The more I read about what Acquia are doing with Carbon, the more worried I get.

Have you come across the how Acquia are approaching Themes? Check out top notch themes, acquia’s new partner site for selling Drupal themes.

What theme designer in their right mind would contribute a great theme to Drupal for free, if they can sell it for $300 – $3,000, which is the going rate on Acquia’s top notch themes partner site?

Acquia’s approach with commercial themes for Drupal is *not* an open source, approach, Onopoc, so, I’m a bit confused with your comment that you’re an open source enthusiast.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out that a “top notch modules” site, selling modules and add-ons is just around the corner.

you say: “Personaly I think Acquia is a good thing for Drupal as long as Acquia’s code is going back to the Drupal.org community”

I’m afraid you’re missing the bigger picture, Onopoc. If acquia had released an INSTALLATION PROFILE, rather than launch a totally new product and a totally new brand, I would tend to agree with you…it would be good for the Drupal community. But, they chose not to do that. They chose to launch a completely new product and a new brand, which is *not* good for the Drupal community because it will inevitably bring about a split in the Drupal community.

However, that approach *IS* very good for the investors and venture capitalists behind acquia.

The way acquia is presenting Carbon in the press and media is as a ‘hardened, commercial-grade’ version of Drupal…which suggests Drupal is sub-standard or noty-good-enough for commercial standards and as a result, it’s not rocket science to assume a lot of full time drupal designers and developers will start using Carbon over Drupal, without paying for the commercial support.

That leads to a natural split in the Drupal community, Onopoc. If most of the full time developers are using Carbon…do you honestly think they will all take their time to rework all their carbon modules for release on drupal.org?

Like the acquia approach with launching carbon as if it’s a totally new product and a new brand, the split in the community is *bad* for the drupal community and *great* for the investors and venture capitalists behind Acquia, because by splitting the Drupal community like that, Acquia will have a Carbon community of free developers, testers, bug-fixers and patchers that would normally have been working 100% with Drupal.

Like I said earlier, if Acquia had of released an ACQUIA INSTALLATION PROFILE, instead of launching a new product, Acquia could still sell their commercial support services. The problem with that approach is that there’s no trademark, logos, or IP assets that Acquia can own…and there is also no Carbon Community of developers/testers etc.

Why Acquia is not contributing back to the Drupal community and meanwhile offering all lines of commercial services and support?

I am afraid that such move will not only “split” Drupal community but rather will turn Drupal into the same line with other tens of OS CMS for the favore of the rising Carbon.

According to Dries Drupal will NOT shift from open source to a trialware/shareware. “Acquia is not going to fork or close-source Drupal. Acquia wants to see the Drupal community succeed and to do so, Acquia will listen to and work with the community to advance Drupal. The Drupal Association continues to operate the drupal.org domain, I [Dries] continue to own the Drupal trademark, and the Drupal community continues to set the technical direction of the Drupal project.”
Source: http://buytaert...-drupal-startup

“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.”
Source: http://drupal.o...#comment-928843

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 is a list of some modules developed or sponsored by Acquia then contributed to the Drupal.org community:
-GMap Lat/Lon: http://drupal.o...ect/gmap_latlon
-Loopfuse Integration: http://drupal.o...roject/loopfuse
-Project issue voting: http://drupal.o...ct_issue_voting
-Drupal Administration Menu: http://drupal.o...ject/admin_menu

I am not related to Acquia or its founders. I’m an open source enthusiast and contributor.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but, can I just say that the way you present the statistics is a tad misleading?

The top 5 contributers to Drupal core code are:
————————————–
dries 6,100 commits
(out of a total of 9,997 commits for the Drupal module)
goba 1,106
unconed 1,050
kjartan 377
drumm 678
—————

Both Dries and Gabor (Gabo) are now working full time for Acquia. (Unconed is the legendary Steve Wittens, by the way, who is not AFAIK working with Acquia ). Many of those commits are patches submitted by other users, in other words, not only were Dries and Gabo the top contributers of commit, but, they were also the gatekeepers for the Drupal project.

Can I also point out that there will be a natural shift of users from Drupal to Carbon..not just because of a shift of some of the main core Drupal developers/gatekeepers to Acquia, but, because Carbon is being presented as a ‘hardened’ version of Drupal.

I’m not sure if that’s a ploy on Acquia’s part to suggest that Drupal is sub-standard and isn’t worthy of commercial support or an admission that the open source model doesn’t work, but, either way, I can’t imagine many who would perceive Drupal to be anything other than below Carbon in the pecking order, now.

What a pity Acquia didn’t run with an “acquia installation profile” instead…it would have meant less confusion and it would have avoided the risk of a split in the Drupal community with developers shifting to carbon. Acquia would still have been able to provide commercial support and network services…so it wouldn’t have made a jot of difference to what they are planning to do.

There were 741 contributors to Drupal 6 core. There are 4 well known Drupal core contributors, and one up and coming Drupal core developer bringing the total to 5. 5 out of 741 is not a majority. It’s worth noting that the new Drupal 7 maintainer doesn’t work for Acquia. Neither does the Drupal 4.7 or Drupal 5 maintainer.

There are 1208 job listings for Drupal developers listed on http://groups.drupal.org/jobs. There are hundreds if not thousands of other Drupal job postings in other places. Acquia has almost 30 employees and has not hired away a single employee from an existing Drupal shop.

Drupal is a vibrant diverse and healthy organic open source project. Read http://drupal.org/planet to see the diverse opinions of hundreds of contributors.

If you would like to learn more about about Acquia read http://acquia.com/faq. If you would like to learn more about how Acquia works with and participates in the Drupal community read our blog: http://acquia.com/blog

Cheers,
Kieran
Drupal community adventure guide
Acquia Inc.

Is it because open source only works up to a point ? or is it that there was an inability to manage and harness the huge drupal community in a smarter way?

Because the majority of the core developers behind Drupal are now working for Acquia full time now, I can see a shift of Drupal users across to Carbon, which is understandable. It is also a pity, because it means Drupal will essentially lose the open source spirit and vitality that has brought Drupal as a project to where it is today.

Why would a contributor to Drupal submit a patch, bug fix, idea for improvement to an existing module, when they can simply copy and modify the existing module, give it a new name and release it as their own…charging for support?

So I tend to disagree with the comments that point to “exciting times in the Drupal World!”….I’m more worried that it is “exciting times for the venture capitalists and shareholders of acquia!”…who own Carbon and all the products Acquia comes up with.