AlexUA

I staff my company only with people whom I distrust, but whom I know I can defeat in hand-to-hand combat. At first it seems like a bad work environment, but the beatings continue until morale improves.

chx- your personal attacks would be distressing, if they weren't so hilariously silly. Yes, my attempts at keeping the Drupal Association accountable, and specifically howling against the DA taking money out of my pocket and putting it directly into the pockets of my competitors hurts Drupal, causes global warming, and is almost completely to blame for world hunger.

For anyone who wants to know what this angry fellow is referring to (self dealing on the Drupal Association board), you can find it in my complaint on groups.drupal.org: http://groups.drupal.org/node/162604

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but that was a direct quote from nedjo, so I'm not actually citing anything other than him. To be honest, I'm not sure what the deal is with the trademark, but I do think it's problematic that it's in private hands.

Yeah, big ups for your clear vision, eloquent writing, and just being persistently awesome here.

Vote for eaton!

What argument are you referring to, that the usage of FUD to shut down criticism is currently endemic to software development communities (the comment you responded to)?

Here's the thing Mikey, I never said Acquia is doing work that "only benefits them", and I also never questioned their motives (unless assuming that profit as a motive for a venture-backed startup is controversial).

Overlay, however, is a great example of the (subtle) shift in power within the community. Now that Dries has a paid staff he is able to have things developed by paying for them directly rather than by building consensus or waiting for a volunteer to take it on. That's a real shift, it's easily seen in how the overlay was built and found it's way into core, and even Acquia employees can see it was a problem: http://groups.drupal.org/node/170999#comment-575529. To quote from the "other" Alex: "The Overlay example, however, is different, in my opinion. This, I do believe was a clear case of Dries knowingly making an unpopular decision, Acquia being the only company willing to fund the development, and the development not have happened without such funding."

So, please rest the FUD talk, you obviously don't have any real examples of me spreading "FUD" here (obvious to me, because your accusation is false), and it's really nothing more than a lame attempt at shutting down a discussion that really needs to take place.

I think it's important to note here that this isn't just about "is core bloated" it's also about the new elephant that has emerged at the center of Drupal's ecosystem: Acquia. I think Nedjo (a permanent member of the Drupal Association) puts it best here (http://groups.drupal.org/node/170999#comment-575044 ) and here ( http://groups.drupal.org/node/170999#comment-580704 )

Some quotes from those two comments: "What Acquia means for the overall Drupal project is a question that's key for the project's future.

Currently 3 of 8 Drupal Association (VZW) board members are on staff at Acquia. This is not due to Acquia stacking the board with its own people. All three have been active in the DA since its early days, before Acquia even existed. Rather, in my view, it is one of many reflections of the convergence of Dries' roles and choices in various domains of the Drupal project: in the Association, in Acquia, and in Drupal core. Sure, this convergence has benefits. But it also has major risks that we all need to be cognizant of and active in addressing.

The influence of Acquia (or another company) on Drupal core may sometimes be explicit, and it's worth looking at specific patches that may or may not reflect this issue. But I think much more to the point are the larger factors of scale, resources, access, and influence.

By analogy, there's the name Drupal itself. We all through our participation and contribution help build meaning for the name, but ultimately its use is controlled individually by its trademark owner, Dries. Any company or individual may apply for a license to use the trademark for commercial purposes, subject to the conditions, which include notice that the requirements for usage may change. Basing a major company, product, or service off an external trademark implies some risk. Does Acquia have differential access to the trademark based on Dries' ownership of both Acquia and the trademark? In practice, the most high profile private branding of Drupal products and services are mainly in Acquia: Drupal Gardens, Acquia Drupal.

"In approving or rejecting proposals and patches, [Dries] gives special weight to comments made by people he trusts and respects for their past contributions to Drupal." About Drupal: Core Developers.) In practice, Dries has gathered around him in Acquia an ever growing number of the core code contributors he most trusts and respects. Included in this pattern are core branch maintainers--for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7, the individuals Dries chose as branch maintainers were subsequently brought onto staff at Acquia. In Angie (Webchick)'s case, her work at Acquia looks a lot like a continuation of her previous work as a core maintainer.

Even with a high level of technical skill and insight, getting even a minor change into Drupal core can require months of work (assuming you aren't in the elite ranks of IRC superstardom). Contributing larger changes - like significantly rewriting a major API system - is a huge investment. Before making such an investment, any company would have to have a high degree of confidence in its likeliness of success.

Acquia has on staff all current committers to Drupal core, and talent to burn, including a lot of the inner circle of Drupal core development, backed by venture capital and a presence in every main area of Drupal products and services. Does this in itself mean that all of Acquia's core initiatives will go in while those of other companies will languish? No. Does it mean that Acquia is uniquely positioned to invest in long term core development, to shape Drupal's future with a degree of confidence that others can only dream of? I think the answer's clear: of course it does."

The perception that Acquia = Drupal is a HUGE problem for both Acquia and the drupal ecosystem. If this perception persists then you can guarantee that more Drupal firms will go the way of Development Seed, who not only stopped working with Drupal for their clients in favor of mapping and data visualization, but who also just released their new site using Jekyll and GitHub pages: http://developmentseed.org/blog/2011/09/09/jekyll-github-pag....

And if all of our shops turn away from Drupal, or turn towards a forked version, Acquia is definitely going to be feeling forked themselves. This is a Mambo moment, and Dries + Acquia should have a healthy fear of a fork.

Disclosure: I own a 20 person open source consultancy that does mostly Drupal work, and we are Acquia "partners".

We really need a new "Godwin's Law" to deal with usage of the term FUD, because at this point it seems to be used any time a corporation or project feels they are being unfairly criticized. Do you have some actual examples to prove that the critics of Dries and Acquia are spreading FUD and not expressing real concerns about the project?

I tell you what- every time I hear an Acquia employee use the word FUD against a critic it just makes the critics look right.

Also, note how Dries addressed approximately 1 of the 10 or so issues outlined in the "Does Acquia have inappropriate influence over core" post.

It might be a poor measurement of quality in general, but in Drupal's case it speaks to the growing pains Drupal core (and Core development in particular) is going through right now. Sun's post is specifically about new and untested/unproven UI modules that were forced into Core by Dries, that have added to the burdon for Core developers, as well as the increasingly complex (and very often poorly documented) Core code base that is making it very hard (or impossible) for new Core developers to get going.

One key thing to keep in mind here with regards to Drupal is the release cycle for Core. The current release (7.x) took three years to come out, so when things get shoved into Core it takes a looooong time to take them out, or even to improve their underlying APIs. This is as opposed to Contributed Modules (Contrib), which is where much of the power of Drupal is, and which evolves at a much faster rate than core (for example- Views went from 1.x-2.x-3.x in the time it took to develop Drupal 7).