[drupal-docs] Drupal vs Mambo

[Morbus Iff]

> Do you mean to tell me that community blogging with threaded comments is 
> not social software? In what part of the internet have you've been 
> living in?!?!

<insert snarky comment about buzzwords, wheel re-inventing, and elitism>

First off, give me your exact definition of what social software
is. Then, read this long and developed history of social software:

   http://duoqu.blogbus.com/logs/2005/04/1148540.html

Nearly everything described in there that is a "feature" can be turned on 
within Drupal, and most of the times, by default, isn't even turned on. If 
we remove the social interaction between two IM clients, it is no longer 
useful for its intent - it is no longer an IM client. If we remove the 
chatting between two IRC users, it is no longer useful for its intent - it 
is no longer an IRC client.

On the other hand, if we remove the commenting on a blog, it is still a 
blog - it still allows me to log to the web what it is I wish to log. Is 
it still a piece of social software, when the interaction is one to many?

Drupal is much the same way: when you strip Drupal of all its features, as 
it is on a default install, it is nothing more than a content management 
system. What it becomes after that is entirely in the vision of the admin:

  "community with blogs and forums, calendar, ecommerce, magazine,
   corporate site, image gallery, intranet app to manage docs...).
   If you describe Drupal as social software you are limiting in
   a great manner its capabilities."

from álvaro is quite true. Software that lives up to its name can not 
become something else without additional effort: sure, I could have, years 
ago, use AIMster to ONLY trade files with other contacts, and never IM 
them, but that would certainly remove the "social" aspect of the IM soft.

-- 
Morbus Iff ( you are nothing without your robot car, NOTHING! )
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/
O'Reilly Author, Weblog, Cook: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus