I have founded a software company called Acquia. The company will provide value-added software and services in and around Drupal. The company plans to participate actively within the Drupal community and project. Acquia will not create a closed-source version of Drupal or compete with existing professional services companies who build Drupal-based websites. Details are available in the Acquia FAQ and in my blog post.

Comments

ericG’s picture

I wish you the best and am looking forward to seeing what comes out of your new venture.

From the pages you posted, it sounds like you've really thought through the potential conflicts that could come from your role here in the drupal community and in your new company.

I hope that this is as good for the overall drupal community and "ecosystem" as it sounds like from your blog post.

Michelle’s picture

Glad you made a post. I've been asking around in #drupal if I should make one to point at your blog. Figured this was front page news. :)

Congratualtions on your startup. Good to know you'll be working with Drupal full time. I know there's been lots of questions about that, given your Phd. No fear from me. I know you'll do what's best for Drupal.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

JohnForsythe’s picture

Sounds good, from what I've read. Hope it works out well for everyone involved.

--
John Forsythe
Need reliable Drupal hosting?

StevenSokulski’s picture

It is truly wonderful that you will be able to support yourself in a means that is both connected to and supportive of the Drupal project. The project surely would not be the same without you, but I know how tough it can be to balance one's passion with the need to maintain income and a means for living. It seems like you have hit on a perfect way to do that.

Congratulations!

ThePickwickProject’s picture

Congrats Dries! Being an entrepreneur is great!

Helpermedia’s picture

Congratulations Dries!

I started my own company (web design and development) some months ago and decided after some research that Drupal is the CMS I want provide services for. It just felt good.

Reading about your new company and the way you want to handle things makes me smile and realize that I've chosen well.

Best wishes,

Marcel

ChrisKennedy’s picture

Huge +1

thatashok’s picture

I'm intrigued by the analogy "We aim to be to Drupal what Ubuntu or Red Hat are to Linux." Not what Wordpress is to Wordpress?

Bendo’s picture

Congratulation Dries, for your work. Best wishes for the PhD thesis and I really hope that your project will be a great successful company like what you are looking for.

I hope also that the Drupal project will remain a free project. In these days "Register Trademark" and Copyright icons have appeared on these pages. For me this sound like a "stop playing", now we are starting to make money. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Good Luck!!!

Bendo

robertDouglass’s picture

The trademark notification on Drupal.org is completely independent of the Acquia announcement. It is the Drupal Association's duty to enforce the Drupal trademark and prevent other people or companies from using in unauthorized ways. How would we feel if someone else started a company called "Drupal: the best email client on earth" and simply stole the name? If we don't actively protect the trademark, the US trademark office tells us that it doesn't belong to us, and anyone else is able to claim it. The byline in the footer is one step that the Association is taking to protect the trademark. It is not a sign of Dries wrapping evil tentacles around the project.

So play with Drupal. Make money with Drupal. The two can co-exist, and thanks to the efforts of the Association, we can feel confident that the Drupal name and trademark won't get stolen or ruined.

- Robert Douglass

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Lullabot | my Drupal book

Michelle’s picture

In case anyone out there doesn't think this is a real problem, check out wikipedia's list of lost trademarks. When I was into writing, I had a subscription to Writer's Digest and they regularily had pleas to writers to not use trademarks generically lest they be lost.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

robertDouglass’s picture

For more on Drupal's copyright policy, read this: http://drupal.org/node/14307

In essence, by posting here, you retain the copyright to your works, but they are governed by the creative commons license. This is a long standing policy and is also in place to let us keep having fun.... without worrying that what we write here will be used improperly.

- Robert Douglass

-----
Lullabot | my Drupal book

Bendo’s picture

Thank you Robert, for this post and for your GRAEAT WORK on Drupal!
I hope this "Drupal adventure" is at the beginning of a new era!

Tahnk you all guys

Callisto-1’s picture

I think also so samo, especially now when drupal so well cannon also in Poland. Success
-------------------

This my project in drupal.
Artem’s picture

I wish you all the best in your new adventure, Dries! Drupal is so much for me. Hope the community interest will pay back to you. Digged and StumbledUpon this post.

derjochenmeyer’s picture

Great news for Drupal!

----------------------
forward-media.de

coupet’s picture

Congratulations! Wish Acquia success as Drupal.

----
Darly

therobyouknow’s picture

Dries, congratulations on your new company; altruism cannot pay the bills but beware that this new enterprise doesn't stifle innovation enjoyed so far in Drupal.

Will we have to pay a regular subscription to use current, previous and future Drupal versions? I think this would be bad. There are so many grass root small organisations that might not afford this. And their existence has made Drupal the success it is today as they bring the user base, spread the word and shape the development through requirements. In an ecosystem, they are at the bottom of the food chain - if they die out the upper layers will die too.

I think the service model of your new business is sound; as it brings in a regular income stream. Technology moves forward so you'll get your money by continually offering new services and new ideas.

There are people who don't wish to spend lots of time learning Drupal, but who want the power. This is where you will make your money. This is a hard concept for a techie to grasp because they can make Drupal solutions with ease and they have the attitude that to make money one should be innovative. But the money maker here is quite simply that some will spend money to save time (your customers) while others will spend time to save money (the Drupal community).

Some have girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives, kids, other past times that demand their time, so they go for the option of getting someone else to do the work. Along with web developers who have swallowed their pride and avoided re-inventing wheel with our own CMS and embracing Drupal instead.

I think your big money maker would be to promote Drupal to corporates to buy and use for their intranets. This is not making Drupal proprietary. Where you make the money is providing the consultancy and deployment and feeding features back into the community at large. I've worked in three large multinational organisations and can see the inefficiency in their information systems: file systems are rigid hierachical not tagged, user management is inadequate, documentation always out of date. Drupal provides a lot of great features for a corporate intranet with its ultra-flexible user management, tagging, content types, extensibility, open-ness, ability to run on many platforms, ease of installation. Your money maker will also be providing interfaces with existing corporate systems, like SAP, Bugzilla, Sharepoint and other systems. The first fact is, no one particular system will win in the corporate world; the key is interoperability, allowing the systems to flow information freely in a controlled manner. The second fact is that any new system that compliments the rest needs evangelism, to get corporate workers to use it to be a success - and that can't be achieved by brilliant technology like Drupal on its own - it requires interpersonal skills and an intimate relationship with the users i.e. not a load of consultants with clipboards.

robertDouglass’s picture

Will we have to pay a regular subscription to use current, previous and future Drupal versions?

No way. This won't ever happen. Read the LICENSE.txt that comes with Drupal.

Were there other questions?

I think Acquia will attempt to make using Drupal easier for a whole range of people. There are lots of aspects of Drupal that are hard, not because of the software, but because the way that websites get hosted on the Internet is just hard. Like backing up your site, upgrading it, or moving it to to a different host. These all represent physical problems that are technical. If any company makes these easier they will have a market. I'm not affiliated with Acquia and don't know what their products and services will be, so this is just speculation on my part.

- Robert Douglass

-----
Lullabot | my Drupal book

therobyouknow’s picture

Thanks Robert for replying.

I think the hardest thing to do in Drupal is site presentation and themes. The tools are very sophisticated making anything possible, but when I say hard I mean the learning curve that is required to use them. Looking forward to the Drupal Themes book imminently. And the web standard, CSS, that themes rely upon is hard to grasp, mainly because of the browser imcompatibilities.

Amazon’s picture

Hello, the Drupal association, a non-profit based in Belgium provides the infrastructure for the Drupal project. The Drupal project code, and all the contributed projects are available freely under the GPL 2 license as mandated by the use of the Drupal CVS repository.

All the content, website, project issues, CVS checkouts, forums infrastructure is funded by the non-profit Drupal association. The association is composed of individual contributors, not the companies they work for, who volunteer to provide legal, marketing, infrastructure, fund raising, conference organizing support to the Drupal project. The association will continue to provide all this infrastructure so the Drupal project continues flourish.

The actual Drupal software project is controlled by the Drupal project lead, the maintainers, and development community which are a loosely organized group of contributors, and not controlled by the Drupal association or any company of any sort.

I hope that assures you that the there are at least two significant forces, The Drupal development community, and the Drupal association which are committed and capable of ensuring you can freely use Drupal software.

Cheers,
Kieran

CTO CivicSpace
Try hosted and pre-configured Drupal 5 profile
http://civicspacelabs.org/create

Kieran Lal

osherl’s picture

Well said about utilizing the flexibility of Drupal in corporate environments, interfacing with ERP systems like SAP, Oracle, Lawson, etc.
http://osherl.com/
Laszlo

Fool2’s picture

I think this is a natural thing to happen.

There are many ways to use Drupal. Dries is intimately familiar with the workings and can provide solutions customized and optimized for specific purposes. Many of the things that Drupal service providers do have no place in the main Drupal project.

The objectives of the Drupal project are usually much different than we have for Drupal in any one application. Drupal is designed to handle many applications, but in any given installation you are building one application.

The idea though is that by doing this engineering work we are finding bugs, optimizing code and releasing modules when appropriate and contributing back to the project. There is no reason to charge a subscription for software like Drupal. Selling services is a much better idea.

Reading the FAQ, Dries is not selling services per se, but he will be offering packages designed for more specific solutions than Drupal proper.

When people have a problem, I think to myself, "Drupal can solve this." The client, though, doesn't know how to fix that problem using Drupal. It's not as easy as downloading one module. They need someone with experience to provide that solution for them unless they want to hire someone to do all the research. In Dries's case, I am guessing, the client will be able to buy a solution tailored to their type of application. Things like ecommerce, CRM, high-traffic websites, etc.

I think this is a great idea.

therobyouknow’s picture

For a great money earner and to help the Drupal take up I think Dries should write O'Reilly books on Drupal, e.g. all of these:
- Learning Drupal
- Drupal in a Nutshell
- Drupal Pocket Reference
- Drupal Cookbook
- Drupal - The Missing Manual
- Drupal Annoyances
- Drupal Performance Tuning
- Drupal Themes

O'Reilly have such a great reputation for technology books.

http://www.oreilly.com/

These titles have been written for other technologies, so how about Drupal? The secret is that there is some overlap in the content between these books which saves effort writing separate books, providing economy of scale and higher margin but each book is pitched to a different reader.

Rob - http://skyline.fm/ - our upcoming Drupal-based community radio station site.

bertboerland’s picture

"For a great money earner"

Not that I ever wrote a book, but I think neither have you. If you count all hours, it has to be the worse paying job in the universe, even if you are called Dries.

--
groets
bert boerland

--
groets
bert boerland

VM’s picture

Unless the book gets turned into a movie : )

I can see the trailer now, coming to theatres Summer 2008, Drupal ........ the drop that can't be stopped.
and in summer of 2009 Drupal: The sequel ....... the drop that keeps on dripping.

starring: .........
_____________________________________________________________________
My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )

BioALIEN’s picture

That's hillarious and creepy at the same time. What would come in 2010? The Fountain of Drops?

Back on topic, this is indeed great news and I wish Acquia much success. They've based their template on RedHat which is a remarkable business model in its own right. Much respect and keep us updated Dries.

---
Dee
iScene Interactive :: iScene.eu

spjsche’s picture

Good Luck with your new venture.

Sree’s picture

congracts & good luck dries!

-- Sree --
IRC Nick: sreeveturi

themegarden.org’s picture

That's really great news.
Wish you all the best.
---
Drupal Theme Garden
Drupal Hosting Article

derekwebb1’s picture

Congratulations I hope that you have more success with your venture into making pre-configured websites from Drupal than we did.

Maybe one or two of you may recall the old Makefunds project that made pre-configured eCommerce websites. The original web sites were made by us however we hoped that others would build their own and distribute them at Makefunds.com... It didn't work out though. Our response from the Drupal community was... depressing.

Indeed we actually got a lot of "who cares" and "who needs that" kind of response from the community. I am glad that you, Dries, are having a much better go of it. It's hard to imagine that you would not though. This is your site and you bootstrapped the Drupal CMS in the first place. Thanks for that by the way. It's my favorite CMS.

I have never been impressed with the community though (particularly the forum community - as independent from the 3rd party module developers). 3rd party module developers are really the ones that make Drupal so great so a big kudos to you guys.

Well, once again... Good luck Dries. I truly do hope that it works for you. In an odd sort of way, if it does, I will know that we were at least doing something right (even if we did a lot of things wrong ;-)

Best regards, Derek

Heres a link to our original post about Makefunds.com 2.0 - it was redesigned so that one people could actually stand to look at it for more than 1.8 picoseconds ::: http://drupal.org/node/146061

kulfi’s picture

Derek - My sympathies regarding your retired Drupal initiative. Did you involve a marketing expert? My initial thoughts would be that you targeted the wrong group (Drupal experts, or those aspiring towards it). Instead, you could've taken on Shopify et all? (I realize this is too little, too late ...)

derekwebb1’s picture

You are probably right about that (targeted the wrong group). The only reason we did try to advertise to Drupalers was because we were hoping that they might also like to create pre-packaged web-sites too...

Don't feel bad about the site's dissolution though. I don't. It would have been a nightmare in upkeep. And frankly I didn't feel like drumming out 10-100 different sites and then having to apply patches, upgrades, etc.

I really do believe that there could be a market for this type of thing though.

Best regards, Derek

Michelle’s picture

I remember when you kept posting about it and I never was very clear on what the site was for. I thought it was yet another place for people to post that they're available for jobs and the domain name sounded rather scammy so I didn't look at it very closely.

Good luck on your new site. Very nice theme and I can tell what it's about easily. :)

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

derekwebb1’s picture

Makefunds.com did have a lousy name, but the front page said very clearly what the site was about - a casual glance should have made it clear...

Well, the name did sound scammy though and something like that can give people a bad first impression - so I certainly understand where you are coming from. Our next big project is going to be called cash4you.com (ha ha - just joking)! I am glad to be done with it though.

Derek

http://sendthemtomars.org

pulpzebra’s picture

Dear drupal everyone,

I cannot be happy after this announcement. Even if the Acquia FAQ do their best to explain that nothing is going to change in the development of Drupal core and modules add-ons, I fear that Acquia nterests will soon be caught by the development of its own business, as this is just the human nature.

What I fear the most, is that Acquia projects will soon overtake the Standard Drupal Core, giving significant performance and usability improvements that will remain external to the Drupal project. Acquia projects might reach those industry standard targets and just relegate the standard drupal core to a mere subproduct of the Acquia installation. Maybe the code under the Core will always be the same, but as it well stated in the FAQ, there might be "non-open-source code improvements"...

Even if this was possible time before Acquia, the fact that Acquia has been founded by Drupal ideators, means that anyone can do this as well! Drupal might be then exposed to an explosion of alternate versions, forks, commercial improvements and so on, without a "lighthouse guardian" to guard and preserve the situation.

Will not wish bad times to Dries and his colleagues at Acquia, but would like him to add the Acquia ethic statements that every line of code ever produced in the direction of improving Drupal performances, stability, usability and functionality, would be published to the Drupal project. That's not to steal their skills and creativity, but to fully preserve Drupal from turning into an "asteroids belt", useful to noone and prone to be replaced by another cms.

chx’s picture

"non-open-source code improvements" do not appear in the FAQ. This

We do note, though, that we may (as part of our solutions) find a need to include some non-open-source code in our distributions. But Drupal/PHP modules / code cannot be closed source.

does. If you would not trust Dries, which is utter foolishness by the way, then trust the GPL. As said can not.

I am totally dumbstruck by this whole thread here. People who never added a single line of code to Drupal, never reviewed a patch, written a handbook page is crying foul. Those who are part of the community are happy
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

pulpzebra’s picture

What you quoted is exactly what I mean. And what I FEAR as a threat to the Drupal Project. I do trust Dries and everyone here, or I would have never put my hand into Drupal, and I trust the GPL. What I fear is that this initiative might lead Drupal towards commercial solutions and reduce the Drupal core standard to a mere "starting point".

I'm not telling Acquia DON'T DO THAT. I simply ask Acquia not to lose the fundamentals of the code. That was said, that must be done.

eaton’s picture

What you quoted is exactly what I mean. And what I FEAR as a threat to the Drupal Project. I do trust Dries and everyone here, or I would have never put my hand into Drupal, and I trust the GPL. What I fear is that this initiative might lead Drupal towards commercial solutions and reduce the Drupal core standard to a mere "starting point".

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Drupal core is already a mere "starting point." Contrib modules and custom-crafted site-specific modules built on top of the core APIs are the lifeblood of any complex site.

It sounds like your concern is that Acquia will, ultimately, blaze a trail off in a new direction, making fundamental "in house" improvements to Drupal core but carefully maintaining control of them so that the Drupal development community never benefits from them. To be honest, anyone who does that is hurting themselves more than the Drupal community. Building and maintaining your own fork of Drupal is rarely worth the effort and hassles that come with it. While I'm sure that Dries has the ability to, he's also a smart guy: the money is not in selling custom modules or holding onto control of important performance patches. The money comes in presenting unified services to clients with large checkbooks, and providing services to the 'long tail' of the Drupal installed base.

--
Lullabot! | Eaton's blog | VotingAPI discussion

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

pulpzebra’s picture

Since my post, that was only meant as a personal point of view, is receiving the comments of two of the most authoritary members of the drupal community, I will no longer insist on that. I've only been kidding around with Drupal for some months and am not in the position of criticize anyone: this has never been my intention neither in the community nor in my whole existence.

Still, wishing Acquia all my best for the future, I only hope that the community interests will not be postponed to the business, but please, let me express my sincere fears about it and let's hope I am completely wrong.

eaton’s picture

Still, wishing Acquia all my best for the future, I only hope that the community interests will not be postponed to the business, but please, let me express my sincere fears about it and let's hope I am completely wrong.

Absolutely! You're right to express your concerns openly and constructively. There's nothing wrong with that and I don't mean to imply that I think you should've kept silent. In my experience, though, the concerns that you've expressed are rarely the problem. I'm more concerned that Dries will be swamped with the work of running a new company and taking care of his baby, and won't have time to develop as much as he'd like. ;-)

--
Lullabot! | Eaton's blog | VotingAPI discussion

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

chx’s picture

I disagree. People who know squat about Drupal community should not spread FUD.
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

pulpzebra’s picture

CHX, it's out of any doubt that people who have more experience inside the community are definitely to be trusted more than who asks, for instance, "how to make post details disappear".

However, I'm quite amazed by your reaction. As a Drupal user I like to stay informed on what's going on inside the community and I will not hide myself from being a little more than a novice. However, in my opinion, I believe that even a silly question posted to the forum might help the spread of Drupal knowledge.

If you say I'm totally wrong, I just have to accept it and believe that anyone who might have expressed my same feelings, will take advantages of your reply.

I apologize if the deep meaning of my comment might have been misunderstood.

thatashok’s picture

-

chx’s picture

... you quoted something which was not on the Acquia website. That I squarely oppose.
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

pulpzebra’s picture

you're right. I made a mistake in saying "code improvement". It's not Drupal Code itself, though, but "code that runs outside of Drupal". I've already made my apologies to everyone here and explained deeper what my concerns are. No need, for me, to further insist on that.

webavant’s picture

I don't think anyone could have cleared this up better than chx:

If you would not trust Dries, which is utter foolishness by the way, then trust the GPL. People who never added a single line of code to Drupal, never reviewed a patch, written a handbook page is crying foul.

Don't worry guys, Drupal can only improve! Acquia can only make products that work for Drupal, not restrict it's future as great GPL software. I'm looking forward to trying out Acquia's software. Good going Dries!

pwolanin’s picture

... for your new venture from someone who wishes some days to switch to making a living off of PHP coding, and who other days is very happy that his salary depends not in the least on getting the patch right.

---
Work: BioRAFT

redpineseed’s picture

that is great, Dries.

we can help you in China. we have developed www.ibobar.com on drupal in chinese for the past year. let me know if you need.

drupal is in china now.

clivesj’s picture

Congatulations and best wishes Dries!

Let's start-off and show us Drupal will remain in place for all Drupal-lovers [from the novice-hobby-programmer to the the Enterprise Web Engineer] by doing the following:

  • Organise training-classes in Europe (BENELUX) like Lullabot does in the US, but then for affordable prices.
  • Write the books mentioned earlier
  • Clean-up some modules that are very important but are seriously malfunctioning [like Subscribtions]
robertDouglass’s picture

Ahem... I'm in Germany all the time =) Benelux is but one trip on the Thalys away.

- Robert Douglass

-----
Lullabot | my Drupal book

clivesj’s picture

Good to hear that Robert.
Off-Topic:
I'm a big fan of lullabot. I read all the articles and I think you are doing a good job.
I have your book as well as the "pro devel" book. As a amateur programmer with skills halfway between an Administrator and Developer I would love to attend some of the trainings llulabot organizes.
Regards.

ewm7712’s picture

The future looks very bright and I know we will see great things in the near future.

Sophia’s picture

Congratulations, Dries.

jswaby’s picture

Are you hiring?

I'd love to work under and learn from the master/creator of the best CMS in the world :)

======
Jason

Dave Cohen’s picture

See the last FAQ.

Mizotan’s picture

While it may be perfect the way this Acquia stuff have turned out and will turn into in future, and while there may be linux + red hat etc ,it would have been a more nice feeling if drupal remained the way it were - that feeling was a homely, cosy one, a very-own closeness ! A feeling that you used to get when it was Drupal 1, 2, 3, 4 .... !

I understand one needs a profession and money but if it would have been like Lerdorf ( he works for yahoo ) probably it would be more nicer, though I am not sure !

I do not know nor have read details about "People who never added a single line of code to Drupal, never reviewed a patch, written a handbook page" but I beleive it is the mass users who without any code contribution but by using Drupal for their webs has made Drupal Drupal by their countless unpaid feedbacks and buying server spaces and bandwidth to run drupal :)

"In most cases, we will group together contributed modules as part of these distributions."- Acquia Faq
And just a small curosity, will the makers of those modules get a part of the payment received - if so what will be the maths ?

Michelle’s picture

Why would module maintainers get paid for it? They don't get paid when people use their modules on client sites. That's not how Drupal works. People get paid for offering services, not for selling modules.

The rest of your post I can't make any sense of.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

webchick’s picture

Although I wouldn't be surprised if module maintainers received sponsorship for adding features or fixing bugs from time to time. That's generally how most commercial entities handle this.

marcrobinsone’s picture

It's amazing how something can literally transform our lives! As I've read each comment posted, its all collectively good enough to describe the emotion present in humanity (fear, happiness, doubt, uncertainty, surprise, madness...).

But imho, the most amazing emotion is trust. It somehow mixes with fear and pain, yet courage brings life to it.

I trust Dries. I trust his work. I trust his intuition. And, I definitely trust the Drupal community.

---
marc.robinsone
http://projects2.apc.edu.ph/~mncaballero/drupal53/

Michelle’s picture

GPL aside, I trust Dries as well. He's done fine for Drupal all these years and I don't expect that to change.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

Brook’s picture

Well done Dries - I think this could be just what Drupal needs, and I wish you all the best.

I do however have one major concern. Who will Acquia be aimed at?

If it will be targetted at the high end of the market, with a large price tag (anything over $200 and annual subscription of over $50), I think this will be a disaster for the bulk of Drupal users (good for Acquia tho).

If it will be targeted to the same markets that current similar platforms are, such as vB, IPB, PHPFOX etc (i.e. affordable enough for most current Drupal Users - less than $200 purchase and less than $50 annual support subscription) then it will be good for everyone, esp the Drupal community.

Can you give us any clarification on this please?

eaton’s picture

I'm not sure why it would be a disaster, really. One of our clients, for example, pays in the neighborhood of $15,000 a month to their hosting company to keep a cluster of Drupal sites online. Doe sthe fact that such services are expensive spell disaster for people who need less expensive services? Nope. Those people don't need 99.995% uptime, multiple redundant fallback DB servers, 24/7 monitoring and a sysadmin with a dedicated pager.

--
Lullabot! | Eaton's blog | VotingAPI discussion

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

pamphile’s picture

I've been thinking of selling packages of Drupal myself. I won't pretend I have Dries experience :).

It's nice to see the idea finally in action. :)

Marcel
Reselling Website Visitors

Ohio Insurance’s picture

Best of luck with the new venture Dries. I'm sure you'll do well, judging by past accomplishments!

proxiss’s picture

I am not sure, if this is good news.
Other than stated in your FAQ - you surly will compete with existing companies in the drupal business - but that's ok, it's economics. I am 14 years in the software business now - sometimes as freelancer, sometimes as CIO - I don't think you can make serious money from selling drupal distributions (anyway you will need lot's of knowledge from the business field you're targeting - i.e. car selling) - RedHat (what you aim for) sell's just one product.

And I do foresee conflicts with your role as drupal project lead. Is the best for drupal also the best for your wallet?

Please don't take me wrong - do did a great job with drupal - but I think Acquia is a bit of a risk to the project.

Cheers,
Rainer

chx’s picture

I peeked at your member page and you are a member for: 3 weeks 3 days. I am sure during this less-than-a-month time you got more experience with how Drupal works and what Dries does than us who trust Dries and work on the project for many years and met him in person.
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The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

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Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

proxiss’s picture

chx - You got me wrong. I don't think that Dries will now turn around 180 deg and try to make as lot money out of drupal as possible - no, I am sure he will not!
But I think it is not a good idea to build a business on a famous community project that you invented. Imagine Linus had founded a Linux company or Stallman had tried to sell his GNU works. I think it can (must not - but is dangerous) injure a community project. And (allthough being member here only since 3 weeks) I like drupal very much and would definitly like to see it growing.

I think I saw your name at top of the learning curve - so - thanks for the flowers - but I am absolutely sure, that you know much more about how drupal work than I do.

Cheers Rainer

vkr11’s picture