A Drupal startup - Acquia

hcgtv · 2007-12-12 22:38:41

Dries Buytaert wrote:

So rather than working on Drupal in my spare time, I will soon have the time and resources to provide the leadership it takes to help get Drupal to the next level. I’m looking forward to leading the many thousands of you to the next step of this incredible adventure.

Thoughts?

ruud · 2007-12-12 22:45:34

I’m thinking… since this is not a Drupal forum, you must have another reason for posting this. Can we hear your thoughts first? :)

els · 2007-12-12 22:59:54

hcgtv wrote:

Thoughts?

Drupal related or TXP related? (Apparently I was thinking exactly the same as Ruud…)

hcgtv · 2007-12-12 23:50:37

Ok, I’ve just puffed on a cigar, here are my thoughts…

Open Source has matured to the point where projects are becoming more than hobbies. The web is a phenomenon that didn’t go away, like I was told by many friends and family in the late nineties when I showed them what a browser was.

Fast forward to 2008, yes it’s almost upon us, and I see projects that began with a few lines of code and a mailing list, blossom into mega organizations. Emphasis on organization, cause it’s not a corporation in the Microsoft sense. I’m talking about passionate folks sticking with something for years to make it better, hoping that one day the fruits of their labor pay off.

What we are seeing now is the thinning of the herd, the best organizations are rising to the top: Drupal is the king of modularity, Joomla! owns the portal and Wordpress has us blogging away. All the other PHP projects are still important in the 1998 sense of the web but they’re fighting for the meat that falls off the carcasses, so to speak.

Which brings me to Textpattern, the Zen master of the web. He shuns the materialistic, focusing only on the word, the text, our prose. Do we show him the way, do we pimp his ride, so to speak?

Mary · 2007-12-13 08:11:20

Still very confused.

colak · 2007-12-13 09:15:22

…I will soon have the time and resources to provide the leadership it takes to help get Drupal to the next level. (http://www.acquia.com/node/8)

I’m not certain that I would go along with you on this bert. When there are leaders there’s a hierarchy which organisations demand unless of course there is an organisation ‘constitution’ which ‘safeguards’ from that.

Txp seems to me that there is less of an organisation and more of a meticulously developed community based effort. The implecations of the article you linked us to imply that Drupal could move away from the ‘open source’ ethic to a marketable commercial product be that a free one. Admittedly with software like with most other things in life, a decision maker is needed. Making decisions does not necessarily mean leading but instead it is about taking responsibility.

I’ve got my doupts re that text…

maniqui · 2007-12-13 16:56:25

Sorry, didn’t read all the article… but what exactly means “the next level”?

I won’t ever forgive Drupal for trying to reinvent the internet terminology (“in Drupal everything is a node”… yucks). Sorry for the offtopic.
Is Drupal so succesful? I rarely find myself browsing a site made using Drupal (of course, this shouldn’t be taken seriously as a parameter of success).

hcgtv wrote:

Drupal is the king of modularity, Joomla! owns the portal and Wordpress has us blogging away. All the other PHP projects are still important in the 1998 sense of the web but they’re fighting for the meat that falls off the carcasses, so to speak.

I think they are fighting for the meat (not only between them, but internally… how many Drupal/Joomla/WP based business are out there? Too many, I suppose).

We are eating sweet and fresh fruit here…

Last edited by maniqui (2007-12-20 20:53:17)

iblastoff · 2007-12-20 03:21:23

drupal developer bags $7 million

i’d say thats pretty successful.

wowzaassss

Last edited by iblastoff (2007-12-20 03:22:02)

Bloke · 2007-12-20 20:39:13

iblastoff wrote:

drupal developer bags $7 million… i’d say thats pretty successful.

Hehe, nice work if you can get it — good luck to him — but it depends on your definition of success I s’pose! In my experience, venture partners are vultures with no soul and no understanding of what they buy into. They hedge bets; sometimes it pays off, other times not, but they make sure they get their money back by fair means or foul. Me? Bitter? Not half :-)

Of course, money is all well and good when a country’s currency is backed by something other than thin air. I take solace in the fact that when the central bankers pull the rug out from under us, the $7m will be worth the same as the loose change in my pocket today.

aesop1 · 2008-11-07 18:35:07

I’ve come almost a year late to this thread, but because I’ve been evaluating Drupal 6 for some projects, I think Acquia is compelling because:

It offers an open source download of Core Drupal + essential modules (analogous to TXP plugins)—to my knowledge TXP doesn’t have anything like this.
It provides customers/developers with an optional network (paid) for core and module updates
It provides direction for core development
I’ve often thought that Textpattern would benefit from a similar model (White Knight Company + Open Source Community)

It seems that most efforts to extend/support TXP have languished because they became unsupported forks or based solely on development models (TXP Pro) for funding. Of course, Textdrive (now Joyent) was supposed to have a similar “White Knight” relationship for TXP and other open source software, but that vision—and money apparently—rapidly evaporated.

Still, it seems that there are some independent developer efforts as well as clusters of TXP developers working on projects that may be able to make such a model work.

Like most of you, I really like the way TXP works and it is still compelling software, but development appears to have slowed and it is falling behind other CMS software in feature sets and stuff that should really be part of the core. But I begin to digress into dangerous territory . . .

Your thoughts?

Destry · 2008-11-10 23:15:27

My post isn’t about Acquia, but Mark Boulton, a fairly well-knowner, wrote an interesting article recently, Drupal.org, Design Iterations, and Designing in the open about his redesigning of the drupal.org site. Interesting timing, with Txp’s coming up, and intersting too in that he speaks of how the project was approached as a design by community, and that it actually worked in this case, though looking at the lengths they took it’s easy to understand why.

Insightful article!

Last edited by Destry (2008-11-10 23:16:47)

Destry · 2008-11-12 01:48:51

See next post.

Last edited by Destry (2008-11-12 07:24:06)

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#1 2007-12-12 22:38:41

A Drupal startup - Acquia

#2 2007-12-12 22:45:34

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#3 2007-12-12 22:59:54

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#4 2007-12-12 23:50:37

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#5 2007-12-13 08:11:20

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#6 2007-12-13 09:15:22

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#7 2007-12-13 16:56:25

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#8 2007-12-20 03:21:23

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#9 2007-12-20 20:39:13

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#10 2008-11-07 18:35:07

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#11 2008-11-10 23:15:27

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

#12 2008-11-12 01:48:51

Re: A Drupal startup - Acquia

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