Fenix on Open Source

When people think of open source, the things that immediately come to mind are products and tools that many consider to be polar opposites of Microsoft offerings.

Firefox vs Internet Explorer
Linux vs Windows
Apache vs IIS
PHP vs ASP.NET
MySQL vs MS SQL
Open Office vs Microsoft Office

If you run an organization that heavily relies on Microsoft technologies like Windows Server and Microsoft SQL, you may immediately assume this means you’re out of luck unless you’re willing to invest in open source web infrastructure – the most popular of which is known as the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack.

Luckily this is no longer true. Microsoft has made a concerted effort to support PHP on Windows Server and Internet Information Services (IIS). While PHP has always been able to run on IIS, the performance and stability was widely considered to be poor and as such, Windows was generally avoided as a viable server environment for PHP applications.

However, as of last year, Microsoft has begun official support for PHP on the Windows Server platform and is publishing official PHP extensions to natively support Microsoft SQL as well. This support has made the Windows Server environment a viable platform for popular open source CMS tools like Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress.

In fact, if you visit the PHP microsite on http://iis.net, you’ll find easy install tools to get PHP running on IIS along with bundles of popular open source projects.

Support doesn’t end there – Microsoft is also addressing scaling and compatibility concerns by publishing a URL rewriter which is compatible with Apache’s popular mod_rewrite and a caching engine.

This move of support from Microsoft is a powerful indicator of how strong and successful the open source movement has been across the web. Microsoft could no longer afford to ignore the prevalence of PHP and rising popularity of open source tools in the enterprise space.

Many open-source advocates may dismiss this support as a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” move on Microsoft’s part, and I think that’s sadly missing the point. Regardless of Microsoft’s intentions in throwing support behind PHP and popular open-source web applications, the key point to take away from this is that Microsoft has dropped several barriers companies have faced in the past when looking to leverage these technologies.

I have a search I monitor in my Twitter client for “drupal“. As the awareness of the tool grows in traditional and new media (especially following the high-profile relaunch of whitehouse.gov), the relative backlash in the feed is startling.

I don’t really blame people, though. Drupal probably isn’t for them, and drupal.org and most Drupal advocates are doing a terrible job of setting expectations. So much so that I feel this trend of pushing Drupal onto everyone for everything is hurting Drupal’s reputation and perception.

Drupal is NOT in any way, shape or form a turnkey solution. You cannot download and install the package from drupal.org and get anything resembling a functional, maintainable website. Drupal is NOT a content management system, it’s a content management platform.

To most people that distinction is meaningless and does not adjust expectations. All one has to do is count how many times a day people ask on Twitter whether they should choose “Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal” to recognize where people’s expectations are when talking about Drupal.

When first installing Drupal 6.x, most people quickly realize:

• It has no WYSIWYG
• It does not generate search engine friendly URLs
• It has no media management
• Does not produce image galleries or embed video
• Has a confusing, cryptic admin interface that doesn’t distinguish itself from the user-facing site

To a user expecting something like Wordpress, Drupal looks like complete and utter garbage, and they’re quick to express this point of view on blogs, twitter, message boards, Facebook, LinkedIn and in comments on posts like this.

Drupal is designed this way intentionally (as counter-intuitive as this may seem). No two websites are the same, and so Drupal tries to make as few assumptions about what kind of site you’re trying to make as possible. Upon installing Drupal, the expectation is that the user then proceeds to head over to http://drupal.org/project/Modules, browse the buffet of functionality and proceed to “build your own content management system”… but no one tells the user that.

With the right amount of patience, research and experience, Drupal has the capability to produce massive, complex, highly customized site management tools for any size organization. This is the main reason many web shops are shifting their business toward providing professional Drupal services. In a nutshell, it lets developers build very customized sites for clients quickly and at lower costs.

There is much debate happening within the Drupal community about whether or not the current approach of shipping the core product with as little as possible is the correct one or not. Some feel shipping with a WYSIWYG and a more concrete set of metaphors is necessary for Drupal’s wide adoption while others feel this takes away from Drupal’s core strengths.

Whichever side of the fence you currently sit on, I think we can all agree that the current state of the messaging to new users sets errant expectations and new users may look upon the tool more favourably if they come into it with the expectation that upon installing Drupal, their job is only starting.

Acquia, Drupal founder Dries Buytaert’s commercial venture, is betting on their Drupal 7 based hosted service,Drupal Gardens, to start changing perceptions by demonstrating what a “productised” implementation of Drupal can do. Whether Gardens will help or hurt the cause remains to be seen as the product is in invite-only beta as of this writing, and Drupal 7 itself has not reached a stable release yet.

Even still, Drupal isn’t for everyone or every site, and that’s OK – I’m a big believer in selecting the right tool for the job. If you’ve found yourself in a position where you’re unsure about whether or not your organization is suited to jumping on the Drupal bandwagon, check out our literature on open source software, and/or give us a shout.