Exciting times in the Drupal world!

We've also just announced our partnership with Acquia to provide high quality themes with their distribution: http://www.topnotchthemes.com/blog/080828/acquia-partners-with-topnotchthemes-commercially-supported-drupal-distribution

This shift from open source to a trialware/shareware ethos (i.e. you get it for free, but, you pay for support) worries me a lot.

Is it because open source only works up to a point ? or is it that there was an inability to manage and harness the huge drupal community in a smarter way?

Because the majority of the core developers behind Drupal are now working for Acquia full time now, I can see a shift of Drupal users across to Carbon, which is understandable. It is also a pity, because it means Drupal will essentially lose the open source spirit and vitality that has brought Drupal as a project to where it is today.

Why would a contributor to Drupal submit a patch, bug fix, idea for improvement to an existing module, when they can simply copy and modify the existing module, give it a new name and release it as their own...charging for support?

So I tend to disagree with the comments that point to "exciting times in the Drupal World!"....I'm more worried that it is "exciting times for the venture capitalists and shareholders of acquia!"...who own Carbon and all the products Acquia comes up with.

Hello PMCKenna,

I just wanted to briefly state that it could really go either way.

Unfortunately, people who own trademarks and copyrights to this stuff find ways to monetize it. Do you think that the people behind Wikipedia are not making money from their efforts?

Look at a video game like Spore. They are going to be making money directly off of other people's efforts. Is it fair? I am not sure.

I'll hold my reservations on this, but this trend of profitable businesses building off of open source software is very hot.

Ethics matter too, but that is why the community exists. Unfortunately, no matter how far Acquia pushes it, the community, for the most part, is likely to stick around unless they step way out of bounds.

If you were Dries Buytaert, wouldn't you want to make money off of this project that everyone on the internet was taking advantage of? I don't know the answer, but, again, that is just the way the world works.

@ James Mowery

I've nothing against Dries, the venture capitalists and investors behind acquia earning money from Drupal, it's the approach I have difficulties with.

Dries and Acquia could just as easily have launched an installation profile of Drupal for enterprise applications and provided commercial support for that.

Installation profiles were introduced by the Drupal community to make the commercialisation of Drupal easier - i.e. installation profiles offer a huge opportunity for companies to provide commercially supported distributions of Drupal. Installation Profiles also helps avoid forks and breakaway projects that may dilute the Drupal project and create confusion.

Instead, we have a 'new' version of Drupal with a new name and a new brand identity. That is not only confusing and very unsettling for the Drupal community (in particular the development community), but, it is also nudges the Drupal community culture away from the open source ethos, which is the very ethos that brought Drupal to where it is today.

It's not difficult to see a lot of Drupal users, particularly Drupal develoeprs switch from Drupal to Carbon, which the press releases describe as "a hardened distribution of Drupal", without paying for the commercial support or network services Acquia plan to provide.

That user migration dilutes the most important part of the Drupal community...i.e. the Drupal developers. It' s plausible that they will continue to take extra time out to take their carbon modules and release them at Drupal.org for free, but, somehow I don't think that will happen in the same open and free way it has for the last few years at drupal.org.

Wouldn't most serious developers prefer to work with 'a hardened version of Drupal'? that's available for free?

I also doubt that community will stay unified for a long time. I just stumbled upon Drupal. This is a great product.

I came across this post. http://communitythugs.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/drupal-dries-acquia-and-community-contributions/

Looking at few comments on this post and the URL above, I think Drupal founder Dries is already getting flames for misleading the community.

I don't care that much for now but if I am to contribute code and Acquia repackaging making money out of it and not releasing 100% of the improvements back, I'd be very concerned in the first place itself.

If I understand correctly, Dries still owns the Trademark which is another problem.

Aziz

Hi Philip and Aziz.

>>Acquia repackaging making money out of it and not releasing 100% of the
>>improvements back

>>It' s plausible that they will continue to take extra time out to take
>>their carbon modules and release them at Drupal.org for free, but,
>>somehow I don't think that will happen in the same open and free way
>>it has for the last few years at drupal.org.

As our announcements on Tuesday made abundantly clear, Acquia Drupal is free to download, GPL-licensed, and all Acquia patches go directly back to the Drupal project for consideration by the appropriate maintainers.

>>installation profiles offer a huge opportunity for companies to provide
>>commercially supported distributions of Drupal.

We looked at this approach, but it doesn't yet provide the simplicity that customers are looking for. Installation profiles still require the user to hunt down module and module version individually, which is a pain. We actually use installation profile functionality within our distribution for some things, but in the end we had to create a fully standalone distribution to deliver the user experience that people want. By keeping all our code in sync with Drupal.org, we avoid the fork issue altogether.

>>Instead, we have a 'new' version of Drupal with a new name and a >>new brand identity.

We have a convenient bundle of Drupal software with the same brand name plus the name of the company that put the bundle together. It is just like Red Hat Linux or Ubuntu Linux, etc. This approach has been an enormous benefit to Linux, and we hope it will be an enormous benefit to Drupal as well.

>>which the press releases describe as "a hardened distribution of Drupal"

Only one press release included that phrase. It was a marketing mistake. I take full responsibility. You won't see it again. Sorry.

>>it is also nudges the Drupal community culture away from the open
>>source ethos

If it nudges the community culture anywhere, it is toward sustainable growth and prosperity for everyone involved in the project. Helping more people to succeed with Drupal, making the Drupal technology better for everyone (no stupid toll booths or walls on the technology), and helping organize and rally the community to accomplish more are good things in which Acquia invests every single day. Our track record speaks for itself, and will continue do so.

>>Dries still owns the Trademark

Dries owns the trademark. Acquia does not. Dries has published guidelines for using the mark. We follow the guidelines. You can too.