Is Drupal in a crisis?
This is a question which "sun" raised on his blog: http://www.unleashedmind.com/en/blog/sun/the-drupal-crisis
There were lots of interesting comments which followed too. He is a core and module contributor -here is his profile of Drupal.org: http://drupal.org/user/54136
A bit of this flowed over to Dries' blog too where there were again some interesting comments:
http://buytaert.net/does-acquia-suck-up-all-the-drupal-talent
My feeling is that Drupal 7 looks good but just doesn't "work" like Drupal 6 does. It looks great but its not production ready, many modules missing or only in dev etc. Almost like Windows Vista as someone stated.
I was wondering what some of our Drupal rock-stars here in Cape Town / South Africa thought about this?
Comments
Thanks for the heads-up,
Thanks for the heads-up, wavesailor :) I've just read through sun's original post, and most of the posts he links to. If I can summarize the issues:
I agree with sun - I think drupal is in a crisis - or rather, the drupal community eco-system is in a crisis. The system is currently incapable of dealing with the amount of incoming work, and unless something changes, something will break (like core devs leaving, or drupal 8 taking 10 years to get released...or something).
I'm still building sites on D6, and I think it will be around for another 2 years. There are plenty of major bugs in D7, although I don't know how many of them will affect fairly normal drupal usage. Cerebra and Telamenta are starting to build new drupal sites on D7.
Here's what I think the SA drupal community can take from this:
Drupal remains a great choice for building websites. How the community responds to this current challenge will dictate drupal's future. So, get involved!
P.S. - the coolest thing I saw while following the links in all of this was an example Choose your drupal download page, which I think is brilliant.
This is interesting
Great posts, wavesailor and Roger.
These posts can easily be split up into three separate topics for discussion, all major issues.:
1. Drupal 7
2. Burnout
3. Core and module contributors
My opinion on them (and pretty much my own opinion):
Drupal 7: I'm glad this has been pointed out by wavesailer and the links to Sun's blog. For me it is very much a sign of things gone wrong. I've been watching the progress of D7 and have been comparing it to by experience when I changed from D5 to D6. Then, I decided to wait a year for D6 to catch up with D5. I started using D6 after 8 months, but it was not easy then as the modules were lacking. But in the end, most of then came to the party.
So I decided to do the same with D7. Great was my excitement knowing there is a movement in D7UX and other smaller pushes to bring Drupal modules up to date with D7 and the top 40 modules will be ready for D7 on time. Guess what? 9 months later and not 1/2 of them are ready most are still in dev state.
Then there is D7 itself. I have played with it, but have not really developed a site with it. For me all the new interface looks great and are suppose to make it easier for general users to build Drupal sites. But don't you all feel that, yes, great, looks cool and all that, but why does it feel lacking? First thing I did was to remove the build in Admin menu and replaced it with the original Admin menu module (updated for D7).
Bug issues as Sun mentioned. A great drive was made to kill all the bugs which lead to much more bugs. D7 was pushed for a final release date, and when all the bugs could not be squashed in time compromises were made.
Burnout. Hehe. I laughed when I saw this mentioned. But yes, it is a true fact and I have experienced myself 4-5 times now. Currently I am on my second burnout of the year, so it's not bad going! Some day I wonder if it's worth it. Even in my dreams I found myself doing coding, lol! Jokes apart, it is a problem I feel we as South African developers face as we have to quote SA market related prices to deliver the same content level as the rest of the world, and then maintain that same high standard as well.
We have a great community of Drupal developers in SA, but what I feel lacking still is the education of clients as to what Drupal and open source software really is about. Business wise, how may full time Drupal developers can raise their hands in saying that there is not enough Drupal work to do? Seems like we are always busy and booked out months ahead (take note those that are considering a full time career in Drupal). Also, each of us have a specialty in Drupal which we can utilize and help each other with instead of trying to everything yourself (for instance, I specialize in custom module development, I rather work with other Drupal developers who can do site building and styling than try to do it all).
Core and module contributors. A lot of times I ask myself where do all these guys find the time to do all this in between doing actual work to put bread on the table? I have 4 modules publish on D.O. (drupal.org) and have about another 5+ modules I've developed for my own or clients use which I thought would be great for other developers to use in Drupal projects. But I just don't have the time to maintain modules on Drupal without some sort of remuneration for the work I do or spend time on it. Points 1 and 2 above also have a lot to do with it.
So if somebody can tell me how I can make money out of developing modules which I can publish to D.O. for the community that they can use as they like, please let me know, would love to do that.
In a nutshell: Reality it is more about looking after yourself first than handing out freebees to others.
Maybe I should go stand on the street corner with a sign around my neck: Will Code for Beer. LOL!
Quentin
I think something that has
I think something that has been avoided, which I think was Suns prompt for the article is that Acquia is draining the resources of the drupal core dev's and thereby making decisions on the direction of drupal itself based on Acquia's business plan. Now that it has shareholders and the 2 top core developers ( dries and webchick ) - I think Sun and others are worried that drupal might be sold out.
The issues, bugs, burnout etc comes with any opensource project I think (and other). ubuntu definitely has some bugs with the new unity ( although its getting some much better everyday ) Luckily for ubuntu is has backing from conical which does base core developments on its business model. Ubuntu one is a bloody awesome service and i sweetly tied into ubuntu.
I think (and have posted on the drupal forums ) that there should be way more exposure to donate to modules and not only that by to hire the developers who created and contribute to the modules if you want added functionality. This could create a whole economic system around the project which can only drive it forward. I didnt get only replies on that post so I guess people are more interested in complaining then finding solutions - although I blame myself here for being one of those very people.
From watching dries keynote from the chicago drupalcon (i think it was that one ) the future process of contributing to core will not allow for massive influence on drupals direction from one group of people, but I could be wrong. They do a lot of good for the community so I am not sure it is such a bad thing.
its still a nice piece of software , and drupal 7 is awesome. Everyone should check out the aloha module
http://drupal.org/node/1275674/release
One more thing. Sun was saying that they should concentrate on core and not these "lipstick " type modules to core. He might be right , im no developer. But even though drupal is free is still needs to be sold. There is alternatives to drupal and I think these lipstick modules are key to marketing the product without marketing the product. The more novices that are sold over by it for its ease of use by using this lipstick approach the more potential for a larger pool of new developers to contribute. I think there is a fine balancing act between the two that needs to be worked out .
I dont like the overlay -- but i dont mind that it was included. I think it increases the potential for very cool contributed modules.
What do you think of the
What do you think of the Choose your drupal download page?
Is Drupal in a crisis
To be honest with you, I think for the next 6 months I will still be running my projects on Drupal 6. Up until Drupal 7 brings some app that is irresistably AWESOME then I don't see myself moving. Like someone just said, It's just like the way we embraced Windows XP, a good version takes a long time to let go.
That's an awesome idea @roger
That's an awesome idea @roger saner. Providing a download choice by use case is exactly what D7 needs because it immediately addresses the need of D7's target audience.
D7 was built for everyday folk, not developers and definitely not for people wanting a platform to build their own business or solution on. What if leadership would accept that D7 was built for the end-user, who is not a developer and who wants an easy to install website that can be configured to do things. Would this make it easier for developers and leadership to make decisions about what happens to D7 core?
I personally want to see an upgrade path from D6 to D8. We built our recently released SAAS Drupal business entirely on D6, even though D7 was released just after we begun development. The shape and size of D7 did not suit our development requirements, so I made a decision very early in the project to stick with D6. Today myself and the development team are really happy about that decision and we have no intention of upgrading our service to run on D7.
We did the same as @Max_Headroom when it came to upgrading to D6. We waited a year. It made sense and it worked out perfectly. D6 is beautiful and is a clear evolution of D5. D7 is more like a branched mutation of D6.
Overall, I'd say D7 is good for Drupal because it will bring in many more end-users. People would usually have the choice of Wordpress or Joomla would now seriously consider Drupal. When the Choose your Drupal page -- with rock solid, fully maintained distributions -- comes about, then choosing Drupal would be so much easier.
I like @bukem's idea to give more support to module maintainers by "promoting" their paid services on the module project page. The donate button is corny. A dedicated "I'm for hire " space is so much cooler. It makes sense. At the moment module maintainers add a line or two to the end of their projects to indicate they're available for higher or have sponsored the module or have something for sale. See: http://drupal.org/project/views - Going with @bukem's idea, we could have all of that info in a dedicated block directly above the maintainers block. And make it pink or something.
Whatever the case, it's important that we stop any negative publicity about D7. It's much better for us to crystallize the vision for D7 and then focus on a leaner D8 which sticks to the "Drupal as a Platform" idea.