I agree it really shouldn’t be framed as an either/or, though obviously on a specific project you’re more likely to choose one than use both. Also, in many companies, there really is a need to standardize their team so they can concentrate training and skill building on a single platform.

The reality is the best developers (and experience designers, and content strategists, and even clients) come out of experience in multiple platforms, and the community benefits more from having healthy Drupal communities and healthy WordPress communities than it would from some theoretical monoculture.

While I get how the distinction between “simple/complex” requirements is different than an organization’s size, to be fair, your post did start with “This is a very interesting move that I think cements the SMB/enterprise positioning between WordPress and Drupal.”

Ultimately I’d agree Drupal build projects are more complex – and the “overhead” (for lack of a better term) of development complexity on a Drupal project makes more sense in a complicated build than in a simple one.

I’ve also found, however, that WordPress is capable of serving way more complex requirements than many folks realize. People who have “used” WordPress at some point in its history (often several years ago, often based on a simple out of the box experience) tend to dismiss it based on that simple experience, without exploring the full API, custom content types and taxonomies, and the like.

It’s the double-edged sword of the success of the consumer-facing WordPress.com: we benefit from the name recognition but suffer from the “simpler” version being taken for the whole.

Just because the WordPress project focuses on simplicity and clarity of user experience (along with backward compatibility) does not mean the underlying platform is limited in terms of what it can be used to accomplish.

I’m always reminded of Ed Begley Jr in the film Who Killed the Electric Car saying: “What the detractors and critics of electric vehicles have been saying for years, is true. The electric vehicle is not for everybody; . . . it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population.”

My only gripe with Drupal is, where on earth is Drupal 8? We’ve been waiting for years. The delay is so great now that I’m advising my Drupal clients to re-platform onto WordPress instead of doing an equivalent upgrade from Drupal 6 and 7. While I still look at Drupal as a viable solution I’m quite disappointed in the long, drawn-out release of Drupal 8.

Thanks for picking up on the conversation. I agree neither community is monolithic. We can all point to success stories with simple and complex sites. Having said that, I do believe Drupal is better suited for complex websites and that WordPress is better suited for simpler websites.

In my blog post and comments, I purposely try to avoid words like “enterprise”. Instead, I try to talk about “complex websites requirements”. As I explained in the comments of my blog post, there are a plenty of enterprises using WordPress for high-traffic websites, but these sites tend to be fairly straightforward in functionality. WordPress.com’s VIP customers are a great example of that; high traffic, well-known brands/enterprises, but relatively simple site requirements. When we talk about Drupal’s or WordPress’ target audience, I believe the primary dimension is (a) the website requirements, followed by (b) the skill level required to develop the website. Note the absence of ‘size of organization’ (small businesses or enterprises) as a dimension. Large multi-billion dollar businesses have websites with simple requirements and often use WordPress for them. On the flip-side, a relatively small business may have complex website requirements that favors Drupal over WordPress.

I guess the point I felt was most important is the one aimed at companies or individuals thinking about developing a site in WordPress or Drupal or another GPL licensed CMS or framework. They should know this (by anyone’s interpretation I’ve ever seen) will not obligate them to distribute the code they develop as part of that site to anyone, nor contribute their custom work for that site back to the project.

I’ve been in plenty of those conversations with clients who ask us to build a WordPress site or network of sites, but then send us an MSA that prohibits the use of any open source software – so I know that pain too.

What I see more often is developers jumping into open source projects – making WordPress plugins or Drupal modules – without understanding the existing license governing the platform and community they are joining. If they then go into trying to monetize those plugins/themes without a solid understanding of the license, they are in for an education. (Note: I’m not saying you can’t sell GPL plugins, just that you’d better understand the licensing and the legal implications thereof).

If you’re building something that is derivative of an existing framework (recognizing there are legal nuances and debates about what is or isn’t a derivative work) you had better be aware of the expectations that comes with – too often people don’t read the license at all (just like the terms of service we all blindly agree to).

If you’re building something more-or-less standalone, which you intend to distribute, you should absolutely be considering the tradeoff between restrictive and permissive licenses. If you use a permissive license like MIT, that means someone can bundle your library into their product, improve it, and never share those improvements with any outside developers. If you use the GPL, there will be some other projects and clients who can’t incorporate your work as a result. Ultimately it depends on whether what you want is “broadest possible distribution and use” or “as many of the improvements any developer makes shared back to the community as possible.” Of course, many downstream developers do share back to projects even when not obligated to, because they too have an interest in improving the core project.

Anyway, sorry if the post came off as a rant – and thanks again for 1) taking the time to be on The Dirt in the first place and 2) for replying here.

Thank you for your thoughtful response to The Dirt podcast episode on open source licensing. You’ve added to the education and information available to listeners, and that’s a good thing.

As a starting point, the episode was meant to provide a very basic audio primer to help independent software developers choose between popular open source license options, and to entertain a little while doing so. I think we did a pretty good job of that, even if we failed to mention Github’s choosealicense.com site (which is also a great resource).

Of course, one can always do better. “Distribution” (or “conveyance” and “propagation” under the GPLv3) is indeed an important concept vis-à-vis the GPL, and we probably should have addressed it, at least briefly.

I think we were assuming that our listeners were generally going to be distributing their software. I also think any sort of detailed discussion of distribution would’ve put the audience to sleep… or at least put my hosts to sleep.

While the open source community may have a consensus about what should happen in various potential distribution scenarios, the GPL versions are different, the FAQs are inconsistent, and there is a relative dearth of legal precedent in the area. All of that leads to practical lawyers advising digital agencies and independent developers to consider other licensing schemes.

If a client were to ask me whether the GPL is a good open source license for a project it is going to be built internally, with no intent to distribute, my answer would likely be to challenge that last assumption. Might there ever be a derivative downloadable application and/or might the client ever want to sell the asset?

As a relevant aside, believe it or not, I often have to fight for my clients’ right to use any open source software. So, conceding on not incorporating anything governed by a copyleft license is often an acceptable middle ground (as long as it isn’t a Drupal or WordPress project, of course) for my agency and independent developer clients.

Of course, I love the idea behind FOSS. I wish there weren’t software patents, or at least that there were far fewer of them. I also wish that my clients’ and my work weren’t repeatedly intruded upon by the outdated and unreasonable requirements of the venture capital and BigCo/BigLaw realms.

So, please keep up the good work.

Gabe

While the JavaScript, CSS, and HTML get downloaded to your machine for rendering (and in the case of JavaScript execution), the license is quite clear that this is not distribution: “Mere interaction with a user through a computer network . . . is not conveying”

On the FAQ about the GPL the FSF says:

Is “convey” in GPLv3 the same thing as what GPLv2 means by “distribute”?

Yes, more or less. During the course of enforcing GPLv2, we learned that some jurisdictions used the word “distribute” in their own copyright laws, but gave it different meanings. We invented a new term to make our intent clear and avoid any problems that could be caused by these differences.

Your points for #1 seem to me to be a little too summarized. Systems that generate websites do distribute things – the websites. So any JavaScript, CSS or HTML that is includes content from the website framework may be affected by the copyleft licensing. Which may come directly from the framework, or from copying a plugin/theme from the framework.

Agree completely on #2, #3 and #4 :)

Your data is yours. You can remove it anytime you want. When you request us to delete your account for the Service, your data will be permanently expunged from our primary production servers and further access to your account will not be possible. We will also promptly disconnect any connection we had established to your Account Information and delete all account credentials.

Though missing the “you can export” that Wesabe offered.

http://2014.montreal.wordcamp.org/

Thanks Sara. The Big Media & Enterprise WordPress meetups have been wonderful – there is one tomorrow night in Boston, but (as you know) there are many WordPress.com VIP events in other cities. I regularly send people to those videos to see what advanced publishers are doing on the platform.

Many WordCamps (including WordCamp Boston, coming up August 23rd-24th 2014 feature talks on “enterprise” use cases as well. I guess what I was reflecting on is just the dominance of that message in the Drupal space – it seems more and more to be the center of their market, or at least their most visible target, where in the WordPress space broadly the message to enterprises can get lost in the broader mission WordPress rightly has.

German – my point wasn’t to suggest that learning should only flow in one direction, but that both projects can learn from each other (and from other projects both open source and proprietary).

The day we start thinking no one outside the community has valuable insight into how to solve similar problems is the day we start decaying as a project (this is true for either community!).

I think we definitely can do a better job telling the story of the enterprise WordPress user.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this if you have any suggestions. At VIP we’re constantly trying to find new ways to bring attention to WP & enterprise – there has to be a lot we haven’t thought about. (Feel free to email me directly if you’d like, too!)

The there are several differences I will point out just a few:

User experience
Drupal needs to get better on the UX, very poor on that department. In the admin interface and in the user interface.

WordPress is super cool no issues. Very well organized the functionality. To publish is is very nice.

Code
Drupal complexity of the code, not really easy to understand even if the developer is a good one in PHP. Getting worse in Drupal 8. I think that so far that would be the best code ever. And the addition to entities in Drupal 7 was really a very good example of extending a system to do anything, really flexible.

Almost any developer with little experience would be able to undestand and read through WordPress code. That is key for the developers of all levels to engage into the development of WordPress.

Theming
Although theming is could be very complex in Drupal, it is very powerful and addresses the most complex implementations. Theming in WordPress is a walk in the park, I mean very nice.

Modules/Plugins
The modules from Drupal are without any doubt the power under the hood, the community is great and collaborative, share what they know. Very nice. Although many configurations are needed to create a complex web app still the power comes from modules.

The plugin system from WordPress works like a charm. Nice and easy all the way. Really enjoy doing sites with WordPress.

So really the question should not be what WordPress communities could be learn from Drupal but the way around.

Drupal community really needs to learn a little bit more how to do the things like in WordPress.

They have more sites that drupal all over the world, but the main reason for that is simplicity and power.

http://www.metaltoad.com/blog/why-more-people-select-wordpress-build-websites-drupal

Building and Deployment
I adore open source software and I have learn my ways in the Drupal world. I love it because is challenguing every single implementation I learn so much.

The same as well with WordPress but without the pain. Seems that Iike the pain and I like Drupal.

Final Thouths
Drupal is not perfect, It needs a lot of love still. Even Drupal 8 as Dries is selling it like the best thing under the sun, will need a couple of years to get full speed on things.

We will be working together to make this project even better.

There are many exiting things to come in the future, that is for sure.

That’s why (I think) Drupal is – at the moment – better positioned for the enterprise than WordPress. It also doesn’t have to focus so much on the end user experience because it hands power of the end user experience entirely over to the developer by making far less of a distinction between front- and back-end.

By contrast, WordPress has come very much from the “famous 5-minute install” end of the spectrum, enabling beautiful sites with easy in very little time for end users. It’s now growing up and trying to meet the needs of the enterprise without loosing that ease of use.

Having worked with Drupal (since v6) and being a WordPress fanatic, there are tons of things I’d love WordPress to learn from Drupal (and vice versa) but it’s hard to do that without adversely affecting the end user experience.

One note on the JSON REST API – I love that it’s heading for core, but this is the kind of thing Drupal has been able to do since v6. Regurgitating the same content, the same fields, in multiple formats is really straightforward (NO coding required, even) and I think this is kinda what Dries was getting to when he talked about the improvements in 8. Drupal 8 sounds much more like a system for presentation and *consumption* of web content through different means – web, mobile apps, kiosks, desktop software, internal contact centre systems etc. I’m reminded of SharePoint (I saw the most recent version in action recently and asked lots of questions) and it’s integration capabilities, out of the box, which is enterprise-level stuff and I think WordPress probably needs some of this handled in core.

Leaving those aside, there’s enough in here to leave you feeling slightly on edge as a WordPress specialist… until the point (45:50) when he admits it won’t actually be released until early or middle of 2015. To put it another way, that’s several full WordPress release cycles.

I won’t be losing any sleep tonight after all.

Hi Kevin – thanks for commenting. I get that I’m likely oversimplifying (making an hour long presentation into a short blog post) but he does say at 21:12

The open web as we know it is closing up . . . the big players are taking over more and more of the front-end of the web, and Drupal sites risk being sort of the the deep web, if you will, for lack of a better word. And the sad part, in a way, is we won’t be able to stop it. I thought really really hard about this – I couldn’t think of a way to stop this. . . it’s actually easier for the users, . . . it’s actually better for the businesses as well. . . . It’s better for users, it’s better for businesses. So how would we be able to stop this?

Agreed, maybe I’m allowing his use of the term “open web” to be more generic than he really means – he’s not suggesting that the web experiences created by individuals or small organizations will disappear, but he does to me seem to imply that – to a significant degree – they will need to be discoverable/findable through those experience aggregators to have a meaningful impact. So called “mom & pop” stores haven’t disappeared in the big box era, but they certainly have gone through some tough times.

Maybe what I’m really reacting to (which perhaps says more about me than about what Dries intends to communicate) is his recognition of the primacy of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple et al in terms of most people’s experience of the web, and his use of large brands like Lady Gaga and Whole Foods as the examples. Yes, we can make content semantic and discoverable, and push “branded experiences” through the portholes Google and Facebook make available to us, but it felt like there was a missing additional alternative history. (Not sure precisely what that would be, honestly, but it would be less focused on big brands, and more focused on people who have succeeded by ignoring the large aggregators or questioning their value).

He does conclude with the notion that D8 we enable us to “Embrace the big players” AND “focus on experiences” – which is to say we can build independent experiences of our own, not just push content through other people’s experiences.

So let’s built some great experiences outside the big boxes, on Drupal and WordPress!

Thanks for commenting Angie. I guess what I was reacting to was seeing a bit of the kind of insularity I’ve seen in many different communities (Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, Sitecore, Adobe CQ, Alfresco, etc) where people start to say (and believe!) “ours is the only platform that can do X.”

I realize that’s not your approach (or even Dries’ typically) but look at what he says in that section of the talk (around 37:30):

“There’s really no other system in the world that does this, or that does this so effortlessly. . . . There’s really nothing else. And people complain about how WordPress is easier to use, again maybe its easier to use, but it doesn’t even come close to doing these kinds of things, it doesn’t come close, its like miles and miles away from this.”

While you’re right that a lot hinges on what exactly “this” is, or what “these kinds of things” means – I guess it just came across to me as a bit of Drupal-centric hubris (understandable perhaps in the context of a State of Drupal address at Drupalcon) to suggest that these features are available nowhere else.

To be fair, I see the same kind of platform-centricity sometimes in the WordPress world – as well as in other CMS communities I’ve been part of. I wasn’t trying to be critical of Dries or the Drupal community so much as point out we all can learn from each other – my ears perk up every time I hear anyone say “our platform is the only one that lets you ___.”

While I spend more of my time now (since joining 10up) in the WordPress world, I’ve also long been part of the Drupal community – so take this less as a view from “the other side of the pond” and more as the view from someone who visits lots of ponds. ;)

He carries this metaphor further by showing how—again just like the big boxes—experience aggregators like Google and Facebook will never be able to deliver unique, rich experiences simply because of the volume of information.

Both in retail and the web, users will always seek things that are authentic, natural, local, or simply exceptional. The explosion of the maker movement shows this clearly. I don’t personally believe we will ever lose exceptional web experiences delivered by individuals or small organizations and I don’t think that was what Dries implied.