr with legacy systems.
Elgg is international. Jah ich sprehcen sie Deutsch, un parlo Italiano. I’ll be living in Europe this summer and spending more time in India. Plus - I make the scene up and down 101 and 280. Watch for Indian and Asian networks in 2007 - as well.
Elgg is private. Or public. Or anything in-between. Uh huh - we got all that - too. Sorry Ben if I’ve deprived you of you post topics and main points. Now where’s that XFN and FOAF support?
What I don’t see in Elgg are:
- Groups
- Messages
- meta networks
- full media galleries (video, audio and photos)
- draggable modules (widgets)
- MySpace-in-a-Box
But they do:
Which is coolio. Don’t get me wrong, there will be many Elgg’s - but only one PeepAgg!
February 7th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Hey Marc,
Great to see what you’ve done with PeopleAggregator, and even moreso, to see you leading the DLA charge. One question though: You mention your software isn’t GPL so customers aren’t forced to contribute anything back, but I’m curious how well that reflects the typical use case for this software. That is, the GPL (the current v2, and in contrast to the MPL, QPL, etc) doesn’t say you have to contribute your changes back, only that if you distribute modified software, you have to distribute the modified source too. So, say I download Elgg’s GPL’d software, install on it my servers, modify it 101 different ways, and launch my site… nothing in here is redistribution. Aren’t your customers typically setting up sites with your software (vs. trying to become software companies, redistributing your software with their own modifications, etc). Because, if they’re just setting up sites, even with their own modifications, then the GPL shouldn’t be an issue for them either.
Don’t get me wrong, there are business-model reasons to not GPL stuff, sure, and I’m not at all criticizing your choice here. If you write good software, don’t want it GPL’d, and want to get paid for it, good for you! Just wanted to clarify the GPL redistribution issue in case I was misunderstanding something here.
Keep up the good work, and keep fighting the good fight…
=john
PS: Check out my BloggerCon IV photo of you too:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnstanforth/sets/72157594480064633/
February 8th, 2007 at 1:10 am
the correct spelling of the german sentence is:
“Ja ich spreche Deutsch”
keep on doing
February 8th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Jesus you sound so desperate…..everyone of your featured networks on the ‘peepAgg’ page has ONLY got content posted by you OR people you know….they are FAKE…..ELGG has a system with 36 k users (The University of brighton) …..i doubt if you have 30 REAL people in ALL your networks…and yours is so eye bleedingly UGLY… like Web 2.0 in 1997!!!
February 8th, 2007 at 5:15 am
I’d like to publicly distance ourselves from the comment above, assuming Marc doesn’t remove it. This is not the way to behave in a public forum. Let’s keep it respectful, no?
However, I do have a response blog post over here.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:14 am
I respect both Marc and Ben’s efforts, and they share a similar vision.
However, it’s important to get the facts right. Without reading Ben’s response I can tell you that Elgg supports FOAF and has groups (they call them communities). I’m not sure how you missed that Marc?
See my coverage on Read/WriteWeb
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/elgg.php
February 8th, 2007 at 7:49 am
So Marc, when’re you going to talk to us about widgets? I mean, you got em, but we got all of them with bells on. And an API. So let’s see where we fit together.
February 10th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Some of the best data on the growth of social networks is coming out of the widget startups. Help me identify the reach of branded widgets by commenting or continuing the conversation at:
http://joannapenabickley.typepad.com/on/2007/02/on_widgets_not_.html
February 12th, 2007 at 3:04 am
[...] posting this now - as John Stanforth left a comment. It was triggered by this post - where I was talking Elgg and their code - which IS [...]
February 12th, 2007 at 11:14 am
[...] then there’s Ben Werdmuller who responded to my post which is a post which got allot of comments - so I feel compelled to keep this meme going. - Ben confirms that Elgg does do FOAF - but nobody [...]