"Community responsibility": Drupal 5.0 und Distributionen

Mit der kommenden Version Drupal 5.0 soll die Entwicklung spezieller Distributionen noch besser unterstützt werden. In einem interessanten Artikel beschreibt Dries Buytaert Möglichkeiten, wie sich mit Drupal-Distributionen neue Anwendungsgebiete und damit auch neue Märkte erschließen lassen könnten.

Drupal 5.0, the upcoming Drupal release, will have better support for Drupal distributions. Each distrubtion takes some set of Drupal themes and modules and packages them together with the Drupal core, along with custom installation steps, documentation, and so on. For example, one could create a distribution called "Drupal for Education"; it could have pre-configured roles and permissions for both teachers and students, and ship with additional modules that allow one to offer online courses and testing.

Buytaert schickt allerdings gleich eine Warnung mit: Funktionieren können derartige Drupal-Ableger nur dann, wenn sie sich in enger Zusammenarbeit mit der Drupal-Community weiterentwickeln. Nicht Konkurrenz, sondern Zusammenarbeit ist gefragt, wie dies z.B. bei der Drupal-Distribution CivicSpace gut funkioniert:

The good news is that we know how to do this. We've been through this already with CivicSpace (previously called "DeanSpace"), a Drupal distribution for online campaign management and grassroots activism. They were quick to realize that the success of the CivicSpace distribution depends on the success Drupal core, and vice versa. The decided they shouldn't fork core development. Instead, CivicSpace decided to do all its development on the drupal.org infrastructure, to synchronize releases, to submit all patches upstream, to centralize bug reports, and to share documentation where possible. Collaboration, not competition.

Als Negativbeispiel nennt Buytaert die letztendlich gescheiterte Drupal-Distribution "Drupal for Bloggers":

Remember the "Drupal for Bloggers" distribution? Hundreds of users had no upgrade path and were stuck with an insecure Drupal fork. The author decided to compete rather than to collaborate, and introduced various incompatibilities that, in the end, negatively affected the users. It is a good example of what we want to avoid.