[consulting] CMS comparison

[Jeremy Epstein]

On 5/10/06, Adrian Simmons <adrinux at perlucida.com> wrote:
> I think Drupal is growing up and it needs a grown up brand that suggests
> strength, reliability and trustworthiness.

A 'grown up' brand isn't going to work, because it won't be an
accurate reflection of the community it's supposed to be representing.
It's true that Drupal is stable and reliable - its major releases are,
at any rate. But look at what happens between a major release and the
next code freeze - look at what's happening right now for a perfect
example of what I'm talking about. The community goes wild, crazy
ideas get thrown around, a surprisingly large number of crazy ideas
actually get developed and committed to core... basically, people
start taking Drupal to places it's never been before.

Does this sound like a 'grown up' platform to you? It sounds to me
like a little kid, who does his/her homework when forced to (i.e.
loads of testing before a major release), but who really just wants to
get outside and start playing in the sand at every opportunity (i.e.
frenzy of ideas and development when HEAD is open).

Drupal is not 'grown up'. A 'grown up' piece of software is one that
has a stable set of features, that change very little between each
release, and where the developers are concerned primarily with
maintenance fixes, and with issues like backwards-compatibility. Look
at MS Word. Look at Apache. Look at Vi. Drupal is a baby that's not
yet toilet-trained, compared to these products.

Personally, I hope Drupal never grows up. I think it's amazing that
Drupal has managed to stay young for this long, to consistently look
ahead to the next release with absolutely no fear of anything, and
with a bit of ideas and a bit of a plan, and a whole lot of passion.
And I think that our branding should continue to reflect that. Because
that's how we'll continue to attract 'plumbers' who are eager to dive
into the sand and start building castles with us. Other software
products wish they were young at heart, wish that they still had a
happy-go-lucky ambition and a super-charged imagination. I say, let's
hold on to that for as long as we can.

Cheers,
Jaza.