I’m curently working as a developer for a chain of educational institutes. I’m developing a web application that will manage students processes (registration, Moodle integration, grades, administrative requirements, etc.), and sice there are very specific requirements, it’s being developed in-house.
The long-term goal is to make that application a product. It’s currently being built in Codeigniter, but the question struck me reciently:
Is a Codeigniter-based (or framework-based) web application candidate for being a profitable, redistributable, sellable product?
Have any of you built a sellable product that uses a OS framework? Is it worth it? Any alternatives or thoughts?
I’m asking this question with many angles in mind – legal, flexibility, portability, scalability, etc. What would you do as a programmer?
If the probable buyer knows what he is doing, using a well-known and qualified open source framework is always a plus.
When it comes to buying a software, the main concern of the buyer (which affects the final choice generally) is the maintainability of the software. And an OS framework-based definitely has a plus it that area.
Also, if you will need another developer to work on the project, it will be a lot easier for the new guy the start working on the job since he won’t have to spend days/weeks to learn how the in-house framework works.
From the developer side, there are hundreds of developers that contributes to OS frameworks, and there are tons of plugins for this frameworks to solve common problems, whether be it security or user system or CMS. You can just use the plugin and work on the problems that are specific to your software. In the end, you will spend less time doing common stuff, and more time on stuff that actually matters.
Since that kind of OS frameworks (codeigniter, symfony etc) are backed up by a great community, you wont need to fear about them being out-of-date or broken.
There is a great guide on symfony2 site (another OS framework) that explains this benefits, which applies to all high quality frameworks.
Yahoo used symfony to build Yahoo Answers and Delicious, which proves that OS frameworks can be used on enterprise-like projects. That means they are scalable and felixible as well for big jobs.(Don’t know very much about codeigniter as I am a symfony guy, but I’m sure there are cases for codeigniter like that as well)
So, go ahead and continue using it.