[consulting] Drupal considerd dangerous

[Michael Haggerty]

One of the things I object to about this thread is the generalities being
bantered around and the lack of specific objections to features in Drupal /
comparative advantages of other systems.

Arguing that the maintainers of Drupal have some sort of responsibility to
promote the deficiencies of the platform relative to the technical
capabilities of individual developers or consulting shops is absurd. I
cannot understand what would be considered a deficiency from one shop to
another and believe this is an impossibly high standard to put on people
maintaining open source projects. If the maintainers of Joomla, Bitweaver,
Plone, Elxis, Slashcode, Dragonfly, PHPNuke, Jupiter, Scoop, Nucleus,
MediaWiki, XOOPS, Moveable Type, Typo3 and the other 20 or so platforms I
screw around with do it, then, yeah, let's consider writing something up
specific to Drupal for people incapable of evaluating software on their own.

But there is *NO* reason to waste time with anything like this thread
suggests. There are plenty of independent ways to evaluate the utility of a
particular CMS and it should be the responsibility of someone deciding to
implement it to understand their own needs and the relative advantages of
one platform or another, especially if they are getting paid to do it.
http://www.opensourcecms.com/ and http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ both do side by
side comparisons of Drupal and anything else that exists or ever has,
Forrester is constantly publishing reports on commercial and open source cms
systems, there are plenty of community forums like Slashdot to ask
questions, usenet still exists and there are like 50 groups with experts
answering questions just about CMS systems, there are 50 or so major online
Linux publications that gush over this stuff, major technology publications
have been touching on the subject of CMS for years, and most people know
some kid who can tell them what to use if all else fails (even my 10 year
old daughter is conversant in the relative advantages of several platforms).
Not to mention google is your friend in finding all these.

If the enormous number of resources that are already available are
insufficient for helping someone understand the advantages of a particular
platform, that person should not be allowed to make decisions about
technology. To that person I say, 'Drupal is perfect for everything and
requires no programming except for really advanced stuff you will never need
anyways (caveat emptor). Check out google for details'.

Oh, yeah, and Drupal is perfect for blogging, even for individuals, if you
know what you are doing. I would choose it over anything on that list I put
up above.
 
Merry Christmas,
Michael Haggerty
Managing Partner
Trellon, LLC
http://www.trellon.com
(p) 301-577-6162
(c) 240-643-6561
(f) 413-691-9114
(aim) haggerty321 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: consulting-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:consulting-bounces at drupal.org]
> On Behalf Of Kieran Lal
> Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 6:06 PM
> To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
> Subject: Re: [consulting] Drupal considerd dangerous
> 
> 
> On Dec 21, 2006, at 12:08 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> 
> > Kieran Lal wrote:
> >>> There are no qualifications or "it's not always the best choice"
> >>> type
> >>> honest comments anywhere to be found.
> >>>
> >>
> >> By targeting specific uses we tried to highlight it's strengths.
> >> Highlighting weaknesses is not very useful as it's frequently the
> >> limitations of the users ability to use a tool that are the real
> >> weakness.
> >>
> > Well, there we have it: "There are no weaknesses in Drupal, just
> > weaknesses in users' ability to master it."
> >
> > You have me at a loss for words, I honestly have no answer to
> > something
> > so incredibly arrogant.
> 
> My point was that Drupal can be made to do different things depending
> on the skill level of the person using it.  In a core maintainer's
> hands it can do somethings.  In a new user hands it can do another.
> The difference is based on the skill level of the user which makes it
> very difficult to make blanket statements about it's weaknesses.
> 
> 
> 
> >
> >>> Small businesses are explicitly mentioned as a target group for whom
> >>> Drupal is the right answer.
> >>> In fact, the page offers no realistic appraisal of what Drupal
> >>> doesn't
> >>> do well, which is also what people coming to such a page are
> >>> looking for.
> >>>
> >> What do you suggest?
> >>
> > The kind of honesty that Bill suggested. An acknowledgement that
> > Drupal
> > isn't for everyone, and a frank analysis of its advantages and
> > drawbacks. Respect for users' intelligence rather than contempt.
> 
> > Emphasis on understanding what users need, rather than what you expect
> > of them.
> 
> Let me know when you write that page or edit the one I wrote and I'll
> publish it.
> 
> Kieran
> 
> > - Evan
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > consulting mailing list
> > consulting at drupal.org
> > http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting