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By Dries on
For many of us, Drupal is very much a labor of love. It's a story of having fun and working hard. If you follow what we do, it's easy to understand what we're all about -- making it easy to build websites, both for users and developers. Passion spreads and as a result, Drupal's size and scope has grown beyond what an ad hoc group of volunteers can realistically manage. Organizing last summer's Drupal conference in Brussels would have been a lot easier with some financial backing, for example. Maintaining, scaling, upgrading, and improving the Drupal.org infrastructure is becoming a monumental task.
In response, we're proud to launch the Drupal Association. The Drupal Association is a non-profit organization with one goal: to support the Drupal project.
I wanted the Drupal Association to be a servant to the Drupal community, and to give it what it needs to flourish. Like this, the Drupal community can focus on what it does best: satisfying our users, defining Drupal's technical direction and having a blast.
After talking to various leaders in the Open Source community, I got together with Dries Knapen and Steven Wittens and we spent days drafting statutes and internal regulations. These were checked by legal advisors, refined, checked and proof-read by various members of the Drupal community until we were confident to incorporate the Drupal Association. Today, the Drupal Association has been incorporated, we assembled the initial board of directors, and we're ready to get to work.
Creating the Drupal Association opens up a number of opportunities. For example, donations may be given to the project through a central entity, rather than to individual community members. By handling administrative tasks, such as event management, resources are freed within the community to focus on improving the Drupal project. In the future, it will also provide the opportunity for individuals and businesses to be formally recognized as supporters of the project.
Needless to say, I'm really excited about the Drupal Association and we've big plans for it, too. Expect to learn more about that soon.
You can read more in our official press release and the official announcement.
In the mean time, if you want to learn more about the Drupal Association, check out the Drupal Association's website; in particular the "about" page, the structure, the history, the staff, the statutes and internal regulations and the FAQ.
Donate to the Drupal Association
Now that we have this vital body in place, it is time to start funding it and giving it the power it needs to get things done. There has never been a better time to show your appreciation and support of Drupal than now, and the best way is to donate to the Drupal Association. Your donation will enable the association to meet its goals for supporting Drupal. One of the first goals is to enhance the hosting infrastructure of Drupal.org to provide a faster and more responsive experience on this site.
Comments
Congratulations, this
Congratulations, this association was much needed, and I intend to donate. I see the drupal's future brilliant.
A quick suggestion: you should put a direct "Make a donation" link on drupal.org main site. No reason to by shy about this.
Definitely!
That's a great suggestion, and we intend to do it.
- Robert Douglass
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Lullabot | My Drupal book | My Digg RSS feed
If we provided direct link
If we provided direct link to donors websites from an easily accesible page
it would give them more incentive to give a little something
take a look at http://moodle.org/donations/
(I am not suggesting that we should disclose how much each one has given, but just a general thought)
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Good read for newbies is http://drupal.org/node/120612
Lots of Discussion and help is going on in http://groups.drupal.org/ too, join in
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GiorgosK
Web Development
donor list
is here:
http://association.drupal.org/donors
It seems some are listing their sites already.
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Work: BioRAFT
thanks for pointing this out
but in the internet people want to be linked and for some of them "listing them" won't be enough
Good read for newbies > http://drupal.org/node/120612
Lots of Discussion and help is going on in http://groups.drupal.org/ too, join in
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GiorgosK
Web Development
Congratulations! Drupal!
Congratulations to all those who worked hard, donating their limited free time in this busy to make Drupal a great CMS. The association will organize all members into a single forum systematizing work and result. It will certainly bring funding in various forms, and most importantly the donations from all well wishers. Keep up the good work.
Dr. G. Pokharel
WebMaster
http://www.geotechnical.org/
Hi there
Will you pay yourselves some salary (to you Dries and Wittens), for taking care of the association, or intend to do so ?
Will the association cover transportation and lodging expenses for some of its members when traveling where the Association want to attend ?
Caroline
Who am I | Where are we
11 heavens
These are unknown at this time.
These issues must be decided by the Board of Directors. Having a paid marketing professional, or someone who receives a salary to extend Drupal.org's infrastructure would be great things for the project, so I'm sure such arrangements will eventually be discussed. However, there needs to be a budget first.
- Robert Douglass
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Lullabot | My Drupal book | My Digg RSS feed
At this point, no one is
At this point, no one is getting paid to work for/on the Drupal Association (expect for lawyers and financial experts that we have to consult/hire).
The Drupal Association might cover travel expenses as doing outreach/marketing is one of its goals. For now, this will be decided on a case per case basis by the board of directors. We (obviously) have no precedents yet so it's not clear what the outcome of such a vote might be.
Non profit and salary
Dear Caroline,
I work in the non profit field and I have done it for the last 12 years. I will give you my opinion on the salary issue.
To be a non profit organization is not the same as volunteering for free. If some professional skills are required it's correct to pay for it.
The terms non profit refer usually to the fact that the organization cannot make profits to be shared between it's members as if they were stake holders, but all the revenues must be reinvested or used for the organization and not distributed among staff or members regardless of their actual work hours or results.
So, finally, there would not be anything wrong in paying a salary to whoever would work for the association, unless it become obvious that the salary is over the usual market standards.
Ciao,
Jan
Congratz!
Congratz!
show your love
show your love of drupal.org by adding the association information to the wikipedia entry in your language for Drupal and add an entry for Drupal-Association.
That way you can help spread the Drupal love.
--
groets
bert boerland
--
groets
bert boerland
Very nice... might be a good
Very nice... might be a good (maybe unnecessary) idea to specify Dries Buytaert in the FAQ where it talks about Dries being the "uberassociator" with respect to the domain name and trademark.
(Ugh, didn't mean for this to be a reply to the previous comment... oh well. Wanted to point out the use of the old favicon unless that's intentional or already noted...)
mmmm
:-)
Why not raise money with Google Ads?
Well done and congratulations. A sensible step forward, I think. Now there is somewhere for the money to go, why not raise thousands of dollars a day by simply adding Google ads to every page?
Please, no.
Please, no google ads -- let's save screen real estate for what matters: working with (and helping others work with) Drupal.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Perhaps you can 'have your cake and eat it'
I share your goal: "what matters". But I see no reason why adding Google ads to any page will reduce its ability to do "what matters". I see no shortage of screen real estate. It's a small amount of space and there's room for any amount of content (you just keep scrolling or clicking to new and related pages).
And those Google ads could raise thousands of dollars a day that can be spent on "what matters", eg, paying the best Drupalers to spend even more time making Drupal better for us all (they have to pay their bills same as everyone and all of them are good enough to use their time to earn good money, if that's what they want).
The only debates I can think of right now (although others will think of more, I'm sure) are:
* How do you know these large sums are money will be spent wisely?' And (correct me if I'm wrong) this is one of the things the Association would do. And if there was even a sniff of 'corruption' (as opposed to disargeement on priorities) then it would be in the public domain.
* Is such money a bad thing, no matter how it's spent? Ie, money corrupts, always. Obviously it often does, and this should be a serious discussion. But again, in theory, the strcuture of the Association comes to the rescue (and again, correct me if I'm wrong).
* Will the mere presence of adverts make people who don't know the truth (Drupal is good) think about Drupal differently? Eg, plenty of people just don't like adverts, or money, or any commercial activity, no matter what the money is spent on. This might be helped with a simple link and page that says and explains 'what this site's ad revenue is spent on'.
Down with Google ads... they
Down with Google ads... they make me think, "tacky." Example? Go browse the MySQL documentation now... they adopted an uglier, bloated theme for browsing the docs and added in Google ads. It's just tacky. And how helpful would it be for someone looking for information on Drupal to see 5 ads for sites offering Drupal "services" where they offer you Fantastico with a 4.7.0 install at the click of a button? That would certainly be unhelpful for anyone looking for Drupal support. And I seriously doubt thousands of dollars would ever come from such ads, and certainly not enough to make the tackiness worth it...
(Honestly, if you were to try and monetize Drupal pages, the association site wouldn't be the place to do it... it would make more sense for d.o with more unique content on a wide range of topics. But the association page is just information on the association. And I'll stop making a case against it, because I'm pretty sure Google ads would be voted down by the association if the idea ever came up...)
Can be done tastefully
What I usually dislike about Google ads is that people tend to go completely overboard when adding them.
Just a single 5px height line above or below the first node (on the frontpage) wouldn't hurt the eyes at all and could quite possibly pay some bills.
And even if you decide you don't want ads on the frontpage I really see a great potential for having it under "paid drupal services" on the forums.
FWIW, I agree with
FWIW, I agree with rszama.
I'll go with any board decision though. :-P
Agreed, rszama says it well
The point about the possibility of misleading ads is also a good one -- with a lot of people offering Fantastico-based installs that are a few releases behind, it could lend a degree of credence if one of those companies appeared in a Google ad on d.o.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
What's in it for us?
Why would we as a community of developers, users, and infatuated addicts give away a sizable percentage of page views and traffic to a company who won't even tell us how much money we get back in return? What's the return-on-investment for a google ad? Anybody?
Your honor, the defense rests.
****
Joel "Senpai" Farris | certified to rock score
Good discussion - more facts needed
Tacky? You can make Google Ads look how you want.
How helpful? Some are some aren't. Depends what you're looking for. The web is a place that people look for things. One click away from drupal.org is google.com where those looking for info and services will see millions of search results.
Misleading ads? Unwanted ads can be blocked.
How much revenue? How much is enough to use the money for good works that far outweigh any problems some have with seeing ads? If done right, I'd expect at least $10 per thousand page impressions? $20 per thousand page impressions is common. (Can't imagine what happened to hass.)
Association page? I mean every page. Personally, I think I would exclude the front page of drupal.org. Just a few pages would be a waste of time.
Steven's points below are interesting. Are you saying that legally it couldn't be done?
no facts here :-)
I buy a house and my financial advisor says "get a boarder, you'll pay it off quicker".
I say "no, this is my house, I want to live in every room".
What's in it for us ? It's
What's in it for us ? It's about Drupal, not us.
The Drupal logo looks hungry. One day Drupal will have kids and a wife too. And what about vacations ? You got to think of the future and prepare for rainy days.
I support adding Yahoo, and Google ads.
Marcel
http://www.bigvertiser.com
http://www.diarist.com
charge back will be nothing...
i think the chargeback from google will be nearly nothing. We tested this on a high volume site and removed it after 10 weeks or so... ~6 EUR/month for a very good and popular type-in domain with high traffic, layout "destroyed" with banners - noone is clicking on this suxxx ADs... makes no sense. i cannot understand why someone put this sh** on his site.
google ads - can test, and not overwhelm pages
Can indeed test google ads: put some on the site, not going overboard, and designed to fit into the page.
If they alarm people, and/or bring no revenue, can adapt or pull them.
I have a couple of low volume sites with google ads; do a fair bit better than 6 Eur/month; haven't had complaints about them, and seems ok to me. Blocked only one or two advertisers, like one for hunting; it could be a pain, but possible to block the dodgiest looking drupal advertisers.
Read of success stories - one bloke reaping a million US or so in a few months (after much work on his site - not easy!)
I guess the google adsense team would be willing to help Drupal here.
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CheungChauHK 長洲HK - South China Sea island in Hong Kong.
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DocMartin and Hong Kong Outdoors
Not a matter of revenue
I don't think anyone disagrees that putting ads on drupal.org would net us a lot of money. The question is whether that would harm the quality of the site a lot. Drupal.org is a hub for all things Drupal, so if a low quality ad comes up and draws people to e.g. a low quality host, they could get a bad impression.
I'd much rather keep Drupal ad free, let the community donate out of its own will, and let the good community members earns a mention on the consultants/services page. If you earn your living with Drupal (as many people do), is it not fair to donate a percentage of that back to the community?
We deliberately separated the association from drupal.org, because we want it to be a separate organ next to the community. If something were to go wrong with the association (it can always happen), the community can continue. Of course, everyone who is now in the association strongly believes in the idea, so this is quite unlikely to happen, but since we are dealing with legal topics here, we wanted to do things right.
From this point of view, tying Drupal.org too closely into the association could be a bad idea, especially when it comes to money.
--
If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.
Would google ads harm drupal.org?
I've thought some more on this, and still don't think google ads would harm the site; and they can be tested (heck, even for a day or several - see if storm of protest).
Few ads, blended.
Yes, get some poor ads; but I'd guess few or no people arriving at drupal are real naive re Internet, and will have seen plenty of ads; hope that's the case.
Maybe could also argue that if people get software from drupal.org and have problems, could also have bad impression (I've tried something that didn't work; something else that baffled me - but I'm on an open source site, using free stuff that's hot off the press, as it were. In a way, that's part of the fun!)
Donating is good; but I wonder re idealism - what of those who don't pay? Ads would seem one way of levelling things a little.
Good point re not tying assoc too much to drupal.org. But if some money could help - inc re marketing drupal, esp compared to certain bold and brassy cms...
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CheungChauHK 長洲HK - South China Sea island in Hong Kong.
____________________________
DocMartin and Hong Kong Outdoors
I've made other points
I've made other points regarding this issue, but there is also the simple question... who's asking for money? "If some money could help"... well, money always helps. But who in charge is saying Drupal is in need of money and is asking to place ads on the site? What need has it come down to where all the community based solutions have been ruled out, the need wasn't possible to meet without money, or the need wasn't just put on a list of things to be done later?
I don't think I've ever been anywhere where users are trying to get ads put on a site! : P
Hello -- Some
Hello --
Some comments:
re:
If you read through the forums and subscribe to the support listserv, people's experience levels vary widely. This is not a safe assumption to make.
re:
Those who don't pay, don't pay -- they don't have to, and that's their right. Who knows, though -- maybe those who don't pay have to come back in another life as a cockroach, or as a guest on the Jerry Springer show :)
All kidding aside, when there is a pressing need for more money (ie, when Dries says we need more money), and the community hasn't responded to methods that have worked in the past (see http://drupal.org/node/26602 and http://drupal.org/node/26707), at that point I'd say it would be in the communities best interest to look at other fundraising options, possibly including Google ads. Until that point, though, it doesn't make sense, and doesn't seem necessary.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
No monies needed, no ads needed
"I don't think I've ever been anywhere where users are trying to get ads put on a site! : P"
- haha, fair enough. At least it indicates people being supportive of Drupal.
Like some others, I'd figured money may help somehow, whether for travel to wider range of meetings, maybe increased bandwidth so drupal.org can really show how the cms can perform. (Elsewhere I posted re images being useful; increased bandwidth was suggested as potential problem.)
Fair enough if money's not needed, and past ways set to work in future, especially if the cockroach/Springer show notion can be mooted for wannabe meanies!
Martin
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CheungChauHK 長洲HK - South China Sea island in Hong Kong.
____________________________
DocMartin and Hong Kong Outdoors
Or you display Google Adsense in your sites, with Dries' ID
Something like that
Maybe Dries or Drupal Association has own Google Adsense ID and I/we will be more than happy to show the ads in our sites
But please keep Drupal.org like this...clean and free from ads
It doesnt even have footers!
A great step --
The Drupal Association is a great step -- congratulations on not just making the step, but on the deliberate way in which you made it.
Cheers,
Bill
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Congrats, this is quite important
Hey Dries, I'm sure this will become a very important point in the life of the Drupal community.
Long live Drupal!
Alexis Bellido
Ventanazul: web development and Internet business consulting shouldn't be boring
Mazel Tov!
This is really wonderful news. Congratulations to the leaders and to everyone who is a part of this project/community.
I've made an initial personal donation. I also plan to lobby the non-profit I work for and who benefits from Drupal to make a donation as well.
(small p.s. -- does anybody know if giving to a Belgian non-profit is tax-deductible in the U.S.A. -- the answer to that question -- and its corollary for other countries -- might be useful to have in the donation FAQ on the association web site)
All the best,
Shai Gluskin
http://www4.jrf.org
http://everydayandeverynight.com/
content2zero.com
Congracts!
Congracts!
-- Sree --
IRC Nick: sreeveturi
Hurrà!
Well, I see what has kept you busy!
My congratulations to the newborn association. Having walked a long persona path in the non profit field, let me tell you that you are all very brave and that your mission is of paramount social importance.
Please, don't underestimate my suggestions to run for EU fundings and always count on my experience on this field. Also, if I might, let me stress the added value of international partnerships, I strongly recommend it!
3 Hurrà for Drupal Association!
Jan Lai
Well Done
This is great news for Drupal. It's the start of a whole new level in terms of what to expect.
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BioALIEN
Buy/Sell/Trade with other webmasters: WebMasterTrader.com
Cool!
Good to see that some more focus will be delivered to important parts of this community via this medium.
Personally I hope to see some sort of democratic system put in place to help assess development & documentation priorities.
Also maybe it would be possible to get some sort of funds allocated for local groups (to help with travel, other basic stuff)? I think this might be quite helpful to help consolidate development by groups rather than just individuals. In that way, a greater understanding of the system can be gained by groups as a whole - this will help individual modules/projects toward completion much more quickly, as well as help solve the seemingly insurmountable issue of adequate documentation for these.
My two cents - I think this is a good step forward anyway! :)
Drupal Build & Development in Nottingham by Kineta Systems
Clarification...
No, this is not the Drupal Association's role.
Development is and always will be left in the very capable hands of the community. The Drupal Association will never step in and dictate things like the future direction of the project, or what should be worked on when by whom, and so on.
The Drupal Association, rather, will be taking care of the peripheral issues such as keeping our infrastructure going, and organizing events where developers can meet each other and brainstorm, etc. so that the community as a whole can keep doing what it does best without having to worry about these. This is a very important distinction.
OK!
Well met, Madam. What do you say on the other matter of funding local groups?
I thought that point might have made a bit more of a ripple actually...
Drupal Build & Development in Nottingham by Kineta Systems
Chapter-based non-profits I've served on
For what it's worth, I've served on various chapter-based non-profit boards in the past.
One of the non-profits, an Hispanic MBA association, required an annual membership fee but would then reinvest some of those proceeds by helping fund an annual meeting/social get-together at the chapter level as well as funding airfare, lodging, and meals for 2 chapter level board members to attend the annual conference and leadership training which, to this day, is held in a different U.S. city each year.
The other non-profit, an alumni association, also required a fee to join (either a life membership or ongoing annual dues). It, too, would reinvest some of those proceeds by helping fund some of the chapter level activities such as marketing, advertising, and postage costs as well as assisting/advising chapter level administration.
IMO, part of the difficulty in funding Drupal local groups might be that none of us are dues-paying members. There is discussion, I'm sure, on the possibility of allowing individual Drupal users as well as established companies the opportunity to donate funds to the Drupal Association under some type of membership, and this setup might open some possibilities.
If funding local groups is considered, part of the question becomes what exactly might be appropriate to give out to the local groups. Should it be done so based upon the total number of members in a specific local group (e.g., 50 members in Austin Drupal Users Group X US$2 per member = $100)? Should it be done based on some type of matching funds to any funds the local group has raised (e.g., Austin DUG raises US$1000 and Association matches it at 10% thus providing an additional US$100)? If local groups are allowed to do local fund-raising, under what circumstances can they do so? For what can any Association provided funds be spent on and on what can they NOT be spent on (e.g., conference room is OK but alcohol is questionable)?
What about non-local Drupal working groups such as the E-Commerce and the Drupal Dojo groups - what's fair to allocate to them, if anything, should they need funds for reason x, y, or z (e.g., needing conference room space at a DrupalCon)?
IMO, there are lots of issues that need to be addressed before the Association can provide funds to local groups.
Just a few thoughts to ponder. :)
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
.
All good points, well made. I just wanted to make sure this was out there. :)
I think the real issues are travel and venue - there is a good case for "virtual" meetings (free & easy) - but this isn't always appropriate.
Drupal Build & Development in Nottingham by Kineta Systems
Suggestion: "Badge" as promotional tool
Ref. the post "Donate a % of jobs":
http://association.drupal.org/donors#comment-100
Lets say there is a system in place where quotations etc. have built-in revenue split to support Drupal.org.
Around that we could arrange with a "certification" or "badge" so that those who base their projects on such support can show it to the world.
This could be placed both in the user profile of the drupal.org accounts, and on the actual web sites.
That way, various drupal.org funding schemes could be promoted and informed about also outside of the bids/quotations and help draw even more attention to supporting drupal economically.
- This could also be further extended, for example by various ratings etc., so that people and organisations can decide to favor recruitment / selection of participants for new projects based on such economical contributions in addition to the requirements for competence, etc.
.
--
( Evaluating the long-term route for Drupal 7.x via BackdropCMS at https://www.CMX.zone )
Congrats! I'll be contributing
This is an important milestone in Drupal's development. A big congrats to the Drupal community in general and, specifically, to the Association's General Assembly for putting in the time, effort, and energy in creating the Association.
Looking forward to reading more about Drupal Association Membership. I'll definitely contribute something based upon my budget as soon as the announcement is made, preferably at some membership level.
I'm hoping there will be individual and corporate membership levels with tiered options from which I can choose an appropriate financial level. Tiered options to choose from, IMO, are generally a good thing and help boost donations. Here's an example from KLRU, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television station in my city, Austin, Texas. Yes, it's for TV, but I'm sure you get the idea. :)
Keep up the great work!
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Congrats
Quite glad that all the paperwork is done now. Hopefully this will allow many corporations to donate more generously, while facilitating better coordination between many projects. Great job.
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Trouvé Media
long time in coming
Thanks for getting this thing going guys!
__________________________________
Percy the Small Engine Fan Site
Grats! Sent yesterday some
Grats!
Sent yesterday some small donation!
Congrats
Big congrats, a great move. I certainly intend to throw in a few bucks. We've always tried to donate by paying developers to help on modules but this is even better if the money is well spent, and I'm sure it will be in this group.
On the flip side, I've had a really bad taste in my mouth lately for non-profits. We've built a few sites and are currently building sites for non-profits. We've kinda come to specialize in that. In doing so I've been disgusted by the bureaucracy. I've experienced and seen a whole bunch of money wasted on important meetings, conference calls. and unnecessary travel. There seems to be a whole lot of ego and self importance in the non-profits I've dealt with which stifles much of the real purpose of the organization. It's pretty sickening and I'm sure the donors would be sadly disappointed to know where the money goes.
I don't see that happening among this group. Too logical of a bunch. But just plan for the future and put things in place that it never degrades to that. I'm sure the founders of the groups I've experienced weren't that way either. But they were operating for a cause that they initiated. It was a passion. It probably just degraded as others took over that cause. Don't know.
Just a thought. But fantastic job.
ShunShifu
agreed
re: On the flip side, I've had a really bad taste in my mouth lately for non-profits.
I have been there. I worked as a contractor for a big non profit organization and it struck me there was lack of passion amongst the workers, they just saw it as a job and wanted to get on top. Waisting lost of money, including hiring me, doing something that was stupid and could be done locally.My job was to get some local infrastructure in the air with dial in connections towards their HQ for corporate mail, this was some 10 years ago before "internet access" was widely (is it now?) available in the rural parts of Africa. Needless to say I do not donate any more to that charity.
Having said that, I will do anything possible to make sure that the reason for existing (raison d'etre) for the association does not become the reason for existing for the association. So no or almost no overhead cost. OTOH, you have to know that running such as thing takes time. And letting it run by "amateurs" (read: unpaid professionals) makes that you will get passionate people, but cant rely on them in the way that you can rely on someone who is being paid to do a job. So we might end up in a couple of years with a paid employee (personal opinion).
I *know* that the people in the board know they have a very responsible task that will be monitored closely by people who donate. We will try to be as transparent as possible, do what needs to be done and I know that all of the people in the board work as hard as they can to facilitate the project in the best way. Spending many hours helping us here all and getting nothing but mail, less sleep and I am sure -uncalled- criticism. And a bit of love.
"It is like peeing in a dark pantalon, nobody sees it but it's a warm feeling"
--
groets
bert boerland
--
groets
bert boerland
What, no Joompala?
No news yet of developers upping and forking off to form a related CMS? (OK, not quite the same as Mambla, but echoes.)
.... Good.
May be time to have a look at "sexing up" Drupal; I've posted re site being unsexy.
This, in turn, could help association and Drupal.
I'm using Drupal for a site after experiences with Mambo/Joomla: "power in simplicity", "easy to manage" are grand boasts - in my view unmerited without qualification, but these boasts plus look of the sites must seem attractive.
Drupal power, strengths under the hood, seem more to be appreciated by in-crowd, knowing of it.
Not real apparent on this site.
Slogan re "community plumbing" could use looking at.
"Drupal - for websites that rock" my notion so far (mtvuk helping in this).
Maybe could at least have section that shows off Drupal's abilities: and not simply a bunch of links to sites running Drupal.
Just maybe, something akin to css Zen Garden: might set up basic page(s), then have some hotshot and even not so hotshot Drupal designers work on it/them to produce pages, maybe using available modules.
Might be power in links from drupal.org, if allow "follow". Could reward helpers this way (maybe already happens); as with money - and for some webmasters, strong links mean money - need care re use.
Anyway, hopefully exciting times for Drupal.
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CheungChauHK 長洲HK - South China Sea island in Hong Kong.
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DocMartin and Hong Kong Outdoors
or.... completely different!
Hmm, I can't see the analogy. Who's playing Miro?
Members and non-members?
Now we will have members and non-members. I can only assume that members are entitled to something extra, otherwise whats the point. So what is it that members get that non-members don't? If its code then the whole landscape changes.
Of course we don't know exactly what will happen , what effect the association will have on our favourite open source project. Change is often enough on it's own to worry some, but I think people are here because they have faith in the project and the people behind it. It's those people who have initiated this change, so the situation is (I hope) very different to mambo.
I of course don't answer for docmartin, that is just the analogy I see.
Mambo/Joomla
The Mambo/Joomla situation started because the legal body owned some of the rights associated with the project. Hence, a renaming and rebranding was necessary.
This is one of the reasons the Drupal Association does not own the domain name or trademark. Another consequence is that we clearly said the Association has no say in the technical development of Drupal at all.
The Association solely exists to support the project with infrastructure, finances, marketing and such. Should the association go sour (unlikely, but theoretically possible), Drupal can simply continue as it always has.
As for membership: some of these benefits are mentioned in our internal regulations, but we are still working out the final version. Generally it comes down to things like:
These benefits would be tiered and you'd get more with higher tier membership. We also plan to distinguish between (cheap) individual membership and (more expensive) corporate membership to give everyone the chance to benefit.
We also stipulated that only individuals can become members of the General Assembly and Board of Directors (the two organs that control and direct the association), to avoid a conflict of corporate and open source interests.
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If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.
Marketing Drupal: power - yet unsexy site
I was being mischievous re Joompala. Were some lofty goals for Mambo Assoc, but I read arguments re pros and cons, full situation still not clear to me. Appreciate profound differences here, inc level-headed approach from Drupal team.
Was serious, however, re Drupal promotion being poor, inc this site nigh on shooting Drupal in the foot, when at least a section could be a showcase. Maybe that doesn't matter, and it's ok if people come to Drupal as somehow learn that never mind this site, Drupal is a powerful cms, and they start using and supporting it.
Likewise serious re "follow" links from this site.
Additional: I'm impressed by looking around drupal.org for software projects, and so far finding they're not commercial.
To me, seems in spirit of open source.
Noticed, too, that some software development is "supported by" certain companies that use Drupal; so they get a little promotion in return for efforts. Hope this helps them, too, including in also doing commercial work with Drupal.
Plus there's chance to make some improvements; for non-coder like me, can mean by writing/helping improve some guff for users.
Would seem ideal if Drupal can continue in this vein. (Maybe wrong-headed of me, but I'm not sure people should get cms for free, but then find they should pay for extras to do some fairly basic things [like SEF URLs!], with time/costs potentially soon exceeding those for commercial cms.)
If can stay like this, can add to marketing re "The Drupal Difference"
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CheungChauHK 長洲HK - South China Sea island in Hong Kong.
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DocMartin and Hong Kong Outdoors
Great News
Congratulations.
I believe open source can survive only when all of us support them with our might.
Guy’s! Give them big hand.
cmswire
cmswire picked it up as well
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groets
bert boerland
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groets
bert boerland
Congradulations, I support
Congradulations,
I support this endeavour ...
Marcel
http://businessletters.com
Congratulations to Drupal
Congratulations to Drupal Association and its member!
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Mak's Gallery
Video Games
Drupal Association - Superb
This is great news. Can't wait for pricing.