Mindtouch rising in the open-source wiki market
Downloads of Mindtouch
One of the great things about open source is that it provides a very tangible way to measure interest in a product: downloads.
Looking at the most recent download statistics for open-source wikis, I was surprised to see that Mindtouch has been on a tear. I bumped into Aaron Fulkerson, one of Mindtouch's co-founders, at OSBC last year and didn't think much about it.
No offense to Aaron. You've got to remember, I was the guy who yawned at SugarCRM when it first debuted. My track record isn't so great. :-)
Mindtouch has hit 100,000 installations and grows by ~50% each month. Why? Reading through the blogosphere, it's because of its ease of use and rich functionality. I may give it a spin over the next few days....
Where does it go from here?
Ok, so where does this leave us? Currently, we perform at Zimbra level. Next we will need to reach Alfresco level. But ultimately, we want to dethrone the reigning champion: mediawiki. Unfortunately, it appears that there is no other wiki competitor between us and mediawiki. And since mediawiki is not commercially supported, well, that makes Deki Wiki already the #1 commercially-supported open-source wiki. But I can?t be happy with that. I want MindTouch to become the number #1 wiki, period.
Ambitious. Dethroning mediawiki is like taking on Linux if you're Solaris. Possible, but an uphill battle. Still, it makes for an interesting market.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
