Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

In terms of Internet time, one can consider Joomla! as a young adult who is trying to figure out what he/she wants to do with the rest of their life and is having an identity crisis in the process.  The Joomla project on one hand wants to remain true to its Mission, Vision & Values.  On the other, it is currently engaging a professional PR Firm to increase it’s brand recognition. 

What Joomla! does not have that a number of other OSS projects do have is one or more commercial entities that provide them with “free” marketing and PR services.  Acquia, Automattic, redhat, Canonical (Ubuntu), Oracle (OpenOffice) come to mind here.

Now that I’ve stated the above, some of you will proceed directly to the comments form and delineate the many evils of commercial entities and the OSS projects that are “conspiring” with them.  Some will suffer from “Twitter Deprivation” and move on.  Others, thinking “What the hell is this idiot talking about?” will read on out of pure curiosity.  And some will simply read on with no malice aforethought!

Now I do not claim to be an expert regarding organizational models adopted by the various OSS projects, or any marketing and PR on their behalf (although I did suffer though a Marketing 101 course many years ago…I needed 3 credit-hours and the class schedule met my needs!).

What I do know is from the outside looking in and not having a clue about the inner workings of the Joomla Leadership Team (LT), Community Oversight Committee (CoC),  and Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM), my perception is that in the race to capture the hearts and minds of the corporate and government worlds, Joomla is losing, or may have already lost. 

Now many may say that the Joomla project is OSS and, as such, they are not competing with their OSS brethren in this or any other arena.  And that may well be true.  But one can also say that neither are the Drupal and Wordpress projects.  The difference is that their commercial champions are.

To date, and absent any household-name, deep pocket benefactors, Joomla has had astounding success.  It has spawned thousands of small businesses who have in turn spawned many thousands of sites for small and medium businesses around the globe.  If one believes in statistics,  only Wordpress surpasses Joomla in the number of installed sites.  And this statistic is probably biased, as Wordpress has much more usage as a blogging engine rather than as a CMS.

In the meantime, OSS associated with strong commercial brand names have made impressive inroads into the corporate/government markets.  An example here is the use of Drupal as the platform for Whitehouse.gov and other US Government sites.  Does this mean Drupal is “better” than Joomla?  Not really, it just means the winning commercial bidder for the Whitehouse.gov contract used Drupal to fulfill the Government’s Request for Proposal (RFP) requirements for CMS features and capabilities. 

In conclusion, my opinion…

I am not by any means qualified to speak for the Joomla leadership and really do not care to do battle with the hordes over the leadership, organization or future direction of the Joomla project.  But what I do know is that Joomla really needs to decide what it wants to be as a grown-up and share this with the community.  And the project is big-time swimming upstream if its real intent is to compete with the commercial entities that are purveyors of Joomla’s OSS brethren.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interests in any of the open source or commercial entities referenced in this tome.  And I long ago gave up on software development as a source of income. 

Top ten reasons why Drupal and Joomla! suck:

1. They are way too easy to install and configure.
2. They are excellent at managing content.
3. One does not have to give anyone their credit card information to download them.
4. They have way too many 3rd party extensions, especially Joomla.
5. They have communities that are way too large and, on the whole, much too friendly and helpful.
6. They are easy to write templates/theme for (although some may give Joomla! the edge here).
7. They have forums where users can ask and answer questions.
8. They have semi-decent documentation
9. They have created a service industry around them, e.g., selling templates, themes and extensions, building web sites, providing ongoing operations and maintenance support, etc.
10. They have provided shining examples of the benefits of open source software development.

I found this today on the Joomla! Forum and thought it was worth passing on...

A comparison of the capabilities and features of the latest releases (as of September 2008) of Joomla 1.5, Drupal 6, and Wordpress 2 with respect to 1) functionality -- multi-user publishing, layout and design, search engine optimization (SEO), mobile device support, and internationalization/localization; 2) extensibility -- the general climate and quality of third-party extension development for each platform; 3) support; 4) specific kinds of websites -- media/publishing sites, community/social sites, eCommerce sites. This is a helpful breakdown when it comes to deciding which platform is the best fit for a specific purpose.

You can view or download a PDF version of the comparison at NewLocalMedia.org.

The Joomla! CMS Project recently announced a change in the policy for listing 3rd-party extensions on their popular JED site.  The new policy requires that all 3rd-party extensions must use the GPL license in order to be listed on the directory.  Furthermore, they will no longer accept extensions that contain encrypted code, which some open source software developers use to discourage individuals and warez sites from redistributing their software.

This came as no big surprise to me, as  Joomla's overall policy on extension licensing, which was announced about 18 months ago, is that extensions to Joomla!, which is GPL, are, by definition, GPL since they are considered "derivative works."

While I personally have no problem with this new policy (other than wondering why GPL-compatible licenses are not allowed), I wondered if anyone had really thought about what the long term effect of a GPL-only policy would be on one of Joomla's often stated future goals.  That being the desire to have the Joomla! CMS spawn a companion "application framework" upon which a number of diverse applications could be built.   

One thought that crossed my mind while burning a minimal amount of brain cells thinking about this was:

What the current state of Linux (aka GNU Linux to the anal-retentive) would be had a decision not been made long ago to use LGPL licensing for the dynamic  libraries?  These libraries provide critical  "application framework" for the vast majority of applications that run in Linux environments.  This allows applications to run on Linux, whether their license is proprietary or one of the non-GPL open source variants.

Talking about Joomla's future application platform and Linux dynamic libraries might seem like a stretch to some.  However  I consider them both application platforms, albeit it at different levels of abstraction.  One can visualize the Joomla! framework as a higher level equivalent of the Linux kernel.  That is, the Joomla! framework provides the basic program control and input/output operations.

Having said this, let us talk a bit about the GPL in the context of PHP-based systems such as Joomla, and the barriers to licensing the prospective Joomla! application platform's APIs as LGPL, thus opening it up for use by proprietary and non-GPL open source application developers.

• License Interpretation - the school of thought that any extension that links to GPL-licensed systems such as Joomla! are also GPL works since they are by definition "statically linked" and thus are derivatives.  To me, this is a fallacious argument when applied to scripting languages such a PHP, since they do not make a distinction between dynamic and static linking.  Everything is  generated on the fly as one big blob at run-time as opposed to classic complied languages such as C where one is given a choice of using dynamic or static linking.
• Mission Impossible - Although Joomla! 1.5 has  been refactored and now use a  MVC  architecture, it still retains a fair amount of the original GPL-licensed code from back in the "Mambo" days.  A such, to effect any change in the Joomla! licensing the Project is legally bound to get permission not only from current developers who hold copyrights to the code, but also from any and all people who have contributed code since Mambo first saw the light of day.  What, if any, solution there is to this issue probably involves lawyers and lots of time and money.       
• Reality - the Joomla! Project's stated policy is to license Joomla! as a GPL work with no exceptions allowed.  This includes the belief that anything that uses the Joomla! framework APIs is, by definition, GPL.

The Joomla! Project may indeed some day offer an application framework in addition to their current CMS software.  However I do wonder how successful it will be if the application framework's APIs remain under the GPL rather than using the LGPL or similar licensing.

Disclaimer:  The above are my opinions.   Furthermore if any of the technical points I've talked about are  in error or inconsistent, it was done with no malice aforethought...just technical ignorance on my part!