You are hereBlogs / Jeff Schuler's blog / Companies and Contributing to Drupal
Companies and Contributing to Drupal
The Lullabot Podcast is a great Drupal resource -- from a rockstar company comprised of some of the very best of the Drupal community.
I was listening to an old episode, (because of a Twitter from DavidWheelerPhd) and came across a quote that resonated with me:
The other thing that I've heard a lot of businesses say is that they can't find Drupal people fast enough.
What Drupal developer, or contributor in general, doesn't want to work for a company who gives stuff back to the community?
Because that's the ultimate thing, right? You want your work that you do to be done for tons and tons of people -- because it's good for your feeling of self worth, it's good for "the world..."
If you have a choice between signing up with a company who does a lot of work and gives it back to the Drupal community, and helps everybody, or going with a company that makes you sign a bunch of NDAs and locks everything up in perpetuity, and the minute you leave that company all your code is gone...
It's a no-brainer choice.
-- Angie Byron (webchick), Lullabot Drupal Podcast No. 54: Contributing to Drupal (at about 33:44) [my transcription & edits]
The health of the project and the world at large are super important factors to the workings and decisions of the Drupal community. This is the Long View, this is sustainability.
- Jeff Schuler's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Yes! This is the key trend that is allowing Open Source CMSes to quickly supercede their proprietary counterparts. I think that OS CMSes are going to become the trophy of community development. I have seen at least a dozen companies regularly contributing Themes and Modules on drupal, not to mention even more organizations and companies sponsoring work here and there. This is not to mention the amazing Installation Profiles like Pressflow, Open Atrium, and others that are emerging. I have seen some CMSes out there that are OS and CHARGE for modules and themes... the madness of it!
The sense of communtiy collaboration and creating a commons on so many nuanced levels around Drupal is exactly why it is so incredibly successful. Whether you are an independent developer or are being paid to develop for Drupal, you are part of a system of reciprocity. You make your work available, and it comes back around to you in the greatest repository of modules ever assembled by any CMS.
I think companies are beginning to catch on to this trend and they just might be starting to see the bigger picture. Once D7 begins to underpin production websites, most proprietary CMSs are just going to fall by the wayside.
Best of all, its a simple pathway for companies to learn about the Open Source software development model and see its many strengths.