Why is Drupal here to stay?
Fri, Jul 3, 2009 by Arnold
I recently came across a discussion on LinkedIn regarding the longevity of Drupal. Alex, who posted the question mentioned about how the Post Nuke CMS forked into Zikula, which has lost a lot of its past popularity. We can see how the popularity shifted back in 2005 with Drupal leading the way. We can also see some of that trends here with Google Trends.
A lot of other users have posted their views on this. Some have mentioned that Drupal has been around for 8 years, while others mentioned that it is used by a lot of major companies.
My view on this is as follows:
1) Drupal will be around for a while because not only are their major organizations using it, but also that these organizations invest in it. When I say investing in it, I mean that a lot of major organizations sponsor modules and have their staff dedicate time to enhance the Drupal system. A few examples of that include the sponsorship of the multi-lingual modules by Sony BMG, and how Economist.com encourages their staff to contribute time to the Drupal project.
2) Drupal is based on an infrastructure that is growing. Drupal is on the LAMP stack. MySQL still has a growing market share. While it is true that the Oracle acquisition of Sun may have an impact on the product. At the end of the day, MySQL is used by a lot of large organizations. It is here to stay. Looking at the other components of the LAMP stack, Linux remains highly popular for servers and Apache remain one of the most popular web servers.
3) Training can be obtained cost effectively. Unlike SAP, Orcale, it is not that costly to receive training for Drupal. After all, Drupal is based on PHP, which programmers can easily learn to use as long as they have a solid technical background. There is a learning curve, but compared to paying thousands of dollars just to get oneself the materials for training, Drupal training has a lower barrier of entry.
Projeksiyon posted on November 23, 2009 3:22 pm
Thirdly, they also rebranded at the same time which I think took focus away from the product.
En İyi Yatırım posted on November 18, 2009 10:30 pm
But then I realized Drupal did lose a major developer not that long ago, Steven Wittens. And guess what, while he won't be replaced
admin posted on July 6, 2009 2:32 am
I think that once a project goes beyond a critical point, the issue of sustainence will not be an issue. I think that Drupal has gone beyond that point. It is just like a company, once it goes beyond a certain number of employees, 1 or 2 employees leaving will not be an issue.
Scott Reynolds posted on July 5, 2009 8:59 pm
first one of the main developers died in an accident which set its progress back.
this comment has stuck with me for a couple days. It got me thinking what would happen if a major Drupal developer left Drupal. What would happen? While is true that major companies use Drupal and sponsor improvements, how many of the Sony, Warner, etc do core development? My impression is it not a lot (I work for a major media company, Lifetime). The core developers are really powered by the major consulting shops and people who do it for fun.
But then I realized Drupal did lose a major developer not that long ago, Steven Wittens. And guess what, while he won't be replaced (which is evident by the issue queue for Core Search), plenty more people have helped to fill the gap.
So while not being a formal software developer for awhile, nor having much experience with other major frameworks, I think that Drupal probably won't suffer the PN's fate in the same manner, nor anytime soon as as suddenly.
Onopoc posted on July 4, 2009 4:38 am
Great post. Thanks.
If you have the technical knowledge you can migrate yourself your data to Drupal using the following modules:
http://drupal.org/project/migrate
http://drupal.org/project/tw
http://drupal.org/project/modules?page=2&text=migrate
If you want to pay there's a company specialize in migrating data to Drupal: http://cyrve.com
Eric posted on July 4, 2009 1:12 am
Sounds like a good talk - wish I could go to Paris...
Eric
Eric posted on July 4, 2009 1:11 am
I have looked at the phpBB to Drupal Forums migration tool, but have not had a chance to really test it yet. My current phpBB Forum has a lot of posts and attachments, so I need to set up a demo site first. Since I just changed hosting providers in May and am in the middle of my site's busy season, it'll have to wait.
I may someday use it, but my users are really happy with phpBB aside from some occasional log in issues. With the Advanced Forum module and it's 'friends' things are looking better for the built-in Drupal Forum...
Eric
admin posted on July 3, 2009 6:02 pm
There is a also a migration tool for TypePAD, but there are some issues with it though.
It is really hard to find migration tools that work flawlessly.
Michelle posted on July 3, 2009 3:46 pm
I know this is just an example, but wanted to point out that there are migration tools from both phpbb and vbulletin to Drupal. I don't know how well they work but they do exist. :)
Michelle
Robert Douglass posted on July 3, 2009 1:30 pm
Eric, I agree that we need good migration tools. That's why I've proposed a session at DrupalCon Paris to show how to use the Migrate and Table Wizard modules. I'll demonstrate with a Joomala! site that has been migrated: http://paris2009.drupalcon.org/session/joomla-drupal-using-migrate-and-t...
Eric posted on July 3, 2009 5:00 am
As a former PostNuke user, I can provide some insight here. PN had a number of issues... first one of the main developers died in an accident which set its progress back.
Second, the update to the 0.8 version took an incredibly long time to arrive. And when it did, I was not too impressed. There were some issues and some modules were not really ready.
Thirdly, they also rebranded at the same time which I think took focus away from the product.
Finally I did not think their development community was as large or as well organized as Drupal's.
I spent a year, just prior to PN 0.8's release, examining and testing Drupal before I decided to make the switch. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to migrate my data from one to the other, including a phpBB based Forum. While I managed to do so successfully, there was no complete or definitive source of information on drupal.org on how to do such a migration.
I would suggest that Drupal could gain market share by providing very extensive migration infomation or tools.
Eric Aitala
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