I'll try to address your points more specifically:
1) BEN: I’m not entirely against people making money by selling their extensions which are built on an open source product.
KENT: As soon as I saw the word "entirely", I couldn't help but classify you as cheap (fairly or not). I am 100% for developers making as much money as they can. The more "free" extensions we have, the lower the quality, and the less likely we are to get technical support, version upgrades, and bug fixes as well as new releases. Yet, because there are so many free Magneto extensions, the quality is lower, yet as soon as I try to offer an extension for money, the same people bitching about quality then bitch because they have to pay. You can't have it both ways. I have a few extensions that I "sell" to clients directly but I do not try to put them out through the MagentoConnect because I don't think the low price I would have to charge versus the technical support I would have to provide would be worth it. Pick quality or price, but not both.
2) BEN: Do you disagree that Magento is a resource hog?
KENT: I agree it is a hog. I also have optimized Magento to run faster via code, in addition to throwing hosting resources at it. More importantly, I know that the tradeoff for the resource hog is that the architecture is very flexible. Yes, in a perfect world, it would be less a resource hog AND just as flexible, but unfortunately I'm not a brilliant enough architect to build that yet, so I will take a resource hog that does what I need since the resource limitation can be addressed.
3) BEN: the base themes are quite simply terrible?
KENT: My problems with Magento are not related to the themes. The base themes are adequate; at first I couldn't understand their fascination with orange buttons, but customer after customer likes the orange as a call to action. I have also completely re-themed front end as well as back end, so moving from base themes to sexier themes is straight forward for me. Occasionally I do a low end Magento and stick with the base theme or a slight variation, and it works. But since most clients want sexy, we give them sexy. So, I would call the base theme adequate.
3) BEN: or that the XML template system is a joke?
KENT: Maybe I have had so much experience with XML that my opinions are biased, so I'll throw that out there for full disclosure That said, XML is a big part of where the flexibility in Magento comes from. To your point, I recently fixed a problem for a new client where one of their modules was obviously deactivated (the feature set wasn't working) even though the administration panel said the module was active. I found that the value active had been set to "false" in the XML file for that module, overriding the value in the admin panel. Simple fix, but perhaps that is an example you would use to state the XML schema is not an advantage. From my view, no one but a knowledgeable site master should be able to edit a default value like that, and I like having the power to change variables easily. I find it facilitates development.
Magento is by no means perfect. I recently had a conversation with the CIO of Belk's Department store, and they are going with Hybris instead of Magento. Hybris is now owned by SAP, and is the European ecommerce darling at the moment. Their decision will work; its not right or wrong, but I would note that the reasons they decided to go with Hybris instead of Magento were based on marketing and backend/front end. Hybris has some marketing channel integrations that Magento doesn't completely have, and that was their big focus. I actually disagreed to an extent; the Amazon and Ebay integrations for Magento are solid, and certainly integration with Google Product submission is doable. However, Hybris offered some other options. Hybris also has a better backend ordering system (meaning orders input by the client received via non-website placed orders).
I'm not sure I addressed all your points. I see some comments on here related to Drupal Commerce; basically, I think Magento's issue comes down to where we should draw a line based on customer size. Because Magento CE was "free" and "open source", programmers chose to use it for any size clients that were not ready for it. I maintain that if you aren't doing $10,000/month minimum in on-line sales, then you probably shouldn't be using Magento; at that level Wordpress Commerce, Drupal, and Shopify are all better solutions.
But as soon as you get into a larger clients, then you need integration with NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft GP Dynamics, or Sage Businessworks accounting systems (because inventory management using accounting inventory tools beats using the ecommerce system for inventory management hands down), and you need robust multi-channel marketing integrations, as well as powerful workflow and non-web order on the back end. Drupal and Wordpress and Shopify are out of their league at that level.
Ben,
I'll try to address your points more specifically:
1) BEN: I’m not entirely against people making money by selling their extensions which are built on an open source product.
KENT: As soon as I saw the word "entirely", I couldn't help but classify you as cheap (fairly or not). I am 100% for developers making as much money as they can. The more "free" extensions we have, the lower the quality, and the less likely we are to get technical support, version upgrades, and bug fixes as well as new releases. Yet, because there are so many free Magneto extensions, the quality is lower, yet as soon as I try to offer an extension for money, the same people bitching about quality then bitch because they have to pay. You can't have it both ways. I have a few extensions that I "sell" to clients directly but I do not try to put them out through the MagentoConnect because I don't think the low price I would have to charge versus the technical support I would have to provide would be worth it. Pick quality or price, but not both.
2) BEN: Do you disagree that Magento is a resource hog?
KENT: I agree it is a hog. I also have optimized Magento to run faster via code, in addition to throwing hosting resources at it. More importantly, I know that the tradeoff for the resource hog is that the architecture is very flexible. Yes, in a perfect world, it would be less a resource hog AND just as flexible, but unfortunately I'm not a brilliant enough architect to build that yet, so I will take a resource hog that does what I need since the resource limitation can be addressed.
3) BEN: the base themes are quite simply terrible?
KENT: My problems with Magento are not related to the themes. The base themes are adequate; at first I couldn't understand their fascination with orange buttons, but customer after customer likes the orange as a call to action. I have also completely re-themed front end as well as back end, so moving from base themes to sexier themes is straight forward for me. Occasionally I do a low end Magento and stick with the base theme or a slight variation, and it works. But since most clients want sexy, we give them sexy. So, I would call the base theme adequate.
3) BEN: or that the XML template system is a joke?
KENT: Maybe I have had so much experience with XML that my opinions are biased, so I'll throw that out there for full disclosure That said, XML is a big part of where the flexibility in Magento comes from. To your point, I recently fixed a problem for a new client where one of their modules was obviously deactivated (the feature set wasn't working) even though the administration panel said the module was active. I found that the value active had been set to "false" in the XML file for that module, overriding the value in the admin panel. Simple fix, but perhaps that is an example you would use to state the XML schema is not an advantage. From my view, no one but a knowledgeable site master should be able to edit a default value like that, and I like having the power to change variables easily. I find it facilitates development.
Magento is by no means perfect. I recently had a conversation with the CIO of Belk's Department store, and they are going with Hybris instead of Magento. Hybris is now owned by SAP, and is the European ecommerce darling at the moment. Their decision will work; its not right or wrong, but I would note that the reasons they decided to go with Hybris instead of Magento were based on marketing and backend/front end. Hybris has some marketing channel integrations that Magento doesn't completely have, and that was their big focus. I actually disagreed to an extent; the Amazon and Ebay integrations for Magento are solid, and certainly integration with Google Product submission is doable. However, Hybris offered some other options. Hybris also has a better backend ordering system (meaning orders input by the client received via non-website placed orders).
I'm not sure I addressed all your points. I see some comments on here related to Drupal Commerce; basically, I think Magento's issue comes down to where we should draw a line based on customer size. Because Magento CE was "free" and "open source", programmers chose to use it for any size clients that were not ready for it. I maintain that if you aren't doing $10,000/month minimum in on-line sales, then you probably shouldn't be using Magento; at that level Wordpress Commerce, Drupal, and Shopify are all better solutions.
But as soon as you get into a larger clients, then you need integration with NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft GP Dynamics, or Sage Businessworks accounting systems (because inventory management using accounting inventory tools beats using the ecommerce system for inventory management hands down), and you need robust multi-channel marketing integrations, as well as powerful workflow and non-web order on the back end. Drupal and Wordpress and Shopify are out of their league at that level.