Whither Thou Goest Joomla!

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

In terms of Internet time, one can consider Joomla! as a young adult who is trying to figure out what he/she wants to do with the rest of their life and is having an identity crisis in the process. The Joomla project on one hand wants to remain true to its Mission, Vision & Values. On the other, it is currently engaging a professional PR Firm to increase it’s brand recognition.

What Joomla! does not have that a number of other OSS projects do have is one or more commercial entities that provide them with “free” marketing and PR services. Acquia, Automattic, redhat, Canonical (Ubuntu), Oracle (OpenOffice) come to mind here.

Now that I’ve stated the above, some of you will proceed directly to the comments form and delineate the many evils of commercial entities and the OSS projects that are “conspiring” with them. Some will suffer from “Twitter Deprivation” and move on. Others, thinking “What the hell is this idiot talking about?” will read on out of pure curiosity. And some will simply read on with no malice aforethought!

Now I do not claim to be an expert regarding organizational models adopted by the various OSS projects, or any marketing and PR on their behalf (although I did suffer though a Marketing 101 course many years ago…I needed 3 credit-hours and the class schedule met my needs!).

What I do know is from the outside looking in and not having a clue about the inner workings of the Joomla Leadership Team (LT), Community Oversight Committee (CoC), and Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM), my perception is that in the race to capture the hearts and minds of the corporate and government worlds, Joomla is losing, or may have already lost.

Now many may say that the Joomla project is OSS and, as such, they are not competing with their OSS brethren in this or any other arena. And that may well be true. But one can also say that neither are the Drupal and Wordpress projects. The difference is that their commercial champions are.

To date, and absent any household-name, deep pocket benefactors, Joomla has had astounding success. It has spawned thousands of small businesses who have in turn spawned many thousands of sites for small and medium businesses around the globe. If one believes in statistics, only Wordpress surpasses Joomla in the number of installed sites. And this statistic is probably biased, as Wordpress has much more usage as a blogging engine rather than as a CMS.

In the meantime, OSS associated with strong commercial brand names have made impressive inroads into the corporate/government markets. An example here is the use of Drupal as the platform for Whitehouse.gov and other US Government sites. Does this mean Drupal is “better” than Joomla? Not really, it just means the winning commercial bidder for the Whitehouse.gov contract used Drupal to fulfill the Government’s Request for Proposal (RFP) requirements for CMS features and capabilities.

In conclusion, my opinion…

I am not by any means qualified to speak for the Joomla leadership and really do not care to do battle with the hordes over the leadership, organization or future direction of the Joomla project. But what I do know is that Joomla really needs to decide what it wants to be as a grown-up and share this with the community. And the project is big-time swimming upstream if its real intent is to compete with the commercial entities that are purveyors of Joomla’s OSS brethren.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interests in any of the open source or commercial entities referenced in this tome. And I long ago gave up on software development as a source of income.

Note: This is a reprint of a post on Prophead's Blog.

Tags: joomla, open, source

Comment by HarryB on March 19, 2010 at 12:10pm: @Dan

True. They are now chasing SaaS, as are a number of others...but this is a recent occurrence in the grand scheme of things. Also, in my opinion, the definition of SaaS is foggy and is not really a new concept, just a new buzzword to replace the 1990'svintage "outsourcing" buzzword.

Point I was trying to make is that "Joomla the OSS Project" may be ill-advised if their intent is to compete with established commercial entities that promote and provide life cycle support to larger corporate/government client base. Fact of life is that large corporate clients want to have a warm feeling that life cycle support will be there via a contractual relationship, rather than dependent on forums, wikis and volunteers.

Comment by Mitch Pirtle on March 19, 2010 at 12:45pm: On one hand, Joomla has a significant weakness when it comes to enterprises and governments evaluating the platform - there are no MAJOR players in the Joomlasphere. You'll see a landscape littered with one-man and two-man armies, which ain't winning any major-sized enterprise battles...

On the flipside however, Joomla has an entire ecosystem of small shops that make a living delivering Joomla-based solutions. That is really what made Joomla the market leader it is today; I'm just not seeing enough progress to demostrate evolution of significance though.

My only complaint (ok we all know I have a million or more, but hey) is that OSM chose to pay several developers for the 1.6 effort, which is still not done. Putting additional money into a PR firm, when 1.6 hitting the finish line should be the obvious top priority for the project, has me scratching my head. They would probably be better off paying that money to more developers, or getting more dedicated time from the guys they are already paying.

Take my words with a grain of salt however: I've been living a drama-free life for a while now, and trying not to get drawn back into it - I prefer having a life and actually accomplishing things every day when I go home :-)

Comment by Ewout Wierda on March 19, 2010 at 3:39pm: Cheers!
Brian, could you name some? I'm not doubting you, just eager to learn and interested to know.

Comment by Lawrence Meckan on March 19, 2010 at 8:24pm: I'd second the understanding that large corporate clients need to have a warm feeling about the lifecycle of support. One of the major government sites in Queensland, Australia was built initially in Joomla 1.0.x and I've seen the contractual obligations for its update to 1.5.x. You'd be suprised how many basic design issues were missed in the initial delivery prior to handover, including basic stuff like hardcoding in dates.

When a large government client cannot feel safe that they can maintain an ongoing relationship of support with their provider and has to RFP for a new support agreement for sites based on Joomla, then the nature of the problem is revealed. There needs to be consistency at the major enterprise level in delivering builds/updates/support with Joomla.

Comment by Amy Stephen on March 19, 2010 at 8:27pm: Joomla really needs to decide

True that. About vision. About the org structure. About release strategies. And most of all, about how to engage this huge, geeky, enthusiastic, unruly Joomla! loving community. It'd be good for the leadership and OSM teams to retreat.

Comment by HarryB on March 21, 2010 at 7:01pm: I guess the bottom line here is that Joomla! and other OSS is available for people to use, modify, abuse, whatever as they see fit (while adhering to licensing and copyright terms of course!).

And we should not offer opinions, criticisms, and ponder Joomla's future use in large commercial enterprises (or any other venue).

But we should continue to unconditionally heap lavish praise those who contribute (other than us, of course) and those who constantly remind us that we are the 10-15 miscreants in the 300K+ community who add no value but love to spew hate and discontent.

Guess it all doesn't matter much. In 10-15 years or so, Joomla, along with many other of the current open source and proprietary applications will all be history.

And with that, my friends (and acquaintances too), I lay my pen to rest and take a vow to nevermore say anything good, bad, or indifferent about Joomla on this or any other venue.

1984, #24 - When everybody loves you, you don't stand for anything.

Comment by Robert Vining on March 22, 2010 at 1:31am: @Harry, if your last sentence is true, that truly saddens me. Your one of the good guys my friend.

Comment by HarryB on March 22, 2010 at 8:20am: Robert..

Thanks. Unfortunately, this blog post been taken by some as inflammatory yellow journalism and hate-mongering. Not in the comments made here, but by reference, both direct and indirect, in posts and comments left in other venues.

Not the first time this has happened over the years, but guarantee it will be the last. I'll still be around but no more blog posts by me regarding project direction, organization, politics, culture, and other like subjects.

Comment by Robert Vining on March 22, 2010 at 9:55am: Can't say as I blame you Harry. I'm just glad the software itself is GPL. That just reassures me I don't have to listen to leadership that doesn't lead, or is leading me down a path I don't choose to follow.

Thank God I live in a Country that still allows me to make my own choices in who and what I support.

Comment by Paul Delbar on March 22, 2010 at 3:14pm: @Harry - I think your point was very valid. It's probably true that Acquia provided a 'Drupal handle' to businesses and decision makers looking for a way to come to terms with an open source project and for an interface to bridge the (perceived) gap. In many countries, it's what the main integrators choose that defines what the businesses will buy. If it's Java instead of PHP, or Drupal instead of Typo3, the effect is the same.

If I listen to business colleagues who are into Java, Drupal, Typo3, ... they all quote 'the vibrant community' as one of the main reasons why they believe they have backed the right horse. Not they are religiously converted to believing this is the best piece of software - often they are quite clear that it is not - but they do feel all the business risks are covered.

When I gave this presentation (http://www.slideshare.net/pdelbar/jd09nl-paul-delbar-choosing-joomla) at #jdnl09 last year, and ended with a mention on product vision and leadership, I had lots of comments afterwards asking me whether I still believed Joomla was on the right track. Many people felt that the heart of Joomla was dying, even though the perimeter of the community was alive and kicking. They said that lack of a roadmap was worse than not having 1.6 ready. They said that not being allowed (some used the word 'forbidden') to use the word 'Joomla' was worse than having to deal with GPL.

All I can say to anyone is what I told them : consider what is important for you, and make a decision. Understand it is *your* decision, and other people will weight what they see differently. Different opinions do not mean at least one of them is wrong. Looking at things from a different perspective enhances your vision.

So please, do not shut up. Your words are as true as anyone's.

Whither Thou Goest Joomla!

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