Every community uses some sort of social platform. Every social website developer codes in one. Our platforms inspire both love and hate, love for their plug-n-play features, hate for the servitude they require. Here's a secret about platforms. Great social platforms empower the developer.
When working with most platforms developers must code within some arcane architecture unique to that platform, or learn to design features as modules, or talk to the API through some weird client-server model. And source code availability? In a .NET social platform? Good luck with that.
Sueetie happened because a group a developers refused to continue conforming to one proprietary platform architecture after another. They were bitten one too many times by platforms that offered the source code essential to maintaining and building their applications only to see that source code taken away or licensed at obscene rates as .NET Social Platforms one-by-one went Enterprise.
In 2008 we looked around at what was available in the .NET Social Networking space and found a gold mine of Open Source applications on which we could build a fantastic platform that would be free, full-featured, rock solid, scalable, and most importantly, offer full source code availability. Gallery Server Pro, YetAnotherForum.NET, BlogEngine.NET and ScrewTurn Wiki each had enthusiastic user communities and an expert team of core developers. All we had to do to was bring them together as a loosely-coupled Social Platform. So in December of 2008 we published the Sueetie Manifesto and announcement Sueetie v1.0.
The initial release contained the great apps that still comprise Sueetie plus a single sign-on membership architecture. Since then, apart from applications updates that have made Sueetie better and better, the Sueetie framework has exploded with features like integrated eCommerce, CMS, global search and tagging, use analytics, walls, mobile theming and much more.
And about that Sueetie Platform Architecture that was created to empower developers? If a developer has experience with C#, ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET Membership, and the ASP.NET Data Provider model, they will feel right at home with Sueetie and each of its applications.
Life in Sueetieville
We built Sueetie so that .NET developers could work with great Open Source apps and build awesome experiences using the integrated Sueetie Platform as a baseline. We never intended to take over the world, procure a round of financing, or offer stock options. In fact, we thrive on the small-town atmosphere of Sueetieville, where we know each other's names and share a common secret, that we Developer Citizens are empowered to do any damn thing we are capable of doing with our God-given abilities and 100% of the source code.
But like everywhere else, in Sueetieville we have to pay the bills and support ongoing development. Finding a revenue model was hard, especially when remaining true to our Open Source roots, so in 2009 Sueetie LLC was formed to oversee Sueetie's ongoing development. The Sueetie revenue model was refined with each major release up to Sueetie Version 4.0 where we released two versions of Sueetie, a free Community Edition and 3 Premium Editions with features not found in the free version. We also designed an incremental model to incentivize contributing to Sueetie development as communities grow and become more profitable. The Version 4.0 licensing model is not written in stone, but we are confident we have come up with a revenue structure that not only makes Sueetie far less expensive than other .NET Social Platforms, but one that will enable us to keep building something great. As we grow we hope to institute our long-term goal of giving back part of the licensing revenue to the application development teams of Gallery Server Pro, YetAnotherForum.NET, BlogEngine.NET and ScrewTurn Wiki.
The Next Chapter
We love working on the Sueetie Platform because we know there's always some cool feature to build, even more so because so many other developers will be leveraging those features in their own communities. The future is going to be great and we hope you'll come along for the ride!
Thanks for reading!
Dave Burke
Sueetie Founder and Lead Developer