NEWS+BLOG

As the current users of our sanscode Content Management System (CMS) know, we don't charge any ongoing license fees for the use of the sanscode platform.

Commonly, content management systems require an ongoing, monthly or annually recurring license fee, may include free patches to rectify any unforeseen issues that may arise during the life of the website.

This ongoing license fee may range from tens to hundreds of dollars per month or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year.

One would also hope that the software being purchased is relatively bug free, well tested and wouldn't require regular patching to fix issues (a la Microsoft Windows of any flavour).

sanscode, having been in solid development for the past 2 years and now used in over 30 websites ranging from small essentially static sites to full ecommerce stores and even news portals, has been bug free and has not required a single patch to be released.

That is until now.

With the recent release of Adobe Flash Player 10, Adobe has made a change to the way in which it handles security and file system permissions which has unfortunately caused the Uploader function within the sanscode File Manager to cease working.

Luckily this issue only affects a small number of sanscode installations (version 3.2.14 onwards) and only those users who upgrade their Adobe Flash Player to version 10.

We are actually happy this issue cropped up for two reasons.

1. Increased security is always a good thing.
2. The issue wasn't with our coding but was cased by a third party component.

Now, getting back to the original point of this article, as we do not charge an ongoing license fee the release of this patch did come at a cost to the sanscode installs affected.

When the cost of developing the patch was spread amongst all affected installs, it came to just over $100.00 and was categorised as an optional upgrade, thus our clients had the option to receive the patch now or wait until they did actually upgrade their Flash Player to version 10.

So now we come to the "Toss Up".

Do you purchase a CMS which requires you to pay an ongoing license fee which could potentially cost you thousands of dollars per year and thus receive this optional $100 update for free?

OR

Do you choose sanscode to power your website and only pay for maintenance when it is needed?

Hhhhmmmm it's a tough choice.