On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Simon Hobbs <<a href="mailto:simon@emspace.com.au">simon@emspace.com.au</a>> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
We really need a D5 appreciation club for those who /choose/ not to<br>
upgrade. When I reach Level 9 in <a href="http://kingdomofloathing.com" target="_blank">http://kingdomofloathing.com</a> I am<br>
going to start that very clan.<br>
<br>
sime</blockquote><div><br>I already started it! So count me in!<br>
<br>
See my blog post: <br>
<br>
"And now for something completely different: Drupal - the quiet revolution"<br>
<br>
<a href="http://awebfactory.com.ar/node/296">http://awebfactory.com.ar/node/296</a><br>
<br>In all seriousness, I think a couple of things are becoming very clear in this very illuminating and interesting thread (some very courageous people, although there is a lot of negation and euphoria going on):<br><br>
1. Without Drupal "users" Drupal would not be the success it is today. They are working hard every day for a living, making sites for people.<br><br>2. Without Drupal "core coders" Drupal would not be the success it is today. They are working very hard every day making Drupal 7.<br>
<br>3. These two groups need to listen to each other closely, and plan, and keep the synergy going the best they can. It's all good, given the general crisis going on all around.<br><br>4. My own opinion in terms of recommendations for users:<br>
Drupal has a very long development cycle, similar to Debian, if you can see beyond the hype (necessary hype in order to compete, to posture so as to try to avoid the fallout from the world crisis, I guess, but hype nonetheless: widgets, anyone?). <br>
<br>The truth of the matter is: Drupal 5.x was a big milestone. Drupal 7 will be the next one.<br><br>So, use 5.x for production, then plan for a major upgrade to Drupal 7 in about a year. Drupal 6.x will be a very rocky road (very necessary for this to happen, some important refactoring going on, module updates might not play nice with production data, core and module updates might not play nice at all with use of core and contrib API's, nor should they: this is an experimental version) a rocky road towards the stable and "real MacCoy" version Drupal 7: as someone said, the Drupal "LTS" release.<br>
<br>The main trouble we have for Drupal 5.x a year from now will be security releases, and the backwardness of jQuery update, which correctly assumed Drupal 6 would take care of business, but in light of things, that may need an evaluation: we should work together to get both of these things done.<br>
<br>And remember, a year from now, Drupal 7 will almost be ready, and will not take so long to become stable, since the cck and views rewrites are going on now, it will just be a matter of porting.<br><br>5. A word to "core developers": I applaud the tremendous courage to do a complete rewrite on cck and views, which will both fit in in spectacular fashion with panels 2 and nodequeue and services and media mover and... the list goes on..... to make an absolutely blockbuster CMS and web application framework. It is well worth waiting a year for. I only wish I had more time to help directly, but my destiny right now is to use Drupal and help others who are using Drupal. That is also a form of testing. And we will be testing all of this like crazy, us parasitical working stiffs who actually use Drupal to make a living, we will be testing this like crazy as we prepare our upgrades from 5.x - {6.x} - 7.x<br>
<br>The only real question of concern is whether all of this effort can survive the current world crisis, but even I have to admit that is off topic. But it is on topic when a lot of assumptions are made about ascending curves.<br>
<br>7. And we must all take into account, that Drupal 8-9 will have to go through another serious refactoring to stay alive, to take care of the code debt which is accumulating all the while and only partially offset by the stable, great and beautiful Drupal 7. But by then all of us will be more mature :)<br>
<br>I think that if we look at it this way, then the picture starts to fit together and we can stop feeling so frustrated with each other! Practically everyone on this discussion thread has contributed awesomely to piece together a clearer picture.<br>
<br>This is not a repetition of previous new release cycles at all.<br><br>Victor Kane<br><a href="http://awebfactory.com.ar">http://awebfactory.com.ar</a><br></div></div>