Five open source content management systems you should know about

Open source has a lot of advantages. For starters, the license is free, which means you take a huge part of the expense out of the equation, but just because the license is free doesn't mean the entire implementation is. You still have to learn about it, set it up, possibly customize it, roll it out, train your users and so forth, just as with any enterprise software. But with open source, you have a lot greater freedom to get under the hood than you do with its proprietary counterparts and to connect to other systems or even completely rework it if you wish. That's the beauty of open source. The code is open and accessible, so you aren't locked into a proprietary vendor's view of what your software should look like.

For these reasons and more, you should at least include open source options when you evaluate content management vendors. Many vendors like eZ Publish and Alfresco are working with large organizations, which shows how well they can scale to even the largest content repository requirements. 

We decided to make a list of five open source content management systems you should know about across the spectrum of content management platforms from ECM, to WCM, to blogging, and Digital Asset Management. As you would expect, these are just some examples of good open source products. We are aware there are many others we have left out.

If you have others you're fond of, please feel free to leave a comment and share them with us. Here's the five we think you should know about in no particular order:

Alfresco
eZ Publish
WordPress
Joomla!
Razuna