During my vacation I reread the excellen book "Hackers and Painters. Big ideas from the computer age".

The book is so great since it makes explicit hat we take for granted, names that we have forgot. For example from the preface:

"The fact is, hackers [1] are obsessed with free speech. Slashdot, the New York times of hacking, has a whole section about it. I think most Slashdot readers take this for granted. But "Plane & Pilot" doesn't have a section about free speech."

[1] Note that the author uses "hackers" as "hackers" would; those knowledgeable in an technology and curious about investigating how this technology works.

With the great momentum of the latestandgreatest release Drupal 7 we should not forget that Open Source -and hence Drupal- is about three thing:

1. Code
2. Community
3. Freedom (license)

The cheesy slogan "Come for the code, stay for the community" doesn't -IMHO- do justice to the third important aspect of Open Source; freedom! Many proprietary software projects have excellent code and many proprietary software projects have great community that helps new members in fora and documents best practises. But they do not have freedom.

I studied in a small town up north in the Netherlands and one of the stores there I use often as a metaphor about why choosing Drupal -or generic open source- is better than a closed source solution.

One could enter the second floor of the store with an escalator. Then shop all you like and when you wanted to go down with all your bags... you had to use the stairs.

It is an excellent example of what proprietary software is; it is easy to step and but hard to get out. And most selection processes for choosing a new CMS do not take in account that at one day they will be wanting to step out. And it that case they have to climb down the stairs with all their new bags in their hands, migrate all their content towards their new CMS.

It does not matter where you are going to; your car or a new shop. What matters is where you came from; the second floor. The second floor is what defines the exit costs, not the ground floor, the location new shop or your car.

There are many CMS hosted solutions as well that are great products, have a cool community and are easy to get it; "no creditcard needed". Yes you heared it right, your first shot is free.

In Drupal / Open Source, freedom is broader defined. You are free to use or change the code under the GPL, free to help others by documenting under an CC license and free to use the main site d.o within the Terms and Conditions.

The Drupal community ("We, the Drupalistas") have an excellent reputation when it comes down to enforcing the GPLicense. And we should keep this focus to make sure we will never suffer from the Joomladisation. We even make sure that the CC license is enforced when people use our handbook on other sites.

But we have been a bit sloppy when it comes down to the Terms and Conditions of drupal.org itself. Typical, this is something the legal department of most sites about proprietary software start with.

So you can help with the Terms & Conditions by helping out in this issue and define freedom. That is, unless you are reading "Plane & Pilot" ... and this blog. And let the first words be: "We, the Drupalistas..." :-)

For some time, Drupal has a marketshare above 1% of all the sites onlne. Now there are numerous ways of counting and presenting data and if you know a bit about measuring and statistics, you know there are a zillion ways to lie.

The fact that Drupal has a big marketshare is something all can agree on. According to the way Dries has measured this is by visiting and fingerprinting the top 1 miljon websites (in hits) and see what percentage is being served with Drupal, as presented during DrupalCon SF.

According to builtwith.com Drupal now has 1.7% marketshare of all the sites entered at buildwith:

1. Drupal 1.69%
2. vBulletin 0.69%
3. Joomla! 0.32%

And Drupal is growing fast, see this (flash) graph. Is it relevant how many sites are using Drupal? Well, in open source it is all about eyeballs. Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow. Yet, eyeballs without installs means nothing. So yes, marketshare is important. More installs means more eyeballs and better code. Or if you are not a developer, more installs means bigger market and more money :-)

I always think it is funny to see a "a A /|" (bigger text selections) on a website. The decision to use this is always made by people who are not visually handicapped and think adding this to a website has anything to do with accessibility.

Blind people are blind on every website and use a braille browser, people with bad eyes are handicapped on every website and have a [control][plus] key combination in their browser. Mirroring browser functionality in the site is in fact a bad thing. Adding the "bigger text" buttons in a website does nothing for accessibility.

I always think it is funny to see a discussion about adding ZIP files on a website instead of a tarball. The decision to add this fileformat is always made by people who do not have a windows machine and and think adding this to a website has anything to do with gaining market-share.

Developers using windows are developers on all projects they work on and have a third party tool to unpack a tarball, people with interest in Drupal but no able to unpack a tarball can be pointed to a simple helptext. Solving problems with technology when it can be dealt with procedures is always a bad thing. Adding a zip distribution does nothing for marketshare but a lot for maintance costs.

Not that I consider windows users to be handicapped... Not at all... :-)

Engeland. Mooie land, Geweldige landschap. Eeuwenoude gewoonte. Sterke cultuur. Maar van koffie hebben ze geen verstand.

Toen ik een espresso bestelde, keken ze al moeilijk. Ik kreeg de twee slokken koffie in een soepkom. En om de grap compleet te maken, vroegen ze of ik er melk bij wou...

Nope, geweldig land maar geen van koffie geen kaas gegeten.

Donderdag 22 juli 2011, Lymes Regis, United Kingdom

Aart (3) loopt uit het zomerhuisje naar de veranda waar Brecht (6) op het trappetje zit.


Aart: "Wat doe je Brecht?"
Brecht : "De wereld veroveren!"


Goed te weten dat ze later open source software developer wordt :-)