created on Tue, 2008-06-24 11:07

You probably saw all of these articles already but ... in case you missed any ... get comfy, pour a beverage and do some reading about Open Source CMSs in the news:

Drupal and The Future of News

Tech writer Kurt Cagle from Open Source Pixels {cribbed article bio: managing editor of XML.com, lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is beginning to wonder what happened to summer - Ed note: Ditto on the summer ;-)} offers a wide-ranging narrative about his experiences with Drupal, (including a name-check of Bryght/Raincity Studios) in his June 1, 2008 article. Well worth a read for his interesting historical and technical perspectives.

Drupal has long been just underneath the radar. My first encounter with it was in 2003, when I became involved with a group of programmers supporting the Howard Dean campaign, where we settled upon Drupal as a good foundation for an easy to roll out web CMS that could support local grassroot groups. Part of the ability of the Dean campaign to raise funds on what amounted to a shoestring budget could be effectively attributed to the Druapl implementation, at the time dubbed DeanSpace. After the election, the developers submitted the extensions back into the Drupal code base as CivicSpace, and this is still one of the most widely used open source political sites to date.

Drupal gained further clout with the rise of blogging in 2004-2005, and much of the functionality that has been added to Drupal has served only to strengthen this blogging capability. The company Bryght was founded in Vancouver in 2004 to sell hosted Drupal services, and along the way significantly pushed Drupal into the spotlight as one of the premier blogging and social networking platforms (Bryght was recently acquired by sibling Vancouver company Raincity Studios, combining a cutting edge web design company with the hosting services Bryght itself provides.

Drupal has gone through a number of iterations, and just recently released its Version 6.0 release. Having worked with it myself in its beta incarnation, I have to commend the many open source developers who put in countless hours in this version - Drupal is finally coming into its own as perhaps one of the best web platforms out there … and the irony is that blogging, while still an integral part of its underlying system, has taken a back seat to its extensive use of taxonomies, feed manipulations and effective use of AJAX systems.

Drupal’s Creator Envisions Web Publishing’s Plug-and-Play Future

The venerable Webmonkey published an interview with Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson by Michael Calore on June 19th, 2008. The interview covers Drupal's beginnings, the importance of professional, modular design, Drupal 7 preview, the developer community population, and what they have in mind for Acquia, their new Drupal-centric company.

Webmonkey: Drupal is especially popular with those who want to build a site around some sort of central social networking component. Is that because it gives such granular control over user management, or is it because Drupal became popular at the same time social networks were really taking off?

Buytaert: I think the first reason is definitely a big part of it. Drupal was a multi-user system from day one, but most of the other systems are behind Drupal as far as user management and access rights.

It’s a very social system by design. For example, the original Drop.org site was very much like Digg, where people could submit links and vote on each other’s submissions. Such user interaction was a key initial feature of Drupal. Over time, we’ve been moving away from these features. That voting system has since been taken out of the core, but it’s available in a module. Instead we’re evolving into a platform that can do more — the traditional web content management stuff as well as the social stuff.

Batson: They also got a good boost because Drupal 5 had as its tag line “Community Plumbing.” At that moment in time when community-based sites were becoming more important, here was this system marketing itself as being optimized for that.

Also at that time, there were a lot of people coming into the Drupal community and contributing code. So, a great deal of code was written in that area with the social features in mind. I know Dries was spending most of his time during that period managing those contributions — keeping the Drupal core slim, but making sure that the key features were there. And, at the same time, stressing the importance of modules.

Being a content producer rather than a developer, I'm curious to see how the next version of Drupal evolves and am exctied about a few user-friendly-ish features coming down the pipe. This simplicity on top of the elegant, stable code sonds like a key mission in Dries' eyes as well:

Our long-term vision for Drupal as an open-source project to fully democratize online publishing — to make it possible for everyone to create really powerful and interesting websites just by clicking around. Drupal lets you get a working prototype up and running in just a couple of hours without having to write any code. That’s very powerful.

Open Source stands together

A blog post by technology pundit (and RCS-er) Boris Mann (back in March but worth noting) delves into the tension of what "is" and what "isn't" open source and the alludes to the stone-throwing 'fiefdoms' which often grow up around projects when they become businesses.

"Basically, sniping other open projects isn't cool. In the first meetings that the Drupal community ever had as a group, in Antwerp and Amsterdam, we had Joomla community members and senior devs. ..."

He extolls his thoughts and includes Matt Mullenweg's (Wordpress) musings:

Matt Mullenweg had to make a pretty clear statement that WordPress is Open Source in response to some sniping from MT.

I already left a comment in support of Matt, and he tossed it back my way:

"Thanks Boris, I think the way Drupal and WordPress have co-existed is a great model to follow despite a few distractions along the way, and your role in facilitating that as an ambassador has been crucial. It’s rare for code for one project to be directly applicable to another, but ideas and values are contagious — in the good Isley Brothers way."

I know how this can be. We flirted with dual licensing around Bryght's mass hosting system, Hostmaster. In hindsight, it probably delayed development by 2 years. Now hosted on Drupal.org, Hostmaster has a couple of more developers buying in and it feels like we're developing some momentum.

Vancouver Joomla Day was a major success!

And finally, speaking of Joomla ... the Joomla-ites held a camp at Vancouver Public Library (nice venue!) a couple of weekends back. I am curious about the cultural similarities moreso then the technical nuances dis/advantages. Int he photos, not many faces i recognize from the heaps of events i/we attend.

It's alsmo like a paralell universe of social media devs and makers right in our own city! We were wondering if we Drupal peeps each have a doppelgänger in the local Joomla tribe?

Dr. Raul, PhD. live blogged the whole gig (cause his fingers never stop typing it seems!):

• Starting Session
• SEO and Joomla 1.5
• Project Spotlight with Jim DeLaHunt
• Project Spotlight - Diabetic Diet Secrets
• Joomla Security, Performance, and Hosting
• Vancouver Joomla Day Recap

and Rastin Mehr blogged about the event at Vancouver Business & Technology Community Tazzu.com, saying ...

I guess the pictures from the Vancouver Joomla Day speak for themselves, we did have a great time all together. There were concerns in the past that Joomla! wasn’t nearly as recognized as Wordpress or Drupal in the Vancouver area, and this event busted the Myth! Based on the multiple counts, we had about 120 people show up. The ratio of ladies to gentlemen were about 1 to 3; we certainly hope to have more ladies involved in these type of events in the future.

After ringleading Drupal Camp Vancouver, i know the feeling he describes:

I should have made this post on Monday, but we were still recovering from the event and catching up with the lost work hours for our client’s projects.

Anyhow, Vancouver Joomla-ians, come visit us sometime. Who are you? Let's bar-b-que and swap anecdotes and skillz (and bring our dopplegangers!)

Photos:

5-minute Drupal booth: bmann

Raincity jumpers: kk+

Dries Buytaert: Robert Scales

Boris Mann: hadsie

Darth Drupal/WP: Ianiv & Arieanna

Joomla Day: Aristocrat

Druplibacon: chrys