The team producing DOCMAN has released the long awaited native 1.5 version. That is great, but what is not so great, is that the file repository system is no longer for free. The team charges a modest fee for the, we must say, more than excellent extension. Perhaps indeed the few EUROs are not so much for a quality product like DOCMAN. It is also not that we do not want to pay - fortunately we can and we hope many others can also. What increasingly frustrates us is, that more and more high profile developers of the most essential Joomla components are asking for "small" fees, undermining the concept of free opensource software.
The DOCMAN version that runs on legacy mode works pretty well, so for those who like to keep costs low, you can always use that version. We have not bought the new version yet: we will wait for the final release of Joomla 1.6 and then most likely will give in soon or later.
The DOCMAN announcement is below (this is a picture from January 2009, so you can click for a while - the "donation button" does not work):
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The Joomla community is of course successfully nudged by JoomlaTools and we do give them credit for this. It is just a matter of time till DOCMAN 1.4 will be useless, assuming it is not compatible with Joomla 1.6. Most people will step over to Joomla 1.6, and will be forced to buy or leave and use an alternative such as Phoca's file system (till they also start to charge of course). Who will be next: Joomla itself?
For a rather amusing discussion on the free DOCMAN topic, please check out:
http://www.joomlachicago.com/John+Coonen/View-by-tag/DocMan/
Latest Update: 12 July 2011 - Another price increase - we follow with great interest if the new version 2 adds significant value.
"To make it a great summer we decided to not only give our existing DOCman 1.5 users a discount but everybody! During the summer holiday our membership costs only $49 (instead of $69), or 3 months for free. Our summer sale ends on the 31th of August."