News flash: developers added those features in order to solve real problems. Look at individual Drupal-based sites to see what I mean. Downloading core and staring at it has never been, and will never be, the way to judge whether Drupal 'solves real problems.'
I agree. I've been actively developing a very large web site using Drupal 4.7 for the last few months. I wrote a lot of code that ties into almost every part of Drupal. I've also run into road blocks that are Drupal specific. I'm not (completely at least) talking out of my ass. Let me elaborate on real problems. Drupal is a great online community tool. Its heritage (IIRC) is a student collaboration / information sharing tool. As a content management system it is lacking some essential features, core support for i18n being #1 (IMHO). People are using Drupal exclusively as a CMS rather than a online community tool. That should be taken into consideration. At OSCMS I met a couple of people who left their jobs to be full time drupal consultants. There is a growing economy building behind the project. What's evolving out of Drupal's popularity as a CMS is Drupal the Product. The difference is the Product has responsibilities: 1. It has to keep up with the competition. i18n support, pluggable authentication, etc. 2. Security 3. Support 4. Available developer base. 5. etc. As more people use Drupal (bryght, consultants, other companies) as a part of their business, the Product has a responsibility to ensure that changes do not completely screw those people over. Livelihoods are starting to depend on Drupal. There is some social responsibility in the project now. So some real world considerations: 1. Where is the long term roadmap to Drupal? 2. What is the long term support structure for Drupal - I spent $200,000 building Site X on Drupal 4.8, how do I maintain (security, new features, etc) it for 2 years? 3. I spent $15,000 building Module Y, for 4.7, what are my options for moving forward with 4.8, 4.9, etc. 4. And so on... These considerations might not matter to geeks/developers adding in features, but it matters to people who depend on this software to provide them a solution. An similar situation, PHP3 disappeared quickly after PHP4 came out. PHP4 will be around for _years_, even after PHP6 comes out. Drupal is headed in that same direction. My point is, the project needs more planning to balance reaction. Developers should be allowed to build any contribution they want, but core should not change so much as it breaks functionality between point releases. Ben.