Dries Buytaert News & Articles

Forget all that talk about the cloud and SaaS. Many just don't want to have to worry about their own hardware, OS, and software. If you're one of this benighted group, there's some new options coming your way. Read on to learn about one of them, Drupal (news, site) style.

Going into the R.I.P Content Management System session -- led by Drupal project founder Dries Buytaert -- at SXSW (news, site), I was not too sure what to expect. I know of Drupal Web CMS and their very large developer community that contributes to the overall success of this open source content management system.

I also understand that Drupal is behind hundreds of thousands of websites, so I was interested in hearing what Buytaert was going to present.

The Drupal (news, site) open source Web CMS project is in the midst of ironing the kinks out of Drupal 7 with the recent release of the second Drupal 7 alpha. Project founder Dries Buytaert recently shared a status update and release plan to take the project through the home stretch. Here's what's cooking in Drupal land.

With all of the chatter about Drupal 7, it would have been easy to miss one or two Drupal-related announcements last April. One of those announcements dealt with Buzzr (news, site), a Lullabot (news, site)-spawned startup focused on bringing hosted Drupal solutions to the masses.

Aside from a small announcement last August, the folks at Buzzr have been pretty quiet, so we thought we'd check in.

It's not easy being popular. You live under the specter of something new breathing down your neck, waiting to take your spot in the limelight. Yes, we know all about it.

But seriously, in the content management world uncool means stale, broken, or worse, irrelevant. Fortunately for Drupal (news, site), the much discussed version 7 release is looking strong. It'll keep its cool we reckon and in the process it's shaping up to further enter the mainstream. Here are the key changes to note.

Call analyst firm Gartner, ask for technology adoption advice, and you may walk away with a new appreciation for Drupal (news, site).

Reportedly thanks to Acquia and the Drupal team's endless efforts to maintain healthy relationships with analysts, Dries Buytaert's CMS baby was added to the 'Visionaries' section of Gartner's Magic Quadrant last month. As their name sits quaintly next to huge players like Google, it looks like the system is going places:

The Drupal (news, site) team's massive push toward Drupal 7 continues. There are a few changes to deadlines and expected features, but so far somehow it's all coming together, despite the daunting scope of the changes.

Editor's Note: Drupal makes Gartner's Magic Quadrant as Visionary for Social Software in Workplace. Read why.

Installing and setting up a CMS might not be the most complex thing you'll ever do, but it's enough to cost many non-technical users a few chunks of hair. At DrupalCon Paris, Acquia (news, site) announced a new service that helps people create, configure, and launch a Drupal 7 site with relative ease.

Originally planned for September 1, the Drupal 7 code freeze didn't quite happen. But that's to be expected says Drupal (news, site) founder Dries Buytaert.

He discussed the code freeze for the open source Web CMS at DrupalCon Paris, saying that it has been extended one week to September 7th, so all patches that come prior to this are still acceptable.

Once DrualCon Paris is over, Buytaert said that he and Angela Byron will do a review of everything that has been marked as ready to be committed. They will then commit what is truly ready.

After September 7, Drupal will enter a five week "code slush". During this period, patches will be allowed. But where these patches include new features and functionality, only the following will be considered:

• Up to 10 carefully selected exceptions for new features
• Important API changes for existing features
• Usability, accessibility, testing, documentation and performance

Drupal 7 --  Code Freeze Schedule (September 2, 2009)

On October 15th there will be an API freeze including markup and schema freezes. The focus becomes about "final polish".

Buytaert's suggestion to all Drupal developers: start upgrading your contributed modules now. The opportunity to address any issues with the new API is limited and the clock is ticking.

Show Acquia (news, site) the money, and it'll be nothin' new. The commercialized cure-all for the Drupal publishing system has raised a whopping US$ 8million in their second round of venture capital funding, according to a recent SEC filing.

The sizable chunk of moolah is just an addition to their nest egg, as the company scored US$ 7million back in December, during round one. First time around funders included North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Said Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal and co-founder of Acquia, "The funding allows us to quickly bring together a world-class team, rent office space, buy equipment, etc. Starting a great company is not cheap, especially if you have big dreams and plans."

The million dollar improvement certainly reflects well of the company, and we presume new CEO Tom Erickson (the "world domination" guy) is especially pleased. Before replacing Acquia co-founder Jay Batson in March of this year, Erickson was an active participant as a member of the Advisory Board.

Another increase in numbers includes the amount of funders. While Acquia saw three generous hands last December, a reported total of four reached out in March. The money is said to be for working capital.

Will Acquia divide and conquer? If things keep going the way they are, then we think some serious domination is definitely within reach.

After allowing Acquia Search to simmer in over two hundred and fifty beta tester kitchens for a few months, Acquia (news, site) has taken the product and added it to its selection of hosted Acquia Network services.

As we've discussed before, the semantic web is supposed to help with issues where computers just have no idea of what they're seeing in any context. The problem was getting people to take advantage of this technology in any real numbers.

Well, if you care about Search Engine Optimization (and who doesn't?) then it's time to wake up and smell the semantics. Otherwise, your search results will plummet as SEO gold goes to those who take advantage of Google's new tool: the Rich Snippet.

And Dries Buytaert of Drupal (news, site) seems to agree completely.

Acquia, the subscription based service and software company behind the popular open source web content management system Drupal, has made some new announcements that mean a change in management and exciting new things for the future of Acquia and Drupal.

With some interest we read recent commentary by Drupal project founder Dries Buyaert. He was meant to be providing pundrity on the future of open source. Some interesting points include:

1. Most people interact with and/or rely on open source much more than they realize
2. Mozilla Firefox, with a supposed 20% of the browser market, is in a large part responsible for bringing the face of open source to the consumer
3. "web master role that we used to know is dead. Publishing tools and content management systems, like Drupal, replaced them"

We can agree with all that. But there are two other points that go a little squirrelly with me.

2009 brings about promise, hope and most importantly change. And change comes in the fashion of newly elected leadership for the open source Web Content Management powerhouse, Drupal.

With the New Year not quite two months underway, Drupal has gone through the process of electing new leadership to spearhead their push into the future of content management. 27 applicants, some of whom were existing members reapplying, led to six new permanent members for a total of eight on the board. This brings the number of permanent Drupal members to an impressive 30.