[drupal-docs] Drupal vs Mambo

[Charlie Lowe]

Dries Buytaert wrote:
> 
> On 30 Jul 2005, at 07:42, Charlie Lowe wrote:
>> "Drupal is an open source content management system built around  
>> social software and community management principles. It has a  
>> flexibile, modular approach to features and functionality, allowing  
>> users to build everything from a simple weblog to traditional  
>> corporate websites, to large multi-user systems that include social  
>> networking tools."

> 
> This explanation makes me wonder what 'social software and community  
> management principles' are and what it means to be build around  these.  
> I (mistakenly) expected the second sentence to explain this.   I very 
> much like the second sentence but I think the first sentence  is 
> somewhat puzzling.

How about instead of

"built around social software and community management principles"

we use something like

"built to facilitate community and collaboration"

or

"with a wide range of collaboration and community-building tools"

> 
> Small nit: Drupal is "free software".  Free software has different  
> values than open source software, and for some, this matters a whole  
> lot.  See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for- 
> freedom.html.  Saying Drupal is 'free software' is more accurate (but  
> not necessarily better to get the point across).

The term "open source" was created as a term more suitable for marketing 
than "free software." See The Origins of "Open Source" in Eric Raymond's 
article "The Revenge of the Hackers":

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/raymond2.html

I agree with Raymond because free software is as much an ideology as a 
description of a particular type of software (note: I am a copyleft 
advocate). So while "free software" might be better for marketing to 
developers who are free software advocates, open source is both better 
understood and more suitable for marketing to business and other users 
who are less familiar with free software principles or might find the 
ideological association objectionable. Besides, those that want to know 
if it is GPL'd will find that information as long as we make it very 
visible elsewhere.