How about a stack? (Read from bottom to top) Drupal Verticals (Education, Blogging, CivicSpace yada yada) Drupal Experimental - All the other stuff (this is sandbox) Drupal Community Contribs - Lots of other stuff (new / part of current contribs) Drupal Base Modules - relatively generic, popular, highly desireable, maintained stuff (new / part of current contribs) Drupal Core - totally generic everyone needs them stuff (this is core) If I was drawing a picture it would be a bunch of stacked boxes and L shapes showing a somewhat more sophisticated "stacking". Don't go all wacky on the naming (just put it here for a conversation starter). And who are the "customers" Accidental Webmaster Webmasters ISVs / Consultants / VARs Developers Each of the above is it's own defined group with specific needs/desires. IMHO Drupal currently does an excellent job with Developers (and pretty well (but not as well) with the others). Simply making more of a distinction between the modules would go a long way in helping these users. Dan
Adrian Rossouw wrote:
I agree, but I believe that pathauto like functionality should be part of our default install, and we should emphasise it. It's one of our more powerful features, and the improvements in usabilty and browsability are amazing. Plus google loves you much much much more.
Okay - people have lost their minds (sorry don't mean to single you out here Adrian - especially considering your comments later on in this thread - and all the work that you do, but this comment just floored me enough to end months of silence).
What floored me is the irony that the topic should come up in a thread about creating a leaner core that can support multiple distributions.
Path auto is the epitome of a contributed module. It serves a purpose that many people may find useful, but is NOT REQUIRED and does not serve a CORE purpose.
(Core module = module absolutely required to make the software/development environment work.)
I've more or less given up trying to define what Drupal is. Its a lot of things to a lot of different people. (I'm finally coming around to thinking of it as two distinct things: 1) a rapid software development platform 2) a Drupal Branded CMS that uses has the rapid software development platform at its core). But I can define what Civicspace is - I can define what DrupalArt is - I can define what Drupal Blog is - I can define what DrupalEd is etc. And I know that Drupal is at the CORE of all of them.
So I'm in full agreement with Jose's idea of 'one core to serve them all'. If something doesn't 'serve them all' it has no place in core.
Take this idea to its logical conclusion and Forum.module should be dropped from core.
"HERESY!!!," the masses rise up and shout. "That's where drupal all began. BURN THE HERETIC."
Fine - light your torches - but when your done and Drupal 5.0 comes out with a full installer that starts with a lean core and adds only whatever users need and/or want - you'll realize that your already on the same page.
andre
p.s. As for multiple contributed modules that do more or less the same thing. If people don't want to work together it doesn't matter. Natural selection will take place. Competition is good. The module that adapts the quickest to the needs of the community will become the defacto standard - until a new competitor comes along.
Why did someone write Drupal when there was another forum tool available at the time? Why do people improve Drupal when they could be working on phpNuke ;-)? The multiple contrib module issue is a non-issue.