More CMS Geography Trivia

Last issue, I talked about the geographical origins of a bunch of CMSs, and noted a concentration in Europe. In that post, I made some glaring omissions, and people called me out for them.

• Kentico and Kentico Cloud hail from Czech Republic
• Sitefinity was originally from Bulgaria (since acquired by Progress, from New England, USA)
• CoreMedia is from Germany
• Tridion was from the Netherlands, but was acquired by SDL (so-called “SDL/Tridion”) from the UK
• Movable Type is from San Francisco, USA, but was acquired by a Japanese company (it’s still wildly popular in Japan, for whatever reason)

And then there’s a bunch of “historical” CMSs that I left out that were legendary back in the day, but are slowly fading away (TeamSite, Stellent, FatWire, etc.).

My friend Carolin made an interesting comment:

[The European emphasis] may be connected to the funding / venture capital culture in Europe vs. America. American investors may favor new technology that creates a “new market” whereas European investors may prefer disrupting an existing market. So the “risk appetite” may influence the investments and essentially result in this distinct split.

I don’t know enough about venture funding to evaluate this, but investment climate plays a huge role in what catches on and what doesn’t.