Opinion, some facts
Projection of our own requirements onto rest of Drupal users.
Bob's cheese shop - local cheesemonger for Jeff - turns out to be built on D! But Bob doesn't care.
Heather's online community - Heather cares but building websites is not what she does. Wants to manage her community.
Mp3s of digital heckling - Mystery Science Theatre 3000. erik runs their website. He writes code, submits code back etc. but it's not like he's a maintainers of modules or a core hacker or at an agency... He's a site caretaker.
Larry Garfield
Editor of the Economist.
Emma is a longstanding Drupal user - trains people to make websites for under 1000 dollars.
Barack doesn't care about core APIs, but he wants Drupal to be secure - no lolcats on whitehouse.gov!
These are all stakeholders in Drupal, and they all differ. We've been trying to make them all happy. But now choices that help one group can hurt the others.
Killing us with complexity. Complexity cost. D7 is 2.5 times bigger than D6.
Back to the question....
Product - something that helps you do something. iPhone. Wordpress. "You should blog."
Framework - a thing that helps you make products. Toolbox, tools.
Platform - a thing that lets you use products. LAMP stack. iOS. HyperCard.
Apple had a hard time working out WHO HyperCard was for. Like Drupal.
Which one is Drupal? It's kind of all three.
IPhone versus old mobile duct taped to a camera duct taped to a pager... "That's a theming issue."
Framework - toolbox versus biggest Swiss army knife in the world.
The platypus of software. "Dear God, this sucks!"
History
2000 Dorm hackers slashdot comment moderation was the hot new thing.
2003 there was no contrib! 2 devs, a dozen users.
Kernel Trap. The Onion. Howard Dean 2004 Deanspace turnkey website.
2005 300 modules 1000s of sites 12 people at the first con
2007 D5 and D6. Drupalsplosion. Printed matter. Venture capital and Acquia
2009 growing pains - people finding things useful... how are they?
To fit active v non active users... Had to change scale to get visible active users on slide! A third of a tiny person would be more like it.
First eye tracking. Well, that was embarrassing. Infrastructure problems. Process problems. Tools for managing Drupal complexity. Features, Aegir, install profiles. We'e really got to do something about this....
Fast forward. These tensions aren't new.
devs v site builders - hey, all the APIs have changed versus where's my toolbox gone in D7 contrib?
Newcomers v old timers - excluding and voices not heard
Agencies v site owners - hacking core
Hippies v capitalists - let's have fun with the Druplicon guy!
What can we do?
Stop doing stuff? - call Drupal mature, fix bugs and drink daiquiris.
Narrow our focus? - anyone who doesn't fit can use....
Work harder? - the problem with Drupal is that Angie doesn't work hard enough.
Just fork already? - there's a button on Github that does it; it can't be morally wrong
But if e.g. the enterprise people leave, a huge resource leaves the community.
Prepare for separation - those who would build their own CMS do need a framework; the site runners don't need that. Install profiles?
Platform lets us not alienate different groups.
Let's agree on the goal - historically good at tactics, terrible at strategy
Ringfence the toolbox - separate product pieces from toolbox pieces. Used to champion smallcore but I know now that probably won't happen.
DRUPAL IS A PLATFORM. we build products on it.
Need to acknowledge different needs.
[J-P's thoughts:
1. What if devs abandon the product pieces? New red-headed stepchildren?
2. Don't different stakeholders differ in their experience rather than in their list of modules? Can you ever separate that out and switch it?
3. Do any stakeholders who aren't devs really have a different set of requirements from each other?]
