Last month Arrow Digital released Hotcakes for the first time under an open source license. One of the primary goals in transitioning to an open source model was to motivate as many online businesses as possible to use the Hotcakes product.

In regards to product packaging, we initially chose to only offer an integrated distribution package which included both the Hotcakes e-commerce solution as well as the CMS platform. For new users we felt that this package offered the most streamlined user experience for installation and showcased the full breadth of product features. This is the same package that is offered in the Hotcakes Cloud environment and it is the package which provides the most benefits in terms of being a fully functional e-commerce solution for the digital enterprise.

That being said, we discovered that there are many users who would like to take advantage of Hotcakes as part of their existing CMS installations. The feedback was very direct and consistent, and was shared with us through a variety of community channels. After some investigation we concluded that there was no technical reason which would prevent us from satisfying the needs of the community.

So we are very happy to announce that we will be providing a Hotcakes module package available for official download. It will be offered under the same open source license terms as the integrated Hotcakes platform. The package will be published as part of the upcoming 3.0.1 release, so please stay tuned.