Western Europe’s Odd Dominance of CMS
From Issue #19
Ever notice that lots of CMSs – including most of the “major” systems – originated in Western Europe?
- eZ publish and Plone are from Norway
- Typo3, Sitecore, and Umbraco are from Denmark
- Episerver is from Sweden
- Drupal is from Belgium
- Magnolia, Adobe Experience Manager (formerly Day CQ5), and Jahia are from Switzerland
- TERMINALFOUR is from Ireland
- Hippo (now Bloomreach) is from The Netherlands
- Contentful is from Germany
- Prismic is from France
What commonly-known CMSs are American?
- WordPress…-ish. It was actually a fork of b2/cafelog which was French, and the lesser-known of the two WordPress founders is English
Of course, this leads to a discussion about where software is “from.” Is it where the founder is from? Where they were located when they wrote it? Where it has the most adoption? And what if the company moves? (Example: Episerver is basically now a U.S. company.)
The other American systems I know of are smaller/niche –
- Ektron came out of New Hampshire (not “small,” I know, but essentially end-of-life now)
- ExpressionEngine, Craft CMS, and Concrete5 all came out of Oregon
- Ingeniux is from Seattle
- dotCMS is from Florida
- Cascade Server/Hannon Hill is from Atlanta
- OmniUpdate is from Southern California
If you know of others, drop me a note.