By kulfi on
Is a micro-business specialising in Drupal implementations, Carbon (Acquia's commercial Drupal distro) and Yellow Jersey (Acquia's Drupal certification programme) make me nervous.
Is Carbon GPL? How is it priced? My clients benefit from the cost savings of FOSS Drupal. Will they now demand Carbon? Why do I now need to prove my Drupal chops to Acquia? Are we now going to get stuck in the never ending cycle of 'upgrade your certification for XXX dollars for every new version of Drupal/Carbon? Not biggies, but a big swirl of discomfort at their general direction.
I know I'm not offering any solutions/anything productive here, just thought it was worth sharing to hear what others with similar/opposing views have to say ...
Comments
a different way of looking
Your thoughts/fears are justified and I can understand.
I would say think about the class of clients who would never use drupal because there is no commercial support. And believe me there are plenty. There is a good chance you may not have even came across those clients(let alone aquire those) since they won't talk to small shops. Having companies like Aquia, opens the door to a whole new market, new jobs for drupal developers and an eco systems which feeds on itself.
Another way to look at this. Think about what Red Hat did to linux? Did it expand the Linux opportunity or decrease? I think Red Hat was a positive thing. It did not stop the Linux but rather more people jumped in when they saw there is more money. Yes to some clients Red Hat Certfication was a required but it didn't hamper opportunity to many thousands developers who didn't have any.
There will be always a market niche which will be never interesting (or small) to players like aquia. There will be always a market (which wasn't there but opening now) which is beyond small shops. and There will be some boundary where there is some overlap. And I think you may be worried about that boundary.
(Disclaimer: I am no way related to Aquia or its founders. Just think Aquia is a positive thing for the drupal community and want to share my 2 cents)
Acquia Drupal code is GPL, Acquia certification
Our subscriptions of Drupal will be GPL. We will be offering Acquia certifications for consultants who want to specialize in implementing solutions based on Acquia's subscriptions. Some customers will want to know that there are people who are experts in that particular collection of software and are proven to meet a certain bar in delivering solutions with it.
It's natural to have some hesitation about a new business model in an ecosystem, but I think you'll find it's beneficial. Just a few years ago people were concerned with non-hobbiest working on Drupal and "actually making money from working on Drupal"!!!!
Kieran
Kieran Lal
Nothing to worry about, yet
Let your clients decide if they want to use Carbon, you should not lose money over it as they will fit the bill. Let your clients decide if they don't trust your level of skill. Would they prefer someone who has contributed a module or core code, or worked on a major Drupal project or someone who has certification from a company very few people have likely heard about? Acquia doesn't nearly have enough money to change the game in any mischievous way, they are contributing to the landscape and promoting the adoption of Drupal. To those ends, it means more work will be created for developers and more work will be contributed towards Drupal. If anything bad happens, the community has much more control over Drupal than Acquia ever will. Acquia cannot buy the community without probably a billion dollars, if that.
My concern is more over
My concern is more over 'product'/'brand' control than a company "chang[ing] the game in any mischievous way". Acquia is positioned to be the ultimate Drupal resource (understandable given its pedigree). But it is a commercial concern, that will now be the last word on what is/nt 'enterprise ready' Drupal and who/isn't qualified to implement Drupal projects.
One brand won't disqualify
One brand won't disqualify any other distributions or certifications.
Each product will provide its own value added.
Branding is also not a problem
That's what I meant about the money, I meant the power to brand. In order to have a really powerful brand you have to spend a lot of money or give away something of real value for free. Red Hat for a while had Linux by the throat, they lost that the day they decided not to provide their code for free to everyone and focus on corporate clients. Same thing here, if Acquia gives away Carbon and it's a really polished version of Drupal, then they will gain market and mind share. If they keep their product behind walled gates and only let certified people work on it and make it a corporate distribution, everyone else could care less.
In the end it's about adoption by the market. Many Universities and other institutions have adopted Drupal stock. There are proven use cases for that. If Acquia can develop a value proposition for why they should adopt Carbon over stock, then they may do so for and Acquia can charge a fee for that service. As a developer you will still be writing code and customizing the code, and Carbon is still Drupal, so it's the same code. If they limit who can work on Carbon, then they will shoot themselves in the foot. Developing an entire ecosystem around Carbon is at best difficult and at worst impossible, considering there are more developers entering the market all the time that start off with Drupal and identify with Drupal more than Carbon as a brand. Acquia depends on freelance and Drupal shops to sell their solution to clients.
Acquia can't really tax anyone more than the value that they are providing, and that's the beauty of Open Source. If they do and there is a market for it, someone else will pop up providing a better value. There are plenty of small Drupal shops that can do that... and Acquia is a small Drupal shop by any measure. Granted they have many core developers, and a lot of talent, they still lack the numbers to be the status quo and eat up any size of the market.
In the end it's about work and clients. If you can offer value to clients, then they will use your services. I know a small dev shop run by 20-somethings in SF that started 2 years ago. I have worked with these guys. They have business from corporate clients like Intel, kiva, etc. These guys simply do good work at a reasonable price, and the Valley simply sends more work their way. If the client wants Carbon, they will implement Carbon and pay Acquia whatever for the trouble of developing it. Acquia can then provide support for their work, but so can these guy if they have the man power to do it -- which they may not. Ultimately, it's very difficult in Open Source to create an image of value without actually providing value. Acquia can provide a sort of go to, which makes sure that in the future there are upgrade paths for work done now as a one-of, and there are many companies that are willing to pay for that. If you can provide the same sort of insurance, then you can be in that business too. I personally think it's a difficult business to support these things in the long run, very labor intensive.
Things may change, but that's the way I see it now.
Drupal trademark non-exclusive license going to the association
The Drupal trademark has been in negotiations to be non-exclusively licensed to the Drupal association, a Belgium non-profit, with 26 members. The Drupal brand will not be controlled by any one commercial company. As Samik says, building a brand other than Drupal would be very difficult because Drupal is where everyone starts. I know first hand from spending years explaining where CivicSpace was different than Drupal, even when the code was identical.
Today there are many people who use Drupal and provide Drupal based products. Bryght, now Rain City Studios, has been offering a Drupal product for four years. There are new hosted solutions like http://www.managingnews.com/ based on Drupal. Drupal.org supports installation profiles based on Drupal, http://drupal.org/project/Installation+profiles
I don't think any one company can become "The ultimate resource". In the first ten months of 2007 there were approximately 9000 people involved in filing issues, posting patches, and asking and answering questions on the Drupal.org issue queue. That's 40 times bigger than the biggest Drupal company that I know of. There are thousands of contributed modules, with hundreds of maintainers, and dozens of contributed themes. There are thousands of Drupal expert blog posts, and soon to be over a dozen published Drupal books from different authors. The Drupal community is "the ultimate resource".
But we believe Acquia will create a lot of value for customers who want Drupal subscriptions that come with support and network services like content protection and quality assured updating of all your modules and themes.
There are a lot of people working hard to ensure the Drupal project is protected. If you are concerned take some time to read Dries's blog posts and some of the blog posts on the Drupal association website and you'll see that there's a lot of really good people addressing your concerns. You can even read Acquia's blog and see how we are addressing these concerns as well.
Cheers,
Kieran
Kieran Lal
When marketing by the
Also, when marketing by the package brand customers still recognize the bundled products.
For example, asking sales for a Cpanel server instead of an Apache server.
Carbon will be GPL
Acquia is in the business of providing support. Carbon is a set of publicly available modules that we choose to provide support for. We can't possibly support all modules, so we have to draw a circle around the modules that we will support. Carbon is that circle.
Carbon will be GPL, and by design, everyone will be able to use and work with Carbon if they choose to do so. You don't have to pay Acquia if you want to use Carbon -- you only have to pay Acquia if you want Acquia to provide you support for Carbon. If you want to pay company ABC to provide you support for Carbon, that is allowed by all means.
Furthermore, Acquia is developing Carbon on drupal.org ... Acquia employees are actively contributing on d.o -- both to core and to contributed modules. We're an active participant in the Drupal community just like many other companies/people are. We submitted a good amount of patches and these patches, if accepted by their maintainers, will end up in both Carbon as well as the individual modules that you can download directly from drupal.org.
I've been working on Drupal for many years and Acquia is my company. I know how Open Source works, I know the Drupal community inside out, I know how companies should work with the community, and I have no intention whatsoever to destroy my own child.
Yes, we hope to have a strong brand, but other companies have strong brands too. For example, Lullabot has a strong brand when it comes to Drupal training. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I'd say it has been very healthy for the Drupal project. Similarly, strong brands like (but not limited to) RedHat were key for Linux' success and adoption. Look at all the big Open Source projects and you'll find that they are all backed by strong brands. It's all about "cross-mojonation" ... ;-)
Awesome!
Awesome!
I have to agree. As long as
I have to agree. As long as the code is going back to the community, I think this kind of setup is ideal. It's going to make Acquia/Drupal like Automattic/WordPress or SixApart/Movable Type.
Here's a good writeup on it: http://webdevnews.net/2008/08/acquia-gets-ready-for-release-of-carbon-co...
As long as Acquia's code is going back to the Drupal community
I was worry a lot too. But after doing some reading here and there my worries are gone.
Personaly I think Acquia is a good thing for Drupal as long as Acquia's code is going back to the Drupal.org community. And so far Acquia is doing that. Here are some modules developed or sponsored by Acquia then contributed to the Drupal.org community:
http://drupal.org/project/gmap_latlon
http://drupal.org/project/loopfuse
http://drupal.org/project/project_issue_voting
http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu
I see Acquia as another contributor to the Drupal community just like many other companies or people.
I am not related to Acquia or its founders. I'm an open source enthusiast and contributor.
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How to contribute to Drupal.
So long 'Carbon', we hardly knew you
Interesting branding decision - http://mashable.com/2008/09/29/acquia-debuts-drupal-for-free.
No other company focused on delivering to Global 1000 enterprise
Acquia, with its funding, business model, and approach, will be/is focused on delivering to the Global Fortune 1000 / Fortune 10000 enterprise customer ... most of whom have never heard of Drupal at the CxO level.
I've said before, there are several other profitable niches to be addressed with streamlined Drupal-based solutions. As Amazon points out, install profiles, and as I have said at various Drupalcons -- install profiles! install profiles! install profiles! :P
Carbon (the subscription support service -- the modules are all GPL) is a potential up-sell for existing and new clients. Decide whether you want to be an Acquia partner (and what value that brings) or if you want to go through the pain of supporting / maintaining your own set of modules.
Each company / consultant needs to decide what their expertise is -- why a client should use them -- and decide what their fit is with Acquia, if any. If you are a company focusing on large enterprise customers, thoroughly examining Acquia's offering -- including their partnership options -- will likely show you that your needs are highly aligned.
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The future is Bryght at Raincity Studios
Perspective
Dries' post is the perfect response, and is actually just a continuation of the Drupal "way", at least from my perspective in reading Dries' blog and looking at DrupalCon presentations...I've come to find Drupal via an exhaustive Open Source CMS evaluation...and to be honest Drupal tool a while to bubble up as the best one...its a little bit hidden away.
For me as a small business owner with Drupal support and installation as just one of the services we provide, Acquia is a godsend because any project that explodes into a large scope with a very large company (it happens you know), Acquia becomes a much needed resource...partnerships and synergy among Drupal providers benefit all of us...
And don't forget what Drupal runs on underneath - I install it on Debian Testing, and I am sure you all use many other distros - there are all sort of free tools in use to manage drupal from the backend like phpmyadmin and google analytics, heck I even use webmin to tar up the non database files, etc. MySQL is perfect example of the model Dries is describing for Acquia - a commercial grade database that can be run for "free" without support...so even if you are worried about what peoples intentions are - there is an on-the-ground reality here that Drupal can't really change it's model because it relies on the very same model just to get up and running.
It's important to keep the perspective that Drupal is still largely unknown, people are still paying fortunes on commercial CMS and from the ground up .net and ajax (and other acronyms du jour platforms) webdev - as mature as Drupal is, those of us that believe in it need to realize that we are all infants...there is plenty of opportunity for anyone providing Drupal services...and the fact is Drupal was always going to have limited penetration up until Dries did something like this. Acquia really means that Drupal has finally arrived...so I am excited, personally.