Willy Dobbe - money

Drupal and godaddy.com

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:17:16 +0200

Over at consumerist is some bad press on Drupal

GoDaddy demanded $6,579 from Adam Fendelman after his disk usage skyrocketed to over 250 GB without warning, vastly exceeding his account's 150 GB allowance. GoDaddy's security department launched a "full-scale investigation" and quickly determined that Adam was responsible for both the data binge and the extraordinary bill. Adam refused to let the matter drop...

The massive data splurge was apparently caused by a bug in the widely-used open source website management software Drupal, which, like a cancerous tumor, was unstoppably copying thousands of temporary files into Adam's account.

Short story: someone used lots of local disk space on godaddy's hosting service caused by a bug in Drupal? Apart from the fact that GoDaddy should have set a quota, should have had procedures and transparent billing / monitoring mechanisms, Drupal a "cancerous tumour"?

Anyone knows what was happening here? Is GoDaddy blaming Drupal and why? Core? Module? I sure as hell /never/ saw Drupal eat 250GB harddisk space and I would like to know what was happening and if it has nothing to do with Drupal- as would be the case I think- that this news should be corrected ASAP.

BTW: 100GB of storage is 6.000 Dollar over at GoDaddy? Another reason to stay away from GoDaddy like "the plague"!

Renew your Drupal Association Membership

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:53:27 +0200

If you are a member of the Drupal Association (and thereby helping the community and showing off you care about the community) you might want to check if you should renew your yearly membershipssfee! If it has been more then a year since you have paid, you should remove the cool "member" badges from your site! Or.... you could renew your membership at the association site!

Please do check to see if your membership is up for renewal and wear your badge with pride! Your financial support is important for the community.

Drupal Trademark policy in progress, please provide feedback

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:55:14 +0200

As anyone who visits Drupal.org more then one a year will know, Dries owns the trademark of "Drupal". Dries want this mark to be protected from The Bad People and to be used by The Good People. Since law doesn't really "see" good or bad people but good or bad actions, he had to write a policy on how and when you can use the word Drupal in a service.

For example, you are not allowed to say that you provide "Drupal Certification" programs, but if your company is called ACME, you are allowed to use "ACME Drupal Certification". This makes sense, we are not a MySQL AB or RedHat Inc; we are a passionate Open Source community. So you are encouraged to build your own brand "ACME" and lean on the shoulder of the Open Source giant Drupal, fair enough I think. Mind you: if you spot a "Official Drupal Certification program", you are encouraged to contact the Drupal Association and file a trademark issue. Also note that as an engineer you are probably better of a taring center that does not claim to have "Drupal Certifications".

Some might ask why it took so long to create this policy For those Dries / Kieran created an timeline explaining all steps. My own answer to questions with "when" in it, would have been "done is a four letter word". So if you want to make this policy better by asking question, hinting, dropping suggestions, please point your browser towards http://groups.drupal.org/node/15023 and read the post, the comments, the answers and step if if you think you can add anything to the discussion.

"Dries is selling out!", all follow the New Leader

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:23:25 +0200

Open Source. Simple in principle yet can become very complex. For example Open Source is build by volunteers who do it for many reasons but for most "ego" is one of the important reasons. And since the value that created is so high, "money" is often another reason to use (and contribute) to open source. Ego, Money and Open Source, a match made in a very warm place.

Acquia is one of the companies that is acting within the triangle money, ego and Open Source / community. Not that Dries has a big ego, but he is a person / icon in the Drupal community and hence people look at him and his "ego". And the moment you are in this triangle -despite the fact that you have been working "for free" for 7 years in such a community- people will try to seek ugly things.

Take for example this wordpress blog entry. It is full of nonsense and maybe I should turn my head and look the other way and not comment on it per point since the complete point is nonsense, but then again, if people keep writing nonsense without being put straight, other people might actually hear the echo of "nonsense" as "sense".

Let me start commenting on some of the nonsense:

Acquia then announced Certifications and Partner Program. But now the most recent job postings show they are getting into Professional Services. This clearly shows that Dries and Acquia has started to find any possible avenue to monetize the brand Drupal. And as they add more offerings, the community feels more and more cheated!

Great detective work, and yes, the WP blogger is speaking on behalf of "the community" and (s)he feels cheated on. I would say, If you feel cheated on, talk to your partner.First, if there is a brand "Drupal" then I can not see why monetizing it would be bad. I know lots and lots of companies that make money with Drupal without ever giving anything back, code wise or money wise. They are free to do so, but the moment ego Dries does it, it is a problem. Once again, talk to your partner if you feel cheated on but do not talk for the community from your anonymous WP blog

Why does the community continue to improve and contribute code back when Acquia having bigger marketing budgets and despite being relatively new is being projected as the goto Drupal shop.

Because Acquia is -like al OSS shops- the shoulders of the community. And it is in the interest of Acquia to make this community better, faster and bigger so Acquia will raise as well. Acquia stands on the shoulders of giants, but is not pissing down its neck.

Where would Acquia have been had there been no Dries?

No Dries in Acquia? Then it would be a company (like it is now). No Dries in Drupal, then maybe within another OSS project. Where would Acqia be if the parents of Dries never met? I can not see what rhetorical questions like these ad anything to the discussion. And think about this for one minute: what if Dries decided NOT to work full time proffsional on Drupal but on another proprietary JAVA CMS?

Will Acquia release all the code they are building to the community? Can there be another “Carbon” like product if someone else puts in $10mm investment and compete with Acquia?

Yes and yes. Mind you, Acquia sells services, not code. The "Give away the recipe, open up a restaurant" model. Up to now, Dries made very clear that all code that is distributed (!) is under the GPLicense, copyrighted by Acquia or not, and they will distribute it under the GPL, see also the excellent license FAQ. I would say, raise 10M and compete with Acquia, you are free to do so.

Dries owns the “Drupal” trademark and also is a key stakeholder in Acquia. Will this not create a conflict in community who now see Acquia as a threat on any work they do?

The trademark "Drupal" is owned by Dries and protected by th Drupal Association. The upcoming policy for trademark policy will be the same for Acquia as it will be for SmallDrupalShop.

There are many Drupal Local User Groups where lot of innovation is planned, architected as well as later released back. Will this slow down? Why has there been no stable Drupal 6 upgrades of many good Drupal 5 contributed modules even months after Drupal 6 release? Has the community lost interest?

Once again, totally irrelevant for the Dries-is-in-Acquia-and-now-the-sky-falls-on-our-head discussion. CCK, Views2 and the D6 discussion have nothing todo with this. You know about CCK right?

Joomla was forked from Mambo. Will we see a new leader in Drupal who truely has interest in product and not get swayed away with commercial interests?

If Dries would piss down the neck of the Drupal Community this will happen, Darwin! And you are free to become The Leader With True Interest in the Product, please do so all the lemmings will follow you Great Leader. Since Dries is /clearly/ selling out and not working many many hours per week for "nothing" on Drupal (code, association and community)

Dries now does not seem to have time for Drupal.

Yes, only 21 status updates the last 24 hours despite Drupal Association meetings, attending a full DrupalCon, running his company and talking to dozen of people. Clearly no time for Drupal.

Please, stop trying pissing down on others with your zipper still up, it smells bad and makes you look funny.

Mail this to a friend, stupid functionality!

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:32:38 +0200

Every now and then, I get customers for my employer Dutch Open Projects that have the weirdest functional requirements. Do not get me wrong, the customer is always right but it helps some time if we can discuss and ask why they want certain functionality.

Take for example the "mail this to a friend" function that is still popular in many designs. First of all, it is stupid functionality. If I want to notify a friend about a page, I bookmark it to delicious. If I really want to make sure (s)he sees it, I use instant messaging and as a last resort, mail.

But I'll never use the mailservice of the website, I have to give my and his email address and I do not think that giving aways another persons email address is a good thing to do, and will never give away my address if there is no need to. Then there is spam.

All User Generated Content suffers from:

IP right problems
Trolls
and spam

Anything that can be used by spammers, WILL be used by spammers, including the "mail this to a friend" functionality.

To proof my point, see this mail I got. There is room for some remarks hence that is were the spam goes. And now, the "good" name of GE is associated with the spam and they did in fact send it to me. Stupid functionality (no-one uses it), stupid functionality (everyone can abuse it).

Mail-this-to-a-friend must die!

Gratis iPhone in ruil voor een PHP nerd

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:47:22 +0200

Gratis iPhone? Sure! Als je een PHP nerd kent die wil werken bij de grootste Open Source software implementator (en de leukste!) in Nederland, geef hem dan aan om te gaan solliciteren bij Dutch Open Projects en krijg gratis een iPhone.

Moet de nerd(in) wel aangenomen worden en door zijn proeftijd komen, maar dat is voor een echte PHP freak die graag met Symfony en/of Drupal werkt geen probleem. Grote klanten, mooie vila, leuke collega's en dito werk.

Kom maar op, de iPhone staat klaar voor je, kom maar op!

OpenSource and clouds

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:47:26 +0200

There are two big trends in ICT; Service a a Service (SaaS) and Open Source Software (OSS). And I do think those two go hand in hand and are reflecting changes that are coming towards the ICT landscape. When I say "hand in hand", I do mean that they are complementary (like people are in a relationship) but also that the are in contrast of each other (like in many relationships). It is my opinion that you either outsource
(parts of your) IT activities, or build the solution yourself. You will either use a cloud to deliver your needs, or make your own cloud. It will either be service from the Microsoft's or you will have to build and manage the solution by yourself. You either well use a cheap commodity service with limited customisation to have the complete freedom to fit the software to your business objectives. Let me try to make clear why this is my opinion and how this influences your role as a user or provider of ICT services.

Recent trends have shown that release cycles of software have become shorter and shorter; to keep ahead of our competitors you have to be able to release early and often.

Release early and release often as a way to be able to quickly add new features for the future, fix problems for the current software and to prevent that software becomes obsolete ("end of life"). The perpetual beta as the new adagium. Where flickr was able to deploy during it's booming period a new codebase every 15 minutes, Microsoft was able to make a new operating 7 years. One is using the "service" (cloud) way of offering it's software, the other is using the "fat client" approach. So on one hand proprietary fat client software s facing competition from cloud based services. Sure Google Docs is not as feature rich or reliable as the Office suite of Microsoft but most agree that this is just a question of time and network reliability; in due time Google Apps will be good enough for the masses. Mind you, most if not all cloud services are proprietary and are doing well; salesforce as the most prominent example.

On the other hand, proprietary software faces problems from the Open Source alternatives. OpenOffice.org is a real competitor for MS-Office, the Ubuntu distribution beats Microsoft in many areas and MySQL is giving the absurd licence fees of Oracle a hard time. If proprietary closed source software wants to stay in business, they have to move. Not to a "long tail" niche but in the other direction, to the left side of the tail where you can offer a highly standardised yet customisable version of their product. That way they are able to release early and often and go for a low margin per product sold but sell a lot. So I do think that closed source software has to move towards a service model, away from the client into the data centre.

This means that the other trend (Open Source Software) -that has written "release early and often" written all over it- will dominate the Do It Yourself area. OSS will be used by people and companies that have time and resources to fulfill their needs via highly customisable software. You will see this first with applications that are by nature webbased; the can move to the cloud with less legacy baggage. Software with much interaction with local legacy products will follow later, much later in some case So Office Automation for existing companies will take some serious time to migrate to the cloud since hybrid solutions (some data local, some in the cloud) will be rather expensive and complex to many from security, identity and manageability point of view.

One of the webbased applications that will dominte the "DIY" will be Drupal. It i already the best Content Mangement System ("looking outside") on the market and it is moving more in the direction of the core of business processes ("looking inside"). Drupal will more and more be used as both a frontend system and a backend system; a system where you can aggregate and enrich data for internal use that can be pushed towards for example an external Drupal site.

If you follow this logic (proprietary moving towards commodity cloud service, Open Source solutions towards customisable client service) you might conclude with me that Open Surce CMS-es have nothing to fear from closed source CMS-es like sharepoint. Sharepoint will be the shell around your office data if you want to use that from a cloud perspective, Drupal will be used by enthusiast and enterprises that need more power and have more resources to kickstart and operate that power.

So some people will use an iPhone and the cloud service "Mobile me", others will build Android. Some will use digital TV solutons from their cable providers, others will build MythTV. Some will run an OpenID service themselves, others will use it from a Google/Yahoo! And some will use voicemail (the most used cloud service in the world) and others prefer a local answering machine. I, I use all kind of differtent services, cloud and local, like most people will do.

PS: This posting as very late for last years' Drupal prediction posting or very early for next year, whatever makes more sense to you

PPS: Sure, you can have Open Source "SaaS" solutions as well, for example hosted and managed Drupal instalations but it will be a niche crossover, if that makes sense to you. Also, when I say "build", it can also mean "let other build", aka buy.

PPPS: I do think that SaaS is a complete wrong term; it is a technological acronym. First, people do not want "Software" as a service, but they want a service (as a service). As long as the ICT things about acronyms like SaaS, true adoption of using a "Service as A Service" will only stall. It is time to stop the technology lingo where it should stop; at the door of the customer and think of services instead of software. Second, Software as a Service is a very limited view on what truly can be accomplished with services; it might be disk capacity from the cloud (like S3, Storage as a Service), it might be CPU capacity (like EC2, CPU as a Service), it might be housing (Rackspace as a Service), hosting (Linux box as a Service) or to give an everyday example we are used to, voicemail (Answeringmachines as a Service). Therefor I plea to stop using the term SaaS and use XaaS ("Anything as a Service") or use SaaS for the acronym "Service as a Service", whatever makes more sense to you.

Forrester brings Drupal in the boardroom

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:27:23 +0200

Selling Drupal. Not a contradiction but not as easy as selling a license of a proprietary CMS. Selling something that is "free" (gratis) seems like an odd idea to many. So how do we get our beloved Drupal CMS spread in a broader range that home blogs, new media sites and the like?

Well, some prospects have functional requirements for their CMS like "It has to start with a D and end with Drupal". Usually there is a passionate user somewhere in the ICT department that convinced some people to go for Drupal. And while this technocratic approach does have its drawbacks, it is a good way to gain more ground and bring Drupal on a higher level.

But most of the time the prospect "just wants a CMS". And since there are zillions of Open Source CMS-es it is hard to choose. Most OSS CMS-es do not have a local "sales" so the company will end up with a proprietary CMS that is years lagging, only have a dozen developers and a couple of hundreds users but with a sales person that is a member of the same club as the CEO.

However, now most bigger companies are moving towards their third CMS implementation, people know what they want from a CMS and people are actually looking for an Open Source CMS and hence an Open Source implementer like my employer is in the Netherlands. And those bigger enterprises all read Gartner, Forrester, MetaGroup and other IT research and advisory companies. I have a very strong opinion about those companies (just echoing yesterdays news for companies that will be in today by tomorrow) but that is a different story. In the boardroom magic quadrants, hype cycles and two by two tables are the goal for any powerpoint wisdom, so if you want to be in the boardroom you have to play chess on the management chessboard; a 2 x 2 matrix.

CNet (writing many rtiles about Drupal in a positive way!) has a piece called Forrester calls out Alfresco and Drupal as the top-two open-source WCM systems. This is really /great/ news, instant boardroom Fähigkeit for Drupal. Forrester says so so we need Drupal!

You can read the excerpt of the report over at Forrester:

This document answers frequently asked questions about the role that open source plays in the WCM market.

You have to pay for the real article but even without reading 20 pages about community, functionality etc, I think it is fine to say that Drupal will be a word you can say in the boardroom from now on. "Could you please fill my cup with some coffee Drupal's" for example.

Thanks to Kieran and others who gave input for the report

Now you talk with you wallet in your mouth!

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:06:43 +0200

After some feedback I got from different people regarding the wallet in your mouth picture (and posting), I decided that it is your turn.

Here is what you have to do:

Make a picture of yourself with your wallet semi open in your mouth
post it on your blog, twitter, facebook, flickr etc
tag it with "talk-with-your-wallet"
add text to it with a request to potential sponsers for the Drupalcon and add links with to szeged2008.drupalcon.org/ and the how to sponsor page.
make sure enough eyeballs see it and more important...
make sure the right eyeballs see it; try to get attention from potential sponsors, explain why sponsoring the DrupalCon is the best thing they can do

Now I don not think that money will float in if you help spreading the word but 1) its funny to see people swallowing their wallet 2) It doesnt hurt 3) you can be part of this uber-cool-mini-micro-nano-viral-photo-shootout.

DrupalCon sponsors, talk with your wallet

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:05:39 +0200

I used to think that to align with an Open Source project like Drupal you had to talk with your mouth (spreading the word) or with your keyboard (contributing code / documentation). And I still think that that is the best way to contribute to an Open Source project.

However, I have grown up but more import Open Source has grown up and specific the Drupal Community has grown. Grown with more people using it and more companies rely on Drupal; making money using Drupal.

For those who either can not or will not contribute with their mouth or their keyboard, it is still a very good option to talk with your wallet, sponsor the Drupal Association or an event like the upcomming Drupalcon.

So if you ever made money with Drupal and want to say thank you, if you want to get the word out that you are a Drupalshop (hirig talent or getting prospects in your funnel), want to make sure that Drupal will keep contining improving itself, please consider dontaing with your wallet and sponsor DrupalCon! Contact the organisers to make sure you get the best spot and help us all.. as well as yourself.

Vote for Drupal!

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:37:45 +0100

In 2006 Drupal was the runner up for the precious Webware CMS Award. And last year our beloved CMS even was the overall winner. By winning the competition, the Drupal Association got 5000 Dollars that was used for amongst others funding Drupal Conferences and to buy hardware for hosting the Drupal infrastructure. But even better then the money, Drupal got more airtime and more and more people recognized the power of Drupal.

This year, Drupal was once again nominated in the category "Publishing" and you are encouraged to vote on Drupal to make sure we win again this year. Please help by spreading the word and vote, you deserve it!

Drupalcon, from Amsterdam (via Brussels and Barcelona) to Boston

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:41:21 +0100

DrupalCon Boston is comming up! And from what I have read, it is by far the biggest DrupalCon so far and the best organized!

Looking back at 2005 (only 2.5 years ago!) I brought by own WiFi 802.11b access point, borrowed a beamer from my work and layed down some powercables. A -semi- anonymous client of Bryght paid for the venue, coffee, lunch and opening drinks. Things surely changed since then, 20 people have been busy for months to raise the money needed to hire the venue, have a logo contest (vote!) and do everything that is needed to make sure 600+ people can have the time of their life. And they have done a great job so far and I am sure it will the "even more best-er DrupalCon ever".

You can find some old snaps of Amsterdam 2005 on Flickr. I got only one question: what did Gaele saw on the desktop of Dries? Either way, we have come a long way.

If you want to become a sponsor of the DrupalCon Boston, look at the direct benefits you gain from becoming so. The indirect benefits are far bigger though, both for the community as for your own business. The community profits by making sure a lot of people can get together to talk about Drupal, plan roadmaps, exchange ideas, shake hands and even code! And when you use the code of "the community", you will gain as well. Your company also gets a better alignment with the community that really pays; prospects will find you! Looking back at 2005 Amsterdam, we have come a long way baby!

I recall a very good talk from Rasmus with an AJAX-ified XSS exploit searcher and a good talk as well from David. The slogan "Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, Be Lazy and 'the greatest inefficiency comes from solving problems you will never have'" is the best description of agility I have come across and has become my mantra. Looking forward to Boston I think we have grown in numbers but most of all in quality. Boston looks great!

So please make sure that you go to Boston and sponsor it if you can!

Slap your customer!

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:52:02 +0100

On freelanceswitch.com you can find a good read on hw to charge your client for the services you deliver (got it via a friend who is a free entrepeneur and a PhD as of yesterday). While all that is said in the posting is true, the best remark came from Michael Martine:

Slap the client in the face as hard as you can, then tell him your rate. If he’s shocked that you slapped him, you’re not charging enough.

(from Anil Dash. Sounds like fun, happy slapping!

And now KPN will be bought (in due time) by AT&T

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:56:38 +0100

I have worked for Pink Elephant, that was bought by Roccade making PinkRoccade and worked for AT&T. I have worked for Unisource that was insourced in KPN. I have worked for PinkRoccade (again) that was bought by Getronics (the worst thing that could happen, but that is another story). And Getronics-PinkRoccade was recently bought by KPN, as I predicted. And now KPN will be bought by ...

...AT&T!

Speculation of a takeover bid for Royal KPN NV from AT&T Inc have been quickly dismissed, and although the Dutch telecoms operator will remain at the heart of takeover talk for the time being, an offer for the company is not expected in the short-term, analysts said.

...or maybe not.

But is weird to see, so many employers and it all comes together. See my linkedin profile for details and My Life in Business Cards. I think I will go to a company that will not be bought by AT&T but will buy the big T!

Google Adsense stops with referral program

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:28:07 +0100

Weird. I always thought there was a shift in advertising from pageviews (3 years ago), towards Clicks per Thousends (CPM, now) towards Signups (Referrals, actually buying a product, 1 year from now) and Google and Amazon both had these kind of affiliate program's. Now Google is partly stopping with this ,a href="https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/Referrals.html">referral

program. From a mail I got from Google:

This is the case for referral units directing visitors to sign up for AdSense. After experimenting with this program over the past year, we've concluded that there are other products that are of higher value than this program to publishers in your region. As a result, referral units for the AdSense program will be retired in the coming weeks. Referrals to other products and services remain unaffected.

So they are only stopping the "adsense for adsense signup program" but still weird to see. The costs of running this service are next to nill (they already have accounting and billing in place) so why stop?