> They reference the Washington Post article about the House migrating > 520 websites from "a mix of proprietary and open-source content > management platforms" to Drupal.
Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. They're not just "moving to Drupal" - they're limiting the vendors who can provide solutions for websites hosted by the US Senate Sergeant-at-Arms (which is basically the iSP for the Senate and the House). We're currently working with several Senators, Representatives and committees there on their current sites. I don't think CF is going anywhere - it will still be one of the hosting options for these sites. But the SAA is no longer going to support most of the currently deployed CMS solutions. > I don't want to start one of those interminable "CF is dying" threads > but I am curious as to how many people had seen these stories and what > they thought in the context of the US government following many other > world governments in a push for FOSS (Free Open Source Software) > solutions? I'm also curious about how Drupal and, say, Mura or FarCry > compare since I'm not familiar enough with all of them to make such a > comparison. > > The government has always been a pretty strong area for ColdFusion > (does someone here know how long ColdFusion has been so deeply > embedded in government? I get the impression it long predates my > exposure to ColdFusion - 2001). At CFUnited in 2009, a government IT > guy approached me and told me his department had been mandated to move > to FOSS and he was researching a proposal to cross-train his team in > PHP and rewrite all their CFML applications. How many folks here work > within the government and can comment on this sort of thing? I don't think it's especially useful to talk about "the government" as if it were a monolithic entity - agencies and departments within agencies often have a lot of control of what they use. But to the extent that we can ... CF has been in use by the federal government practically as long as it's existed - we were working on government projects back in CF 2.0 days. CF has always been very popular with the government as well - more, I think, than with private industry. It's still popular too. We're located in DC, and the government has always been a big part of our business. If you do a search for CF jobs, you'll find that DC is the hot spot for them. I do think that, for a lot of agencies that have lagged behind in deploying web apps, those agencies are more likely to go with F/OSS solutions, just because they haven't had the budget to do these things before. These agencies tend to be smaller. But CF is still going strong in the federal space, both in development and sales. There's a lot of generalization in my response - I'm sure people can come up with counterexamples - but I think it's pretty accurate overall. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ http://training.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:340728 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
