Interesting Stuff...

Comment by Marcos Peebles on May 12, 2010 at 8:07am

Interesting comments as well :)

Comment by Manoel J. Silva on May 12, 2010 at 8:25am

...we'll have to educate a tsunami of new community members about our values and culture to make sure that they adopt the "Drupal Way" of doing things (i.e. our culture of collaboration, sharing, passion, openness, innovation and leadership).

Interesting indeed!

Comment by Amy Stephen on May 12, 2010 at 11:07am

I'll certainly welcome lessons from Dries in community building, any day of the week.

Comment by Ewout Wierda on May 12, 2010 at 1:38pm

I think a key lesson is already there in the blog and comments where the Joomla way is criticised for the sale of what is of course referred to as modules. I think that hits a point, if everybody were to be focused on making extensions for profit, nobody is left to work on the core. Sounds familiar?

Comment by Johan Janssens on May 12, 2010 at 6:48pm

My counter comment would be that Joomla is actually more free software then Drupal is. Joomla's community has fully accepted and embraced the fact that free means freedom and not free beer.

The challenge that Joomla faces is that of upstream contributions. The barriers to upstream contribution in Joomla are very high. We can definitly learn from Drupal here. Drupal's everything-is-a-patch -process work very well to promote upstream contributions. It's a very simple, yet very effective.

The question for Joomla future is not what the roadmap will look like but how to get experienced developers to collaborate and contribute upstream. The code is there, it just needs to be harvested.

In that sense I do agree with Ewout but for different reasons. Joomla extensions developers are too much cought in a traditional competition model. The power of open source lies in collaboration not in competition.

Comment by Amy Stephen on May 12, 2010 at 6:53pm

Full agreement on all points.

Comment by HarryB on May 13, 2010 at 6:58am

My counter comment would be that Joomla is actually more free software then Drupal is. Joomla's community has fully accepted and embraced the fact that free means freedom and not free beer.

This may indeed be the case for Joomla leadership and those who are its most visible/vocal evangelists/proponents. However, I suspect that "Free as in Beer" is the primary motivation for the vast majority of folks who use Joomla and open source software in general.
And, having used Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, and a number of other OSS packages both personally and occasionally for profit, I really do not believe that one s is "purer" or "more dedicated" than the other in their commitment to the four freedoms as defined by RMS.

Comment by HarryB on May 16, 2010 at 9:03am

After having read a few more "snotty" comments on the original post, the little devil who has a permanent residence on my left shoulder whispered the following into my ear:

It has been my experience that nobody wins debates about religious and/or political views. Same goes for debates regarding which open source CMS is the best.

Having said that, for those who deride Joomla! because it has a large community of 3rd-party developers who "sell" their extensions, templates, themes, whatever...this is perfectly acceptable under the terms of the GPL...which is a license, not a religion. The four freedoms associated with GPL do not require a vow of poverty. RMS himself has been known to derive income from stuff which is GPL licensed.

And conversely, for those who throw brickbats at Drupal and refer to their fearless leader as the "Drupal Dictator" with implications that Benevolence has left the building, it is time for them to get back under the bridge with the rest of the trolls.

The Drupal and Joomla! communities are not and should never become clones of each other. Each has its own unique culture,which to me is "A Good Thing."

Comment by Nick balestra on May 24, 2010 at 7:27pm

"The power of open source lies in collaboration not in competition"

Comment by HarryB on May 25, 2010 at 5:57am

"The money in open source lies in competition, not collaboration" ;-)

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