Mohamed Nanabhay's Blog

I've just posted this to Drupal.org - it's another great endorsement for my favourite open source project.

The M.I.T. Technology Review has published their annual list of 35 young innovators under the age of 35. The name that jumped out of the page at me was of course Drupal's very own founder, Dries Buytaert:
The Internet has made publishing on a global scale almost effortless. That's the rhetoric, anyway. The truth is more complicated, because the Internet provides only a means of distribution; a would-be publisher still needs a publishing tool. A decade ago, people who wanted such a tool had three choices, all bad: a cheap but inflexible system, a versatile but expensive one, or one written from scratch. What was needed was something in the ­middle, requiring neither enormous expense nor months of development--not a single application, but a platform for creating custom publishing environments. For tens of thousands of sites and millions of users, that something is Drupal....
Head over to the M.I.T. Technology Review site for a full profile on Dries and Drupal written up by Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody).

Rock on Drupal!

The long awaited Drupal Association (that's the Belgian version of a foundation) has finally been launched.

From the announcement :

On January 15, 2001, Dries Buytaert started a new hobby - he created the content management system that became known as Drupal. Six years of phenomenal growth have followed. The Drupal project has evolved from a part-time interest for a handful of students to one of the most thriving and productive open source software projects in the world.

Drupal has been a community effort since its earliest days - and a wildly successful one. The project's the size and scope are now getting beyond what an ad hoc group of volunteers can realistically manage. In response, the Drupal Association has been called into existence. Its purpose is to support the vibrant Drupal community and help provide what it needs to continue to grow and flourish in the future.

Drupal is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is very close to my heart. When I first started using it back in 2004 it was a bit of a love/hate relationship until I had that "Aha!" moment that comes to every Drupalhead after he discovers admin/access and the page.tpl.php file.

So as soon as I figure out how to change my country in PayPal, I'll be off to donate to the Drupal Association. It's definately money well spent.

While the Association is currently not accepting donations for specific development tasks, I hope it is something they have planned for the near future. Being able to organise bounties or set aside funds for particular features/modules is something that is urgently needed. An efficient and transparent method of matching developers to people who are willing to pay is badly needed. I'm not saying that the Association should fund these requests - rather they should be able to manage the process of matching people who want with people who need.