Following the announcement that Mautic Inc. was acquired by Acquia, we offer you our first reactions in this editorial. You will discover our impressions, ideas and some clarifications from the perspective of the second largest contributor of Mautic community.
Requirement: to distinguish Mautic from... Mautic!
Careful: the communication around this event was a bit awkward. Acquia bought Mautic company, what we call Mautic Corp. or Mautic Inc. Buying Mautic does not mean buying the community!
Actually, Mautic community and open source project is supported by a non-profit organization and cannot be bought by a group with commercial purposes. This makes it possible to answer the first question that can emerge: no, this is not, by any means, the end of Mautic open source.
Who's Acquia?
Acquia is a company specialized in the sales of open source products on cloud (or SaaS). More specifically around the Drupal project. To this date, this company is the leading contributor to the open source CMS Drupal.
As a result, Acquia, that has around a $ 200 million turnover, has great expertise in managing a community project, development & hosting. It it also a Symfony expert, since Drupal uses this framework (just like Mautic does).
Does this purchase mean good news?
Yes, yes and yes. It makes two important things possible:
- Provide funds to Mautic Inc. following their fundraising (Series A), which is starting to date. This provides fuel to Mautic to continue to invest efforts in the development of this open source software. Since Mautic Inc. is the first contributor to the project, we are in a comfortable position to say that the main contributor will continue on.
- Count on an additional expertise in managing an open source project, development, etc. Drupal is a real success, so there is good source of inspiration. Especially since the convergence between the two projects is anything but a bad idea! A good website / application with a good marketing automation tool is music to everybody's ears.
What about Webmecanik?
Just like before! We remain the second largest contributor to the open source project, just after Mautic Corp. and most importantly, we continue to take care of our customers and the many partners/agencies who have trusted us for more than 4 years.
