March 5th, 2008
Will Acquia ruin Drupal?
Drupal is one of the most successful community-run projects out there.
Will having a corporate sponsor ruin it?
Dries Buytaert hopes not. He developed Drupal, and upon completing his doctoral thesis recently he’s launched Acquia, a commercial version with all the bells and whistles, including venture capital partners, who’ve put in $7 million.
As part of the roll-out Buytaert also launched Acquia Projects, a corporate community site with a definite development gameplan which includes code names like Carbon and Spokes.
All this comes just weeks after the release of Drupal 6, the latest major version of the CMS software. (Full disclosure — I run Drupal at Voic.Us, a site on southern politics.) It’s billed as the “easiest Drupal ever.”
Still, given the continuing tensions between corporate project masters and their communities (cough, Sun, cough) some questions need answering.
Questions like which side of the shop will direct development. Like what losing its corporate users will do to the non-profit Drupal community. Like will Dries still love us if he’s a rich Boston suit?
Managing relations between a commercial project and a community project is no easy feat. That balance is one of the primary themes here.
Can Drupal and Acquia manage it?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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