JXtended Catalog to be retired on 1 January 2011
JXtended Catalog was one of the first truly flexible content systems (typically called CCKs nowadays) available for Joomla 1.5. It was first developed in 2006 and released for sale in 2007 as one of the first commercial GPL products available for Joomla. It filled a wide gap in the Joomla extensions market for a directory that supported searchable custom fields, a full depth category tree and also the ability to map items to multiple categories.
Today, in 2009, there are quite a number of extensions that do the same or similar thing, if not better, and the potential also exists for Joomla 1.6 itself to fill the needs of much of the market.
With that in mind the we've had to take a long, hard look at the long term viability of Catalog as a product offering and where it fits into the current Joomla marketspace. After a heartfelt critical analysis, we feel there are products available that are better value and will quickly outstrip the feature set that we can offer with Catalog. To this end, Catalog will no longer be available for sale from the 1 January 2010 and technical support will cease after 1 January 2011. The online documentation for Catalog will remain available for this time.
What does this mean for existing customers with a support arrangement? Regardless of when you purchased Catalog, if you have a support subscription active on the 1 January 2010, this will be extended right through to the end-of-life date of 1 January 2011. This potentially gives you in the range of 1 to 364 days of extra support for free. During this time we will be looking carefully at the growth of other CCK products and evaluating the viability of offering a migration path to one of these. If you need to renew your existing subscription before the 1 January 2010, this will cost US$60.
What does this mean for the maintenance of Catalog? We will still maintain bona-fide bugs that we find in the software up until the end-of-life date. We also plan to include front-end submission and editing of catalog items but this will be the last major feature that we plan to be add to the product.
Oh, thats a surprise... though i can understand some of your reasons. Aren´t there any features and techniques which should find a way into joomla core development? I read about your comment system, which will become a J! part...
I myself tried many of the so-called CCKs, but i am still missing (and still want) build-in extra-fields, which are added to the original joomla content. To be honest... i don´t understand why this should be impossible. Since Joomla 1.6 will get a major change in the category structure, i think this would be THE right time to add something like extrafields, too!!!
Switching to a third party CCK may have some strong extra features... but it does also bring a lot of other changes and incompatibilities: submission, itemtypes, almost no core content display module will work, plugins may not work etc etc.
So, a build-in CCK is still very much appreciated. Even if it is a simpler approach! (compared to the competitors with a longer dev time)
Why don't you flip it back to Open Source non-commercial GPL? Something like this should not DIE.
I agree about releasing it into the public domain. You never know who might pick it up and what they may make it into. Dop you have recommendations for replacement products we might consider?
I also agree. Why do you want to totally remove it? Why not just make it non-commercial? I would also like to know if you have other recommendations of products to use if you are totally going to remove it? (Please don't)
You say that "Today, in 2009, there are quite a number of extensions that do the same or similar thing, if not better" - but what are these? I have looked around a lot in the Joomla extenstions catalog and have not found anything comparable to this.
When you say, "Catalog will no longer be available for sale from the 1 January 2010", does that mean it will disappear from the site altogether or will it be downloadable for free from that time? I am sure that many would appreciate what it can do and providing no support was offered with it (as many non-commercial components don't have anyway), then it wouldn't be a burden on JXtended.
We will release it as non-commercial GPL with no support in the future. We are not going to release it immediately because it is not fair to the people that recently purchased Catalog that they paid full price where other people might get it a few days/weeks/whatever later for free.
Nice to hear about the non-commercial release...
BTW, Is something of Catalog in the upcoming Joomla releases?
Previous Customers:
What about a gift for them, like a extra extension of choice (at least a package at the same value)
Sorry for asking again...
What is the most difficult part in extending the normal joomla articles with extra fields? I mean, a solution which does not alter or modify the structure and core, so it does not produce any big disadvantages for 3rd-party module developers...
Since J! 1.6 will change in the category-structure...: Doesn't it affect all content display modules? Isn´t this the right time and chance to add an extra fields feature to articles?
TIA!
You should probably direct those questions to the Joomla development mailing lists.