Slashdot Mirror
Drupal Needs a New Home
reardonsteel writes "All of the Drupal websites were offline for about two days because of a server meltdown at the organization's hosting provider. The main Drupal website is back up with a single temporary page and they've announced a fund-raising drive to raise US$3000 for a new server to be hosted at the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University's server farm. Drupal is the leading open-source (written in PHP) content management system and is used to power tens of thousands of websites, blogs, community sites, etc." At this point, all they need is an actual server, too: the OSL has agreed to provide rack space, bandwidth, power, backup facilities and support.
So now we'll go ahead and destroy the temporary server too. Good work.
Steal This Sig
and the description doesn't give me any indication whatsoever... what the hell is this about? what is drupal, what happened to their server, and why should i care?
In only 12 hours, they have already raised nearly 2000 dollars for the new server, PRIOR to the posting on slashdot. People who care change the world for the BETTER, while those who don't impact it terribly.
Why do i care about this project?
It needs your money.
What was its place
drupal.org
and its goals?
Collect $3000.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They have a server meltdown, so Slashdot gives them another?
:)
tim, I think you should watch your (real life) Karma...That's not very nice
Certainly could. But I've never heard about the Mamboserver project ( http://www.mamboserver.com/ ) before. But they dont claim to be leading in the CMS business, just among the most powerful *shrug*
What I don't get is why they aren't renting their own dedicated box, so they don't have to own the hardware. You can get a dual Xeon configuration for about $200-300/month and with about 2TB of bandwidth. Of course now they won't have a monthly bill, but every time they need to upgrade the machine or repair it, there are going to be costs.
see a Text Widget
Parent? Meet Google. I know it's hard to believe, but this is a site that catalogs the entire internet and allows you to search through them for the information you seek. For example, if you were to type "Drupal" in the text box and hit enter, the website would return thousands of pages that use that term, and would further enlighten you to
Or you could just use Wikipedia, which, of course, has a wonderful page up about Drupal. Oh, but I forgot. You're too busy to do any of that. We should just explain everything to you. Who do you think you are, man? Seriously? Not a web developer, obviously.
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
Last month, drupal.org alone served more than 3 million pages for 100 Gb of traffic (this does not include any of the other sites or services; non Drupal websites, Drupal mailing list traffic, etc).
Once they have a new box, why don't they distribute their software and docs up on P2P? surely that'll lighten the network load and cost them less.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Seriously, I have never heard of Drupal until I saw this article. It may be useful software, very useful, but who knows? FA like this should really start off like this:
Then maybe
To answer the question, what is Drupal...
Drupal is the open-source CMS behind:
and many more sites. Even if you don't know Drupal, you've probably visited a Drupal site before. Drupal is known for its modular architecture, clean code and developer friendlyness.
Today I was reading an entry in Eugenia Loli-Queru's Slashdot journal. It was discussing the recent defacing of TuxTops.com.
Now, looking at the source code to the main page of TuxTops.com I noticed that it includes a CSS file "misc/drupal.css". That would lead me to believe that they are using Drupal as their content management system. Please verify this for yourself if you do not believe me.
My question is: why was their site defaced so easily? Was it because Drupal itself is an inherently insecure system? Or was it just improperly installed?
Can anybody shed some light on this? I would like to use it, but seeing stuff like that makes me nervous.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Server meltdown? Oh let's /. them now that they are back online.
I offered them a free Dual Xeon 2.8GHz server, 1GB RAM, 1x80GB hard drive with 500GB transfer a month, hosted at Simpli (my hosting company). We host several Drupal sites and I'd be happy to have them on board. I asked for a text link back to Simpli. I haven't heard back from them, so I guess they'd rather beg their users for money than take a free dedicated server. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed, but it's their money and their choice.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
When you have to claim you're the leading something-or-the-other in the same breath it takes to describe who you are, then you're clearly not there yet. Unable to handle the traffic, that a leader in something-or-the-other would be expected to have, doesn't help either.
I just finished a project using drupal. I found it pretty solid CMS. The code is clean and relatively easy to manage.
Thalasar
From the single page, it says:
Fundraise status
Start date:
13 hours 5 min ago
Received:
$6468 USD
Target:
$3000 USD
Last updated:
2 min 56 sec ago
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
liqbase
Thanks for wasting my time. You do much for their cause.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Largely because it was a shared host. What's the big deal? They just out grew their environment.
Thalasar
As a minor contributor to the Drupal project, I can tell you it rocks. It's a very well written piece of code. Much more than a CMS, it's a platform on which communities can be launched and mini applications can be written. I believe that Drupal could help revolutionize web site development for inidividuals, small non-profits, and small businesses. It's an extremely flexible and powerful platform. What's more, the main developers of Drupal are pure to the free software philosophy.
When the site comes back up, you should check it out.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
...such as they could be using AWStats which recently provided a possible attack vector. They could have any other unsecure scripts running (phpbb et al). If they are on a shared host that hasn't locked down the environment (according to reverse DNS there's 4 sites on their machine).
Or it may have been drupal, who knows.
From what I've seen Drupal is one of the better written PHP blog/cms/portals out there (John Lim, author of PHP ADODB also seems to think so, pointing out several things like how damn small it is compared to other packages that provide the same functionality).
As always, YMMV.
I am NaN
That's the *reason why* they went down. It doesn't matter whether it's a good reason. Customers (rightly) only care about whether they can rely on them or not. Reliable businesses outgrow their envirnments under a plan. Even when spikes hit, they don't go down - they go to "Plan B". Especially as Drupal is in the exact business that manages this properly - high productivity content management - they really are obligated to uptime. Or they're good software, but not a good business. Which isn't adequate for businesses to rely on. Only sentimental ones which are willing to go down with them.
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Excuse me, they are asking for money. If I'm to donate MY money the damned project better benefit ME.
Its pretty simple.
Why should i have to search for 'more info' when they are asking for donations? A responsible 'news service' would happen to explain what the hell the subject was about. Other than just a blurb 'we are drupal and we want your money'.
Get off your high horse, idiot. Who the hell do you think YOU are? Not someone with some sense, obviously.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just moved my website, GoRobotics.net (website about robotics) to Mambo.
How does Drupal compare to Mambo?
RobotBox - Robot projects from around the world
The point is that html supports this handy thing called links. You have made good use of them, but the article submitter could have done so. If the average slashdotter is going to have to use google to find out what it is (and judging by the number of "what is it" posts, in this story they do) then the submitter should include a link to the relevant result.
I am trolling
...seeing as the main drupal tarball is only ~450k.
I am NaN
So when MS went down because of a DOS attack, they makes them a poor business partner? They are the richest company in the world, they should always be up right? My point is that sometimes things happen in business that you cannot plan for. Perhaps they were planning on upgrading. I doubt very much this will have ANY impact on drupal's long term acceptance in the community.
BTW I find the lectures about what you think customers want somewhat annoying. Customers care about having their own systems up and running. While it might be a cause for concern, it's hardly world ending.
Thalasar
You'd be making a good point if either
a) Drupal was a business or
b) Drupal provided hosting as a service to customers.
Sadly, neither is true, and that about does it for your line of argument.
Any business running Drupal will do just fine, thanks, provided it doesn't have the same crappy host that this project's been stick with recently.
xfce just got donated a new server from 2x.com For less than 1600 dollars. 3000? gimme a break!
I think that Drupal wants something more than a toy. A box full of a bunch of no-name, el-cheapo hardware isn't really going to cut it. $3K for a low to mid level, brand name server with some guts to it and a real warranty is a fair price.
-h-
Today, CivicSpace is a distribution of Drupal: their core is unforked, and their modules are developed and stored in the main Drupal repository. They contribute patches to the main project as well as work on their own stuff.
Is it possible to make a donation? Drupal is a great project and an impressive community.
Here is your one stop place to compare CMS ... cmsmatrix.org
No sig for now.
i use drupal for my guildwars fansite at www.tyria.net, of all the CMS out there its probably the most intuitive. its biggest drawback is that forums, the main component of most community sites is an after thought with drupal and ends up being more work to manage than its worth.
To the naysayers out there, you should know that Drupal got 11 "Summer of Code" developers. Do the folks at Google obviously think very highly of this open source project.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
http://sourceforge.net/
"Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within." - Albert Einstein
You're an ass. Of course I "work in marketing" - I'm a successful businessman. That doesn't make me a marketdroid; marketing is essential to business. You are a hobbyist - open source doesn't have to be anything to you, except open, and source. But I'm talking about what it needs to be for business, as is perfectly clear for my post. Which is what any "leading" tools company must satisfy. Or it's suitable only for hobbyists, and people like you who are scared of success in the market.
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Far from true. I've worked with a large company that used a CMS (Interwoven Teamsite). Just about every enterprise website is CMS powered. And for many good reasons:
- separate content and code
- portability (apply a different presentation, and you can have xml output, html, wml, plain text, pdf, doc, ps, etc. etc)
- management (most content contributors don't know anything about html. Only the content.
IMHO above comment is a troll.
Yes and where were you before the actual problem? This was already in the works for the last few weeks.
:) ]
.... unfortunate.
It is better to OWN your core resources and leverage the other stuff that OSL is offering. They also provide mirroring, 24x7 admin staff familier with and specializing in open source software.
OSL does NOT REQUIRE an AD for this service. IT's just what they do. What happends when Drupal goes beyond 500GB/month? All this for the price of owning a server. I own my server and you seem to own yours.
For four years a very few people have born the expense of this while growing at a phenominal rate. While lots of happy users [and some that chose other products
Your post just seems a little
You can meet many former 'homosexuals'; you will never meet a former 'African-American'."
Are they trying to say that I'll never meet Michael Jackson?
Burn, Karma, Burn...
Yes, when MS went down it made them a poor business partner. Because they are so rich, and focused, the question of "will it happen again" is answered with "probably not". Since so much of their products are worse than the competition, the main reason they lead the industry is because "they'll be there to support us next year, too".
There are other reasons why an MS outage, though "unacceptable", is accepted, while Drupal's is not. Because MS is an monopoly, their downtime weighs against the lack of alternatives, for people locked in to their platform. Drupal doesn't enjoy that advantage, and smart customers will switch. An overloaded server can be planned for: most of us are operating under such plans. Drupal failed, it's important, and you can't admit that.
I find that you've completely discredited yourself in your apology for Drupal's inadequacy in serving their customers. Customers want reliability - it's one reason we switch to Linux from Microsoft when we can. That means that when they need to get info from the vendor, especially in an emergency, unavailability is a bottleneck they can't mitigate. Only you said it's "world ending", the hyperbolic distortions of someone who isn't interested in the facts, or learning anything. You just want to have it your way, with your fetish for Drupal.
I have had a lot of success knowing what customers want, and wanting the right things as a customer. What do you know? Where do you get off questioning my insight, without basis? What's your source of authority? Come correct, or don't come at all.
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wtf does their hardware uptime have to do with the quality of their software? they could even not have a website at all and just sell their software on CDs, would that make it any less reliable?
Both FreeBSD and NetBSD got projects, both GNOME and KDE got projects, both Ubuntu and Fedora Core got projects and both Perl and Python got projects. Each of those pairing are opposing projects, they just had interesting ideas that someone at Google liked.
So, I hardly see this as Google being infatuated with Drupal, more likely Drupal got a few proposals that interested the team that had to select from the 8k ideas. Maybe if other crappy little PHP CMSes had applied with ideas that seemed not only possible but useful there would be other ones in the Summer of Code.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Drupal is providing a service, software delivery, to its users. It might not be a business, but businesses depend on it. So it has to act professionally, regardless of its technical "business" status. Their uptime is in the critical path for their users, who depend on access to their website, especially in emergencies.
There's a reason businesses prefer to do business with businesses, rather than hobbyist "projects". Reliability, discipline. When a business has a problem like Drupal's outage, it responds, to ensure customers can rely on it. Drupal will probably respond in keeping with the excuses for their failure promoted in this thread: it's OK, it wasn't our fault, it wasn't our core competency. But since I think Drupal is a good thing for people to use, I want them to be more reliable. Denial of what's important and letting them off the hook doesn't do that. Instead, it opens them up to competition from inferior products from more reliable companies. Which sounds like it's bad for almost everyone, including me, you, Drupal users, and Drupal.
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Did I say anything about you being a marketdroid? I am hardly a hobbyist. I have founded several companies and have worked on the business development side of the house for years. My last company was sold to good old VA Software
"You are a hobbyist - open source doesn't have to be anything to you, except open, and source."
"Or it's suitable only for hobbyists, and people like you who are scared of success in the market."
Nice ad hominem attacks. As far this goes, its a minor affair, in fact I would use it as clear selling tool that we have exceeded our goals in growth. We didn't anticipate growth being this strong.
My point is this is a minor hiccup in a company's growth. As far being a successful businessman I have had more than my fair share of successes and failures.
Growing pains happen in every company. How you handle them is entirely indicative of the quality of the company.
Stop it with the ad hominem attacks, it's not helping your argument.
Thalasar
A CMS solves the problem of having 30 (or 300000, Slash is a CMS) people modify the site at the same time. Try doing that with flat html or custom written php. It also simplifies the routine management of the site, like archiving and indexing old news items (or blog posts, or whatever other C youre M'ing).
My apologies if I am way off base here, but it sounds like web programming means much less to you than it does to me. The great advantage of using a CMS is that I, the 1337 developer-dude, am not responsible for all the content on the site. If I wanted to spend 8 times the time on every project so that there are spiffy, user-friendly ways for the tech-unsavvy in my organization to be able to put up new content, I could do it.
But... somehow... I don't seem to have that sort of motivation... Actually, it's not a motivation thing. Ultimately, my time is worth more than building maintenance infrastructure that eventually starts to look an awful lot like a CMS.
-Ant Slayer-
It has nothing to do with the quality of their software. It has something important to do with their reliability as a technology resource. If I can't get to their website when I need an upgrade or technical question answered, I'm screwed, no matter how well their SW would work installed on my server if it were working. I'm talking about the reliability of the project, essential in a vendor or any business partner. If they can't get a new server, and they stop functioning as a project, what happens to everyone who's bought into their software?
It's open source, so perhaps someone will take over the project. Better than an unreliable proprietary SW project, but not as good as a reliable project with worse SW. Or maybe I could take over the development myself, a cost proposition that I didn't bargain for when I bought into the platform.
Business is defined by risk management. Dependency on unreliable components is just as bad for business as it is for programming. And Drupal has just demonstrated that the risks are worse than they previously appeared: always bad news in business. I'm apparently doing Slashdotters, naive in legitimate business priorities and realities, a favor for pointing this out. For which I'm getting flamed.
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Please save me from the same trouble - what solution did you find that was better?
They're being offered free colo and bandwidth. If they were to rent that for $300/month, they'd have spent $3000 in 10 months (or 15 months, if they're paying $200/month.) That's not very long - it's much better financially to buy the hardware and take the free monthly. Also, it's probably much easier to raise funds for a one-time item like this than to beg for rent money every month.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"I find that you've completely discredited yourself in your apology for Drupal's inadequacy in serving their customers."
Drupal is a software package. No customers are down as a result. I can certainly admit that Drupal fucked up. With those traffic numbers I would have moved to my own set of boxes awhile ago.
"I find that you've completely discredited yourself in your apology for Drupal's inadequacy in serving their customers. Customers want reliability - it's one reason we switch to Linux from Microsoft when we can. That means that when they need to get info from the vendor, especially in an emergency, unavailability is a bottleneck they can't mitigate. Only you said it's "world ending", the hyperbolic distortions of someone who isn't interested in the facts, or learning anything. You just want to have it your way, with your fetish for Drupal."
Dude what fetish? I just used it for one project and was pleasantly surprised. Why all these personal attacks? What Drupal customers haven't been serviced as a result?
I can question your insight on several grounds. First off I have been on the business development side of the house for years. While this is certainly a problem, it's not the end of the world for Drupal. I have sold open source ecommerce systems since 1994 with the launch Hot Hot Hot, the hot sauce store launched by Presence Information Design. So that's roughly 11 years of sales experience in this particular field.
I sold an open source software company to good old VA.
You offer NO credentials about what you do or from what data set you are drawing your conclusions. You haven't established your authority yet.
Truthfully this is a huge screw up but they are handling it well. So it's hardly world ending for drupal.
Thalasar
Or maybe there was some misunderstanding you could clear up?
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
TYPO3?
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
yup I'm a non-native english speaker, but I can order decent hardware with decent support for less. Take off the "dell" label and get Tyan components or 3ware, and you get the same HW warranty as dell, for at least a thousand dollars less.
Waste your money on Dell and HP, sure you get 3 years of support, but in the 3rd year you wish you had gotten something cheaper and replaced the harware already, instead of calling HP/Dell support over and over because some component has become unreliable.
"people like you who start twisting words around"
"You don't work in marketing, by any chance?"
You created this market for ad hominem attacks, so you can't have it both ways. Try to pretend that the first attack is on my "twisting", and not an insult to "people like [me]". Or that the marketing remark isn't a personal attack, on a marketdroid. Pretty sleazy rhetorical strategy, and I don't buy it.
On the point worth discussing, you point out that the company's handling growing pains indicates its quality. Drupal isn't a company, it's a project. Already a risk in depending on them. Their handling of their outage, enabled by relying on a hosting company which has ignored their 72+h of downtime, left their users stranded for a while. Which, if not over a Summer weekend, would have been an even worse source of risk. They were resilient enough to get back up anyway, and have a supportive enough user base that their pleas for help have given them enough money to buy a computer. That kind of management schema is very risky, especially as it seems they were unprepared for the contingency. Though their tech skills salvaged them.
Plenty of companies succeed despite management blind spots like IT reliability. Having that reliability, even outside one's core competency, is important. Learning from getting poked in the blind spot is an even more important element of a successful organization that will last, that is an acceptable risk level for a company to depend upon. We'll see whether Drupal changes their operations strategy to learn from this lesson. I hope they take criticism from peolple like me, which will make them stronger, rather than apologies for their failures, which helps them not at all.
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make install -not war
Did I ever use the word "infatuated"?
You don't think being among the 40 from over 8,000 ideas doesn't give the project some kind credibility?
Me thinks you have some kind of axe to grind. Sorry.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Even 2 year old dell servers will make you worry. I've got one with a SCSI disc that is starting to give bad sectors. 3 years is a _very_ long time especially for always-on hardware. You're better of replacing it after 2 then fixing it after 3 years.
Thanks, OSU. Go Beavers!
</beaver pride>
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
Dude - You aren't quoting me. I didn't write that. Pay attention to who is posting.
Thalasar
I have replied to your points in my response to your other post, where you also made them.
As for my credibility, after 15 years programming, 5 years professionally, I launched a multinational consultancy in Toronto and NYC. We built websites and backend/intranet infosystems for banks, publishing companies, cable companies, and other big businesses. Like NorTel, DeutscheBank, PrenticeHall, the Federal government of Canada, and others with billion dollar organizations depending to some degree on the product I delivered. Many of which I hosted on my datacenter, when not relying on major datacenters for uptime guarantees. As well as dozens of small businesses. I have built multimillion dollar businesses on the web for companies like The Guardian, Nabisco, and other global brands. I have been programmer, trainer, architect, COO, CEO, and business strategy consultant to all kinds of businesses. And the ones which aren't experimenting with R&D (nearly all) all require reliability. Which is a function of corporate operations, management of IT, beyond the quality of the software delivered as the product. I know what I'm talking about, having learned firsthand what happens when you screw up someone's business, even when it isn't "your fault". It is your responsibility, when you accept it.
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No, it's really not a fair price. $2k will get you a 1U (assuming you pay by space, which is common at colos), 3Ghz P4, 2GB, 2x80GB SATA w/RAID controller, from Dell. Including 3 years of next-day on-site service. That's a pretty damn nice box; maybe you'd like to trade in 1GB of that RAM for a pair of 120's or 200's, but you get the idea. If that's not enough horsepower for an installation of drupal, some mailing lists, CVS/SVN repository, and a website...then something is wrong. Furthermore, much of Dell's rackmount boxes start at around $1K...and that's only if you need rackmount. If someone is offering up a shelf in a colo or their private datacenter and a minitower isn't a problem, $1k gets you an equally nicely-equipped system as the $2k rackmount I spec'd out above.
Oh, and three grand is also almost 3 years of $100/month hosting (which would be VERY steep hosting!)
A box full of a bunch of no-name, el-cheapo hardware isn't really going to cut it.
When you're an open-source community project, you take what you can get. If you're homeless, you don't whine about how the roof leaks in the house someone handed you keys to, and you don't go asking for $500,000 for a "nice house with some really nice carpets".
Please help metamoderate.
To be clear, I started the consultancy (grown to over 50 people) in 1995. That brings me to 15 years pro experience, most of it at the high end, in 25 years wrestling with the business.
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Well that certainly helps with your credentials. I guess I could if I so wanted give you a similar list of Fortune 500s we did work with etc. Suffice it to say I have a similar background with a company about 12 people smaller. BTW you did see that you weren't quoting my post? That those two quotes weren't mine right?
Thalasar
Yeah? Well my dick is TWELVE inches long! ...Oh, were we being subtle?
The image is a dream, the beauty is real. Can you see the difference?
that gets 100GB traffic
I don't know where drupal is hosting, but 100GB is not that much bandwidth if you're hosting in the U.S.
see a Text Widget
We have clearly had different experiences with how demanding are businesses of operations reliability of their suppliers. I note for completeness that my consultancy typically included all source code with deliveries, without restriction. Only when we packaged some code for resale in other projects, to lower the price, did we ever require that the customer not redistribute the code (noncompete). We never gave those clauses a second thought after the sale was complete. Also, FWIW, we were the ones who patched the CERN httpd to serve multiple websites from the same host, and published the source into the public domain. For all of 1995, until Netscape published their Commerce Server, our code was running on every "multihome" host, which certainly helped the Bubble expand. During which time we made certain that our servers were up 24/7 for download, documentation and feedback. Not for nothing did I sleep with a pager for 5 years.
As for the argument about insults, I still don't get it. I replied in that other thread.
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What kind of game are you playing? I responded to an Anonymous Cowards' personal attacks in kind. You responded with a post from an ID, responding to those counterattacks as if mine were directed at you, when they were directed at the AC. So it's hardly to be expected that I could distinguish you from the AC, when you act like it was you.
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tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
I just saw that AC post. Needless to say I filter out AC posts. I suggest you do since you decided to flame me for someone else's post.
Thalasar
Feel free to check out our CMS, called Sitellite. I won't claim it's the leading CMS in PHP by any means, but its code is architected and mostly pretty clean (there are a few rough spots around the edges, but the core is very much OOP + MVC). Plus we just released a major new version with lots of great stuff in it. For more info, see:
http://www.sitellite.org/
Disclaimer: My sig links to the company that supports Sitellite and funds its main developers (incl. me).
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
You can suggest whatever you want. I suggest that if you're going to respond to a post, you make certain that your filters haven't tricked you into thinking that the post to which you're replying is addressing you. At least not if you're going to accuse me of unfair attacks on you, when you're imagining them. Especially if, by so doing, you're escalating a fight you wouldn't want to be in, by inheriting the fight from an anonymous poster who can't be distinguished from you.
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My fault for filtering AC posts. I suggest you do so too, you will find it less stressful. To be completely fair you did say I had a "fetish" for drupal and was a "hobbyist". Fetish & "hoobyists" a fairly loaded terms. I agree 100% with you for their fuck-up. As one of the founders of my company I carried the old pager for years to moniter the data center. I suspect we differ on the degree to which this will hurt them. Crisis management always defines the quality of a company.
BTW Ignore the AC trolls my friend.
Thalasar
You're a big dick. So what?
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A lot of "successful" sites seem to be hosted at OSL. But really, how successful are these sites if they can't even raise $3,000 for a new server (before posting on Slashdot)? And how would tuition-payers at Oregon State University feel about funding such a service (yes, yes, they would probably say "open-what?" but once you explain it...) There are a lot of benefits of making a business out of this software stuff.
"Hobbyist" I think is appropriate, given the relative levels of professionalism to which we are subscribing. "Fetish" is another way of saying the same thing, more pointedly, when arguing that lesser criteria than necessary are being used for acceptance. But I'm glad we're beyond that heated rhetoric now. Even if we don't agree, at least we understand each other better :).
;). It's my way of actually releasing the stress I accumulate from people with whom it's impolitic to argue, even when they're horrendously wrong. It's a weakness for human flesh, but I relish it :).
Nah, I eat AC trolls for breakfast. I don't care about getting mud on me when wrestling with a pig: the loophole in the old adage about the pig liking it is that I like it better, especially when I roast their chops
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I don't think anyone doubts your sentiments in an ideal situation, nor do I think that Slashdotters in general are a naive as you make out, whilst passionate an a little biased, Slashdotters do seem to have good knowledge of the realities of the business world.
The passion and [every so] slight bias is what open source software is all about and these fundamental properties of the people involved also provide a lot of tollerance for emerging projects suffering the odd failure.
Drupal appears to have a good offering to the OSS community and is obviously outgrowing it's 'hobby' roots and I'd like to think they were making preparations for this transision before it was suddenly forced upon them by the failure of their host.
Whilst all projects, large and small have to develop contingencies for the un-expected, until they recieve good financial backing from donations or the corporates who would seek the level of service and support you suggest it can be difficult for the average joe with a good idea to protect themselves against everything. However this most certainly should not put such people off developing their ideas for the benefit of the community.
The afore mentioned tollerance helps this process and has created a unique environment for us all to freely express our ideas.
Have you tried eBay? GoodWill?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
That is just absurd. Your saying that if people cannot write their own CMS they shouldn't have a website? Some people spend less than 6 hours a day in front of a computer, does that entitle them to anything less on the internet?
Go troll somewhere, please.
Slashdot taught me how to use the preview button!
I know what you're saying but don't you think it would be a little like Ford giving their sales force vauxhalls as company cars ;)
I don't think the levels of professionalism are actually all that different. If Drupal had been my project, it would have never gone down EVER. Blaming your upstream provider is one thing but people have an expectation of sites being up. I expect systems to stay up years at a time with proper maintaince. Many of the systems we have done are entering their 5th & 6th years running continously with minor patch downtime for portions of the cluster.
I also expect people to do capacity planning and notice that, "Hey maybe we should do something about this slow ass hosting like getting our own small cluster." My suspicion is that they don't have a sys admin and were afraid to make the leap. (or just not enough cash to buy the machine)
I suspect that this project will recover from this hiccup. They have gotten pretty popular (The Google Page Rank of drupal.org is 8) but are not deployed in too many corporations. Many of their customer testimonials are smaller installations.
I tried their system after going on a CMS binge where I played virtually every product on the market. Despite it being in PHP I was pleasantly surprised by this system. Maybe they will grow into MySQL or maybe they will wither away. I chipped in to help them as I have other projects (like perl.org).
Thalasar
But the point is that it isn't a product for sale, and they do not have or even need a "customer" relationship. It is given away for free by volunteers, and they aren't required to donate their money too, just because they donated their time. That would be like some hobo at a soup kitchen complaining that he had to walk a few miles to get his free meal instead of being driven by one of the volunteers.
Best Slashdot comment ever
Please save me from the same trouble - what solution did you find that was better?
Plone and a dedicated server.
It has the disadvantage of needing to know what you are doing, but it was the solution.
I would reject all PHP CMSes out of hand. An application server was the way to go. Java frameworks were overly cumbersome. Zope/Plone had the perfect separation of content, presentation, and logic. It's been a great experience for me for over two years now. Not perfect. But not a soul sucking headache, either.
I agree. I'm passionate myself ;).
Further, you've given me an opportunity to commend Drupal, and the OSS community of which we're all members. A traditional corporation that went through a catastrophe like this probably wouldn't survive. Because all it would have to rely on would be its revenues, which would dry up after such an outage (especially if they hadn't reserved enough to redeploy). And investment, which would be an even worse outlook. But Drupal could naturally request help from its users, who have resources, skills and money to offer. Especially the $6000 in donations they received in 14 hours, which few small businesses would be able to muster, without damaging or stressing their customer relations. Instead, Drupal has probably tightened its relationships with its community.
That dynamic bodes very well for OSS competition, without the "all or nothing" heavy costs of traditional business. It's decentralized, can reverse customer/supplier relationships in a heartbeart, when appropriate, and is run on the value of the relationships, not solely the value of a dollar in hand.
Both sides of my analysis are important insights into the state of OSS today. It's got to grow, to become more reliable, to fit into the business socket created by its proprietary predecessors. But it's bringing new advantages to the niches. My criticisms are made in the spirit of improving the environment, constructively, with positive recommendations in the face of failures. I want this to work, so I offer advice on what my experience tells me will help.
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"suspect that this project will recover from this hiccup. They have gotten pretty popular (The Google Page Rank of drupal.org is 8) but are not deployed in too many corporations. Many of their customer testimonials are smaller installations."
:).
I agree. I also think that their sector distribution is related to exactly the kinds of risks we've been talking about. When they grow up enough that a burnt hosted server isn't even noticeable, due to failover planning, they'll expand their corporate base. With such a lead mostly in the grassroots, they're poised for greatness. I hope they can take criticism like mine constructively, because I want them, and other worthwhile OSS projects, to succeed and survive. So I can use them
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If you don't know about it, then it's not you they are asking for money. I was ready to get out my credit card and make a donation, then I found they already have what they need. They got the donations so quickly (in less than 12 hours, it seems) because there are more than enough people who use, depend on and value the software.
Or like someone who depended on "free" garbage collection going on strike for a week complaining? I have not made any argument about Drupal being "worth the money". There are plenty of other costs in using 3rd party SW, like the cost of switching to something else when it can't be relied upon. OSS projects that want acceptance by businesses and serious individuals must be reliable. If their volunteer/donation system actually works, that's great. In this case, a widely deployed system suffered from users unable to reach its distributors (and documentation, upgrades, support discussions, etc) for some time, due to the failure of their model. Hopefully they'll learn from the experience, and we'll all have a more robust environment in which to work. Including those other projects that learn from them.
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You make it seem as though Google cares for this project in some manner, I pointed out that they obviously aren't taking favourites here. This was that the people that wanted to work on Drupal projects came up with ideas that people at Google thought interesting.
If you want to call an apple an orange you're not going to have me agreeing with you, cause they're not the same.
Apology accepted, next time just skip the attempt at undermining my character and you won't need to apologise though.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Touche. :)
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
Bull. I used to write all of the code for my own website. It probably took me about a week of full-time-equivalent work, and it worked OK, but that's still a far cry from half an hour. Don't give me any of that crap about it being because you're a better programmer, either. I work on kernels and distributed systems for a living, and have done for over a decade. Web programming is something I do as a break from real work because it's so easy by comparison. Nonetheless, all you can get in half an hour is something that sucks. If you want something that's modular and maintainable, that takes more time. If you want something that's database-efficient, that takes more time...and flat-file-based systems are even worse so don't go there. If you want something that's standards-compliant, that takes more time...and your main page generated 130 errors when I ran it through the W3C validator. If you want it not to look like crap (again unlike your site) that takes more time. If you want to have features like markup in comments and comment preview, decent archive management, categories, and search (again unlike...) that takes more time. If you want to do all of those things and have it be secure, that takes more time; not knowing how to implement features securely is a poor excuse for having a low-functionality site. Do all that in under the week it took me, and I'll be impressed. So far, not even close.
My guess, based on your comment, is that you're another victim of the rewrite bug that often afflicts junior programmers. Writing code is not necessarily more efficient than reading other people's, but it is generally more fun so kiddies always want to rewrite everything in sight. What they end up with isn't usually any better, though. Most code that's written as an excuse not to understand something that already existed sucks far worse than what it replaces. That's why most of the people who roll their own website never even have the balls to make the result available for others to see. They know that it's a lot easier to claim superiority than to prove it.
That's the most offensive thing about your post, and why I went out of my way to be offensive right back. Sure, maybe you and I can (with varying degrees of success) write code to do the things that a typical weblog does, but why should we be the only ones to have sites? Why shouldn't high-school students and grandmothers have them too? Sure, most of what they write is crap, but so is most of what geeks write (including here). What purpose is served by having someone who might be able to contribute code in some other domain that you know nothing about have to learn your most treasured skills as the price of entry to the world of website ownership? What if their contribution is something other than code - like scientific knowledge or political insight? Aren't those valuable too? Thinking that everyone should value what you value is beyond elitist, and contrary to the spirit of free enterprise. It's just a crutch for insecurity, not a valid or useful attitude. It's almost as pathetic as posting fake-IQ-test results to your blog.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Oh, get over yourself.
The image is a dream, the beauty is real. Can you see the difference?
Drupal has changed quite a lot in the past 2-3 years.
The initial release of Drupal was Jan 15, 2001.
My big Drupal crash was last August. I've been using Plone for over two years (from about the time it was released as well) and it was good to start with. I inherited the Drupal nightmare. For a CMS to be flexible enough, it needs an application server. Plone is a CMS which runs on a Zope application server. Zope is an application server tailor made for CMSes. The whole architecture of Drupal is part of what makes it a mess. Mostly it's just PHP mixing up presentation, content, and logic, making things ultra brittle.
What a bunch of asshats!
My web server is a mere Pentium III Xeon dual 700mhz but I have 4 gigs of RAM. That's right! 4 gigs of sweet, beautiful, delicious, delectible RAM. Even my home computer has more RAM than Drupal's "server".
$3000, eh?
Well, according to this, they're going to be receiving 11 * $500 = $5500 for participating in Google's Summer of Code.
So...
If you are the example of 'their targeted audience', then i hope they go under.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Drupal is providing a service, software delivery, to its users. It might not be a business, but businesses depend on it. So it has to act professionally, regardless of its technical "business" status. Their uptime is in the critical path for their users, who depend on access to their website, especially in emergencies.
Are you Drupal user? If yes, then please switch to something else and stop bleething. If not, then please use something else and stop bleething.
You obviuosly have no idea what Drupal is, and the fact they could be down 1 month is meaningless. Most people care if Drupal on THEIR OWN servers is running, not if the Drupal website is running.
But then again, you're a "businessman", and nobody else here is - so you must be the one who collected all the wisdom on this planet...
It has nothing to do with the quality of their software. It has something important to do with their reliability as a technology resource. If I can't get to their website when I need an upgrade or technical question answered, I'm screwed, no matter how well their SW would work installed on my server if it were working.
Blah blah, blah. Blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah. Blah.
That's about how useful your comments are. You must be a PhD...
Maybe your offer just didn't meet their requirements. Maybe they have tax reasons. Maybe they just want to be near all of the Gentoo project machines at OSU.
:)
Could be many reasons for it, and if Drupal owns the hardware and has it hosted at an educational institution, it probably works out better for them.
For quality hardware, 3 years is *NOTHING*. I've got production servers that were purchased in 1996 and are still working fine. My mail servers are in the process of being upgraded, but they're about 5 years old now (when Red Hat Linux 6.1 and 6.2 were current). Good hardware runs almost forever. If you're replacing hardware every 2 years, you're buying junk.
Well, it turns out, you're right. I went to his site and thought, "hmm, a blog system with comments and trackbacks, maybe he does have a point if he built this whole thing in 30 minutes." But then I tried his system. Anyone can add comments -- comment spam could (and probably eventually will) overrun his system. In addition, I was able to easily drop JavaScript code into the comments and it was executed! Of course, I only dropped in a harmless JavaScript alert, as I don't want to get in trouble for "hacking" a neophyte's crappy blog system.
But in any case, to the grandparent post: my God, man, you cannot build such a shoddy, terrible system, and then tout the benefits of reinventing the wheel. Your wheel is awful, and better people before you have built wheels that put yours to shame. Yours is bad enough to actually be dangerous. It's a black-hat's wet dream. SQL injection, code insertion, you don't even launder your input! I fear for your site and the server that hosts it.
A big difference between you an me is that at least I know that I am an A-grade arsehole.
But the bigger difference would be the 150 points by which my IQ exceeds yours.
Not every article on /. is directed at every reader. This one was directed at people who cared about Drupal. If that's not you, then newsflash, you don't have to bother going past the front page blurb. It's not anybody else's responsibility to dish out information to you on a silver platter. If you want more, seek it. If you don't, then go to the next article.
Your sig is from Kant. See the end of The Critique of Practical Reason.
If you're interested in a quick video screen capture overview of Drupal, take a look at this Shockwave tutorial that I'm working on.
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
No, you are wrong.
It is the responsibility of everyone to give me what I want, how I want it, and when I want it.
I am the only one that actually matters.
Back to the subject at hand, I was actually considering helping these people, until i got grief from the likes of you weirdos. I might even have paid off the bill entirely for them.
And to re-clarify, *I* am all that matters. And once the rest of you get that through your thick skulls your lives will be a lot happier.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
All of the Drupal websites were offline for about two days because of a server meltdown at the organization's hosting provider.
Nucular computers is bad, mm'kay! Don't support it. This is what happens, things melt down and people are left without homes.
Fuck you.
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Yap yap yap. Whereas your useful comment is the talk of the mailroom.
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Though I hadn't heard of Mambo before tonight I had done some sites using Drupal in the past. Nice but a pain to configure. Just curious how it is nowdays. I find Xoops (the engine behind perfectreign) to be very easy. Any recent experiences out there to compare?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
This guy sounds like a real expert on secure
web programming.
Maybe that's why there are Kevin Mitnick
heads snowing down his comments page .
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
Let me reiterate this point for you then... Their website has nothing to do with the reliability of their software. Two completely different things. When their new host gets hit by a meteor that won't be their fault either.
While your post is merely average flaming. How is my post a troll?
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Well, if *you* are a businessman, you are a bad one - I never claimed a monopoly on the profession, just expertise. You don't understand that both the product, and its suppliers, must be reliable for a business to rely on it. You're not much of anything, because you think that a desire for a good product to be supported by a reliable organization means switching to something else, rather than telling the organization what it needs to provide to serve me, and people like me. Which is to say: people with money and sense. Unlike some others in this thread, like you.
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Let me quote the sentence that you don't seem to be capable of understanding. It's as simple a statement as possible, so I won't be bothering to help you again, except to point out their software isn't all that people rely on when they use their software. They also rely on the project.
"It has nothing to do with the quality of their software. It has something important to do with their reliability as a technology resource."
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I don't know where they have free garbage collection, it has always been a municipal thing everywhere I have been, and the strikes were because their union decided they weren't making enough money. Garbagemen aren't volunteers.
The point is, people are donating their skilled labor, and often not for the reasons you would think, which is apparently to "gain userbase". I have never used this particular program, and don't know anybody who is working on it, but I bet that they have different motives than that.
This is not a business: viewing it that way isn't very enlightening.
Best Slashdot comment ever
MS probably is a bad business partner (they seem pretty good at slitting throats of customers and 'business partners' alike). However I would admit that that has nothing to do with the survivability of their website.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Care to elaborate?
"Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within." - Albert Einstein
For those after a good content management system for their site (and can't be bothered to make their own) check OpenSourceCMS.com for live demo's of about two dozen open source CMS systems scripts.
Click "Portals (CMS)" in the crappy tree menu on the left and then each CMS has a demo link. Here is the Drupal demo (login: admin/demo).
They also have blog script demos up - such as Wordpress
Don't you think that if you were running a business which relied on Drupal you would be sensible to arrange some kind of support with the core developers rather than just surf onto their website every time your business requirements changed ?
Meltdown? What the fuck does that mean?
It's not a nuclear reactor, it's probably just a burned CPU which can be replaced in 10 min and at a very low cost.
Couldn't they tell the truth - "we're fed up with the old server and/or the hosting company"?
Well, whilst sourceforge is a great resource, it is a CMS and using it to host a CMS one has developed may give the impression than one's own CMS isn't up to the job.
At very least this may be their justification. Personally I'd have used sourceforge and hope users were with-it enough to understand why.
Why would any serious business rely on a company that can't even suffer a small setback of a few $1000, like a computer breaking down. ... now, or else we're going under.
I'd be scared if I had a business that relied on another company and that company would immediately suspend its development, take its webpage offline and relies on donations and fundraisers whenever some hardware failed.
It's no fun going to a website for support only to see a static page saying oh no, our 200 GB harddisk crashed, we need your support. Donate money to
> Well, whilst sourceforge is a great resource, > it is a CMS and using it to host a CMS one has > developed may give the impression than one's > own CMS isn't up to the job. SourceForge.net is not a CMS (content management system). It provides the following services for open-source projects: Free website hosting Free file download hosting (powerful mirror net) CVS and more. It is *exactly* what they need. And it will not cost them a cent.
"Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within." - Albert Einstein
First of all, you are not relying on the Drupal website - whether it is working or not is irrelevant to the performance of the Drupal CMS.
Although I can't see any obvious scenarios where a business would rely on a CMS such a business would be wise to realise that it's the core developers who are important when it comes to the Drupal CMS installation they are using and buy some kind of support contract with them.
Lastly, being Open Source it does not matter if everyone involved in Drupal gets bored and goes off to do other things since you will have everything you need to do whatever you want with the software.
Even more lastly Drupal is not a company and any business person unable to make that distinction is unlikely to be in business very long.
I'm not making my point very well, I know exactly what SF is, but I imagine Drupal implements more than enough functionality to present itself, which is what I imagine they are after.
But yes, SF would give them everything they need with none of the headaches.
Oh, that does it. Now I'm gonna go cry. Thanks a lot mister! This is me sobbing.
The image is a dream, the beauty is real. Can you see the difference?
Yes, they could easily run Drupal on a website hosted on sourceforge. Either drupal.sf.net or drupal.org or whatever they want. Even if 100 MB would not be enough for them, they can negotiate better terms with SF if they can justify their such extra needs.
"Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within." - Albert Einstein
It's not a perfect metaphor, but apt anyway: you don't pay directly for garbage collection, but it's part of the cost of living in a town. Likewise, you don't pay for free SW, but there is an indirect path of your money for other services to its providers. Certainly a closer analogy than the one to which I responded. Maybe I should have replied within their frame: it's more like a poor person depending on a regular ride to the soup kitchen, so they only know about the one across town. When the ride disappears unexpectedly, they go hungry. The person offering the ride, creating the dependency, has an obligation once they created it.
The point is that the measure of how much a business depends on a project like Drupal isn't the price of its SW. It's the degree to which they depend on it, like needing to get documentation, downloads, user discussions - ongoing support. Businesses sensibly avoid companies which will disappear once the business depends on their software, regardless of their "motives" (which are largely irrelevant to businessmen). Drupal shook the necessary confidence with this unprofessional downtime. You can say that businesses which expect professionalism from Drupal, which is merely a volunteer project with no guarantees they'll be operating Monday morning, are making a bad decision. I'd agree. Especially after this debacle shows what can go wrong. Unless Drupal changes their operations to reduce the risk of this outage happening again. Which would be professional of them, regardless of their business status.
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The Drupal project provides this website as the way to contact the core developers. And to get the other support info which is necessary to use the Drupal package in one's business.
Take a look at all the useful, but abandoned, OSS projects that no one uses now. Because "just the SW" is important only to geeks, hobbyists, and collectors. Businesspeople need to know "when I have a problem, who do I call?" or something similar. Do you run a business?
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I checked a few Drupal-based sites and they all seemed to use text/html as their content-type so it seems to be the default in Drupal. AFAIK Sending XHTML as text/html is harmful, so could someone please clarify why is a project as big as Drupal using it?
Thanks. Now, if you'll just go to your room and think about how to act in public next time, I'll stop lauging in your face.
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You don't really have to do anything to divide bandwidth. There will be more people interested in Mozilla than in Drupal, hence the bandwidth will be requested by more visitors for one project over the other. Give every visitor a fair share and you'll end up giving more bandwidth to Mozilla than to Drupal.
It could go like this:
Drupal> Did Mozilla get more bandwidth?
OSUOSL> Do they have more visitors?
Drupal> Yes.
OSUOSL> Then they got more bandwidth.
Businesspeople need to know "when I have a problem, who do I call?"
Isn't that what I have just said, twice now ?
OSU Open Source Lab: Drupal's future home, here:
http://osuosl.org/
The list of project they already host is impressive:
http://osuosl.org/about/collaborators
A:.
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http://www.gnosis-usa.com/
Revolutionary Psychology, White Tantrism, Dream Yoga...
http://www.reuniting.info/
Intimate Relationships, peace and harmony in the couple.
http://www.masquilier.org/republic/election/ Condorcet, Plurality voting and alternative voting enabled bulletin board.
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
Just because this thread is full of Drupal fans who don't care about how businesses rely on a team, not just the SW they could download sometime last week (but not this week, because the website is down), doesn't mean they should flame me. And it certainly doesn't mean that the comment is "Flamebait", whatever that means. Does it mean "I'm a nerd with some mod points, and I disagree, but I know that you'll destroy my weak argument, even if I post as AC, so I'll anonymously mod you down, because I don't even have the balls to flame you"? Yep, that's it. TrollMods can't argue, so they mod down anonymously.
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I don't see that you've answered that meaningfully. You've said that they should "make a deal with the core developers for support". That's what the Drupal website is, which is why its unreliability is a problem. How can you dismiss the website reliability while agreeing that businesses need reliable support from the team, which is represented by the website? While simultaneously making the argument that it's the SW that matters, and the ability to work with the team not at all?
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Oh, and I was curious what drupal was too, the slashdot link doesn't give much more info than that it's a CMS, and drupal.org is down (looks like they haven't installed the new hardware in time for slashdot).
Here's the wikipedia with link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal
Drupal is a content management framework, content management system and blogging engine which was originally written by Dries Buytaert and is the software used to power Debian Planet [1], Terminus1525 [2], Spread Firefox [3] and Kernel Trap [4], among others. Drupal is written in PHP using strict coding standards.
Drupal is the English spelling for the Dutch word 'druppel' which means 'drop'.
Though it started as a small bulletin board system, Drupal has become much more than just a news portal, thanks to its flexible architecture. Drupal has a basic layer, or core, which supports pluggable modules that enable additional behaviors. The modules available for Drupal provide a wide assortment of features, including e-commerce systems, workflow, photo galleries, mailing list management, and CVS integration. Drupal's taxonomy/classification module is especially interesting, in that it allows any content to be classified with a flexible tagging system.
Some of the more special roles that Drupal has filled include company intranets, online classrooms, art communities and project management. Many feel that Drupal's focus on user communities is what makes it stand out from its competition.
As a followup, here at the pix of the Sun hardware. http://osuosl.org/photos/drupal/view
Slightly OT, but I'd like to know where he's getting a server with those specs at that price. I can't seem to configure one like that on Dell's site for any less then 4500.