My thoughts on the Drupal App Store

I would say that a app store like will harm drupal community and as you said it will put off new comers to try/evaluate drupal freely.

I absolutely agree with you.
When I started looking for a new CMS after working with ez publish for some time, I just downloaded a lot of Systems and played around with them.
One of the Systems I tried out was Joomla. And I tried to build a basic website with it. I don't know about its current status, but back then, there was no easy way to get clean URLs. There were at least three custom modules for SEO URLs. But none of them were free. And I really didn't want to pay 20$ each just to try them out and look which one works for me.
Lucky me, because the next CMS I looked at was Drupal 5, and it had everything I was looking for. :)

I've been thinking about this same thing. Two things come to mind. First, donations don't really work. They have been tried in some spaces and even on some drupal.org modules. The data I've seen suggests they just don't work. If Drupal is somehow going to pursue this how would we do it differently than those who came before us to make it work? If we don't have a way than why would we assume we are going to be different from them? This is what's stopped me from embracing donations.

Second, I hear a lot of criticism of existing Drupal modules. The state of contrib has driven numerous people away from Drupal. Since they don't really care about Drupal we aren't going to see blog posts from them sharing their experiences. But, I've seen their comments in the Drupal space and have talked with people about this.

Among their complaints are modules without good end user documentation, not enough support in forums, or modules for developers when what they want is a feature. There are others as well. The nature of our community leads to developer modules and not a lot of great documentation or support.

Could an app store address people like this?

I don't know the right answers here nor am I sure whether there is good space for an app store. But, I do have lots of questions that someone who pursues an app store should try to answer.

I agree with your first point. It would have made me think twice about choosing Drupal when I first started out. I'm sure a commercial app store would be an additional unnecessary barrier and upshot would be fewer people coming to Drupal. Besides which, in no time at all, all quality modules would disappear behind paywalls (devs with tens of thousands of downloads would be mad not to charge) and the spirit of Drupal with it. It's a bad, bad idea.

But mostly it's unnecessary. We already have an app store - it's called Drupal.org, and it works perfectly well.

Should devs earn more money....? Well, from my own vantage, it seems that the makers of best and most exciting modules enjoy a status that brings great financial rewards. Their reputations justly go before them, and they get the best jobs. We all benefit from the free nature of modules. No drupal site was ever built from a single module. Any money they might earn selling their modules, would be offset when they come to build a site by the cost of using modules developed by others. So what is the point, except to firstly, ride on apple's coat-tails in a silly quest for coolness, and secondly to create a two tier system? And why these days do there seem to be constant attempts to create two tier systems of one sort or another in Drupal? It's like a huge flock of birds, that having reached a certain mass can't rest until it's split in two. Mark my words - the risk for Drupal isn't from competitor CMS, slow reactions to new technologies or smallcore: it's from misguided initiatives like this that use a seductive but specious rationale to push for some sort of division.

I believe those people who are thinking they're going to make a bundle selling their modules are delusional.

Let's cut to the chase: this is about money, right?

I currently maintain several small modules and am about to release another one. I pride myself on producing quality compliant modules and strive to be responsive to bug reports and support requests. I genuinely enjoy helping people. I do so as time permits and people are largely accommodating and appreciative. The earning potential of selling these modules doesn't excite me. I can make more money in a week building a brochure web site than in a whole year selling my modules. In addition, peoples expectations will increase dramatically once you start asking them shell out real money. What was once a labor-of-love volunteer contribution has turned into a full-blown commercial obligation. No thanks, I don't need the headaches or aggravation.

I'm all for new ideas and people making money. Just work smarter, not harder. I predict if this model is widely adopted it will fragment the community and you will see many of us leave.

Agree w you. Everytime I want to try a module, I test it in a development environment first... if i were to be charged, it would severely limit my choices of modules to test- which is important, because there is often many modules that accomplish the same task.

Yes, there could be a way to make donations much easier. There could be a module that would donate $1 to all installed modules. Or there could be an unified donation infrastructure on drupal.org - right now people integrate whatever they can like ChipIn. It probably wouldn't bring in huge amounts of money, but it's a start. Drupal.org could still get 30% of the donations.

Yeah donations makes so much sense in this system. I also read somewhere about hiring the core module developers to create features of a certian module. This too makes sense. That way a business gets a feature they need ( and would otherwize pay a developer for ) and the module developers are at the front of what thier module is being used for. I still believe that feature requests should be free, in how it is happening right now on D.O , but if a business needs functionality its going to be done either way, whether a non developer fights his way through a learning curve of development, they wait for the feature request to be implemented, or they just hire a developer.

Selling modules .. hmmm ... does wordpress sell any of its plug-ins (although I know a lot of people dont like to compare WP and drupal , the fight is on, the new WP is moving up and they have a lot of people involved - they dont have views though ; )

When something is awesome why get money involved. Mo Money Mo Problems!

You can sell tickets to concerts and sports events. But try selling tickets to church. It just won't work. Start charging and you'll kill Drupal. Kind of the goose and the golden egg thing. I used to develop sites using a shopping cart that had "pay for" modules. Work was just a matter of doing what you had to in order to get the job done. No experimentation, no enthusiam, no community, no pushing the boundries. Look around and you'll see that when it comes to Drupal, a lot of people speak in terms of addiction. Start charging and you'll lose the addicts. Their habbit will become just too expensive. Drupal will be left with drone workerbees. And what kind of community will that be? Certainly not cutting-edge.

I maintain a handful of modules on drupal.org and I've been following all these posts alot trying to sort out my thoughts on the matter. Ultimately, I can't think of decent way for devs to be compensated for maintainership, but one thing I know for sure is an app store is not that answer.

First, currently, everyone in the community is basically an equal member-- and app store would change all that. I know that I would instantly stop all the time I spend troubleshooting and submitting patches to others' modules. And I'm sure others would as well. Afterall, why should someone volunteer their time and effort to someone else's paid project?

Second my mind reels at the overnight explosion of paid duplicate modules that would likely occur-- most of which would probably be from many of the already marginal quality drupal dev shops we see pop up from time to time. I often see posts in the forums from people with obviously questionable drupal dev skills whining about how they want to sell their modules. This can't help but affect newbies perceptions of drupal as whole. Plus, we already have a known problem now with guiding users to finding the best modules for a particular use case-- this would only greatly exacerbate it.

As some other have mentioned here and in other posts on this subject, I too originally came from joomla-- at the time their adherence to the GPL was still marginal. I very quickly became disillusioned as nearly every single module road invariably lead to having to pay for basic functionality. I even began to wonder if the free and buggy versions of paid modules were nothing more than bate and switch for the paid ones.

It was drupal's free (both as in speech and beer) community where everyone is on an equal footing that led me to stay, learn to develop for drupal, and contribute both my own modules and patches to others' modules. I'm also working on getting good enough to eventually contribute to core. I'd really hate to lose that and that's exactly what an app store would do. :-(

A drupal app store makes no sense to me.
There are hundreds of good quality and open source CMS.
I chose Drupal because I like it. And I promote it at every opportunity every time I discuss with friends and professionals about development.
If I stop liking it I will leave Drupal.

Drupal has already got a good and sustainable business model.
The community builds powerful extensions that allow small businesses to provide support and build powerful applications.
This is a growing ecosystem and will become richer. A commercial app store is like exactly what Joomla does.

If developers want more money they can learn a commercial technology like Oracle, SAP etc or simply they can build Drupal modules for enterprises.

Drupal is powerful because of the modules. If you charge for them I stop using them and Drupal stops being powerful.

That's what I think...

First, I agree with the previous posts that paying for modules would have turned me off of Drupal on day one. It reminds me of VBulletin board, you have to pay for every little add on and customization, many have also moved to subscription modules, which is even worse. The last thing modules need is more bloat to build income!

DrupalModules.com is my App Store! between DrupalModules and Drupal.org, how many more places are needed to scatter modules out to? DrupalModules is a great resource and I find it much easier to find and evaluate modules on it than Drupal.org.

Drupal lives (and could possibly die) by its contributed modules. I think the fewer barriers between the code needed to make Drupal do what site builders need, the better. I also think contributors should get a little something back to thank them for their efforts. My guess is that a few bucks from 50% of each install would barely scratch the surface as compensation for many contrib developers. However, I do know that a simple gesture of Thank You can also go a long ways toward rewarding someone that has donated their time and services. So I would urge everyone that has ever found a module and thought "This is exactly what I was looking for!" to toss the developer a few bucks if they a option to do so, or send them a message of thanks otherwise!

I have found many modules frustrating due to poor or zero documentation. Paying for modules with less than stellar documentation could give Drupal a big black eye. Likewise, stroking the developers with donations and thanks could help encourage developers to provide better documentation.

Back in 2004 when I started with Mambo almost all modules there where free. With the transition to Joomla things have changed and now there are more commercial modules than free ones. This was one of the reasons why I switched to Drupal.

Community based on enthusiasm and volounteering is much more exiting and motivating. It also drives you to contribute back which will never happen with commercial modules. There you will have demands instead of patches. :)

And also think about stuff like drush make scripts, distributions and profiles. If at least some (important) modules will go commercial, what will happen with automatic build scripts and distributions? Building a site and then entering a bunch of serial numbers? Paying and downloading them manually? No, thanks!

Hi Tim,

I agree with you, and all commenter's, that a separate app store would be treading a dangerous path that without question will lead to conflicts within the community.

Like you I have been thinking a lot about the app store idea and how it to some part still could be used to benefit Drupal without creating issues. My take on it is that it has to be integrated on drupal.org, but not as a pay before download. Instead my idea is based on sponsoring and fundraising and making it easy for users to do this for modules they want to see ported to Drupal 7, getting new features and so on.

The app store itself would be an improved Download and Extend section and revamped project pages and administrated by the Drupal Association, who in return would get a cut from it.

You can find a more detailed description about this on Drupal Mill. The post also includes an angle for commercial interests to promote added services for project they host on drupal.org. Something I believe could give them a compelling reason for investing in developing modules for Drupal.

Instead of focusing on apps; we already have that it's called modules and they are free. Besides having had to provide feature analysis between several retail software systems and Drupal the Free part really helps convince corporations of the advantages.
Monetizing Drupal modules (which are bound by the open source license on Drupal.org) it going to be pretty tough to say the lease. Besides having had experience with the Saleforce.com API module there are select companies (who's names I will not mention) who have expanded the (rather basic if dare I say unusable) community version of the module to provide themselves a competitive edge against anyone else who does salesforce integration with Drupal. I compare the strategy to what Microsoft did, branching Java and calling is J# (of which they got sued and lost as I remember).

But, really it's about selling value, experience, and expertise. True any Joe or Jill Blow off the street can install Drupal and a few modules and claim they are a Drupal consultants (which I've experienced the aftermath of and do I have horror stories of the fakers out there).

Drupal has become a complex platform and if you are building a blog or simple community website any newcomer "may" be able to build their website on Drupal. But once you start talking about work flows, revisions, e-commerce, high performance scalability and stability, security and enterprise-grade centralized account and business systems integration. And Poof, you've just lost 98% of the community right there.

It's one thing to look for a Drupal consultant to help you put a slideshow on your church website. It is a totally different process to select consultants who will provide direction on integrating your small business's processed within Drupal. And an even harder step to find consultants with the depth required to support the needs of enterprise business which may require a marketing, intranet and extranet sites that integrate into several business systems (On windows, linux, and unix platforms).

Finding quality, experienced business and software professionals can be challenging no matter what technology or industry you are talking about (and no I'm not talking about just the companies that pay lots of money to Acquia to be listed as "partners").

That is what I think is of value, not paid module distributions or "features" bundles.

Robert Foley Jr
Solutions Architect
www.robertfoleyjr.com

This is Bad Bad Bad on so many levels. An App Store is the absolute opposite direction of What Drupal Stands for. Stupid idea.

Hi, I've been using Joomla for a while and I sometimes use WordPress, but I've heard good things about Drupal and was wondering if anyone things the apps are better and why? I know this is quite a hard question to answer but figured I would just get your general oppinion. I think an app store for all three would be good, Joomla, WP and Drupal. I created my main site with Joomla: webdesignservices.net

I like the idea of a paid drupal app store - what about a free trial of some of the modules with limited functionality and then a paid version with full use? www.flightstozante.co.uk

From the GNU FAQ:

I want to distribute an extended version of a GPL-covered program in binary form. Is it enough to distribute the source for the original version?
No, you must supply the source code that corresponds to the binary. Corresponding source means the source from which users can rebuild the same binary.

Part of the idea of free software is that users should have access to the source code for *the programs they use*. Those using your version should have access to the source code for your version.

A major goal of the GPL is to build up the Free World by making sure that improvement to a free program are themselves free. If you release an improved version of a GPL-covered program, you must release the improved source code under the GPL.

I downloaded just the binary from the net. If I distribute copies, do I have to get the source and distribute that too?

Yes. The general rule is, if you distribute binaries, you must distribute the complete corresponding source code too. The exception for the case where you received a written offer for source code is quite limited.

My friend got a GPL-covered binary with an offer to supply source, and made a copy for me. Can I use the offer myself to obtain the source?

Yes, you can. The offer must be open to everyone who has a copy of the binary that it accompanies. This is why the GPL says your friend must give you a copy of the offer along with a copy of the binary—so you can take advantage of it.
--
You really want to push the idea Drupal is another Joomla?
:wq WTF_people.txt