Drupal has grown in complexity over years. The community was managed by developers and architects, not users. Developers love to play, but the end-results is incompatible APIs which requires major rewrites of contrib modules between versions. Lots of contrib modules won't survive. Lots of sites won't upgrade. This is a major pain for existing Drupal users.
Stop reinventing core APIs! I'm tired from the need to rewrite old sites which suddently become obsolete as their version is no longer supported. Most small sites simply won't upgrade.
Another issue is that the system can't be used out of the box. Lots of tech decisions need to be made, lots of modules need to be tested and configured.
Of course, there are Drupal distributions which aim to solve it, but the fact that those systems are not in core means that there are competing implementations which don't get the full attention they deserve.
Enter Backdrop
Unannounced officially, but discovered and tweeted about over the past week, is Backdrop, a Drupal fork.
The README as of today states:
"Backdrop is a fully-featured content management system that allows non-technical users to manage a wide-variety of content. It can be used to create blogs, forums, image galleries, social networks, intranets, and more.
Backdrop aims to provide:
* A full-featured CMS that puts editorial and end-users first.
* A system that can be utilized out-of-the-box.
* Code that can be learned and easily developed..
* Extensible APIs.…Backdrop is a fork of Drupal.
It’s all on Github, so people are free to examine the code.
A sigh of relief. At last, someone understand what's needed to save Drupal from itself.
Will it succeed? From my opinition, @backdropcms must retain compatibility with contrib modules to survive. Currently it seems they won't, and that would be a huge mistake.
Contribute! You can:
- Spread the word.
- Join the development effort.
- Contribute money to the backdrop campaign on Indiegogo.
Community was the reason why I've chosen Drupal on the first place.
Backdrop has the potential to become a community lifesaver. But for that they have to retain compatibility with contrib modules, otherwise they will have to invent their own community.
Read more at backdropcms.org.