Ellington licenses go for $15,000 and up --per site. While django, the framework, is open-source, ellington is not. The two, contrary to the moniker django/ellington, are very different. That is almost like saying 'php/drupal' when referring to drupal.

Anyhow --a free version of something much like ellington is floating around the campus at UT and could be found running other local news site. Yes --that one is open source, unlike ellington. Not that I have anything against ellington --I just feel that smaller papers will have a hard time swallowing the bill that comes with it. Again, I refer folks to tnjn.com and seymourherald.com (the later being more advanced) as examples.

The folks down in the Scripps Bat Cave in west knoxville know more about django than I could ever learn --perhaps some'll chime in on this?

..I hadn't noticed that. Looks like they are trying to market buzz words.

Tried to get a copy of their 'open source' stuff for tnjn early last spring and was laughed off the phone.

If you buy the license, your right ---you still dont have access to the code. From what I remember, scripps did do the extra 50% so they could manage the core ellington code base, though, I may be wrong on that.

Sorry, I just saw "open source" bullet. Didn't read the fine print. Thanks for the clarification.

By the way, the Seymour Herald site is pretty aweseome. Haven't had time to fully explore it yet (and didn't even know there was such a thing) but so far it looks great.

I also like that the "opinion" section has been renamed "blogs/opinion", a nod to the the new wave of internet journalism and Web 2.0.

I hope this will not block opinion section by filters such as those in use in Oak Ridge that do not allow access to KNS blogs.

I also got a preview of the new (and free) GoVolsXtra site. I never saw the old site before, but the new (free) site is very nice.

Will you be asked to leave town if you have never viewed the GoVolsXtra site?

Wow -- Rneal was right! The new knoxnews site does far surpass the previous version! Kudos to the web crew over there!

Sorry, I had to be snarky. The new website looks great. Unfortunately, the news content is as irrelevant as ever.

UPDATE: Oh, wait a minute. They changed the picture. Now it's a firefighter. Well, I'd rather see that one...

The Django/Ellington moniker comes about because both projects share core developers.

I spent a little time last night reading about the two. The Django project appears to have been founded and continues to be run with a real spirit of sharing and community and openness, while Ellington comes across as almost a parody of corporate co-opting of the whole free software thing. Yet they're the same people, which is rather odd.

Open source the software and charge for consulting fees --thats the end run on ellington. These guys give you django and say --go forth and build something great. They offer you ellington right after that, saying "we've built what your looking for". And they have, for the most part.

A good example of django working on its own, sans the BIG E, is Holovaty's projects at the washingtonpost.com site. From that, it is quiet clear django, paired with a skilled geek, can do just fine alone.

Keeping django open source helps ensure that there is a vibrant 'mindshare' invested in the project while protecting their investment by 'licensing' ellington.

Still, I say, keeping the two together as a single name for a product is silly. If your going to do that why not call it python/django/ellington? Or maybe a simplier name is in store ---like 'djefferson', which is what scripps seems to be calling their customized flavor of the ellington cms.

If your going to do that why not call it python/django/ellington?

It's not Django, it's GNU/Django.

A little Django trivia... Jazz fans get the riffing on "Django/Ellington," but did you know one of the program's developers is becoming a YouTube star with videos of his own Django-influenced guitar playing?
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By the way, I've suggested they call dJohnny Dobbins' contributions "Basie," as a basic small combo approach to building news sites -- rather than the expensive full orchestration of "Ellington."

Johnny and Jim Stovall also were talking about calling it "Satchmo," which would be cool too -- Louis Armstrong's horn playing actually inspired Django in the thirties -- but there's already a pretty active Satchmo ecommerce-with-Django project.
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Just Johnny -- if you're still here, I sent an email to you several months ago, but never got a reply and things didn't get fixed, so I guess you didn't get it. Anyway, you forgot to turn off the Django debugging error messages on TNJN.com.

edit: didn't dredge up this thread just for that -- RN must have deleted the spam that brought it up to the top.