OT: Drupal in The New York Times

[Meng Cheah]

The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/nyregion/02open.html

March 2, 2009


Software System’s Fans Gather to Talk Code

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

There were people who were proud to call themselves tech geeks and a few 
who admitted being near-Luddites, and there was at least one person who 
called herself a radical technologist. They joined book publishers, 
librarians and computer consultants, some of whom had come from as far 
as Ireland and Brazil, at the Polytechnic Institute of New York 
University 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
in Downtown Brooklyn on Saturday for something akin to a happening for 
the Internet age — Drupal Camp.

Drupal <http://drupal.org> is free software used to run Web sites, and 
participants at the event said they were drawn there, despite 
differences in backgrounds and ideologies, by a belief in an almost 
utopian form of technological cooperation.

“We’re throwing out the idea of software as a commodity and replacing it 
with the idea of labor and participation being valued more than 
ownership,” Eric Goldhagen, a software consultant and developer from the 
East Village and a primary organizer of the event, told the gathering.

Drupal was developed by Dries Buytaert <http://buytaert.net>, a Belgian 
programmer, and nearly 10 years ago he made the Drupal code public, 
giving up formal control of his creation and letting people use it 
without charge with the stipulation that they share modifications and 
improvements with one another.

In keeping with that decentralized spirit, after Mr. Goldhagen’s 
introductory address the participants put the conference schedule to a 
vote, then scattered to take part in workshops and discussions.

“This is a very social event,” said Cary Gordon, president of a software 
development company in Los Angeles. “The users and the developers are 
one and the same and there’s a certain amount of esprit de corps that 
goes along with that.”

Dozens of Drupal Camps are held around the world annually, yet Mr. 
Goldhagen said the first was held in New York in 2006, when Drupal was a 
relatively obscure system, used mainly by nonprofit organizations and 
small businesses.

Many of those initial users turned to Drupal to avoid licensing fees 
charged by companies like Microsoft 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/microsoft_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>. 
But other users liked Drupal because they were free to change it 
themselves by writing new code, or because they were drawn to the sense 
of community formed when users began to communicate with one another 
about how to resolve technical snags and how to shape the software’s 
future.

In recent years Drupal (the name, according to its Web site, is derived 
from druppel, the Dutch word used to describe a drop of water) has 
become more popular. Large companies like Sony 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/sony_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
use it, as do organizations like Human Rights Watch 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/human_rights_watch/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
and the Pulitzer Prizes 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/pulitzer_prizes/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>. 
The federal Web site recovery.gov <http://recovery.gov>, a clearinghouse 
of information on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, recently 
signed into law by President Obama 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, 
is run on Drupal.

Chris Ridder, a residential fellow at the Center for the Internet and 
Society <http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/> at Stanford Law School, said 
that there was an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of free and 
open-source software, but added that such software has recently become 
more widely used, in part because of its flexibility.

As might be expected, the conference itself was free. Sponsors donated 
food and drinks, and instructors volunteered their time.

So, 50 beginners gathered in Room 204, illuminated only by the glow of 
laptop screens and a beam from an overhead projector as one of those 
volunteers, Peter Dowling, 43, of Stamford, Conn., led them though the 
steps of installing Drupal on their computers.

Down the hall, in Room 200, about 20 advanced users listened to David 
Burns, a consultant from Philadelphia, describe ways to speed up a 
sluggish Web site. The audience clapped, and Mr. Burns, 27, announced 
that he could be found later at a nearby bar, the Zombie Hut.

Some of the participants said that they were motivated to use Drupal 
mainly by a sense of pragmatism. Others cited principle.

The radical technologist, Mallory Knodel, 25, of the Lower East Side, 
writes code to help further leftist causes. She said Drupal had been 
helpful for her group, May First/People Link, a network that includes 
trade unions and political pranksters who oppose globalization.

And Andy Thornton, 36, a programmer from Astoria, Queens, who works at 
the United Nations 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, 
said the egalitarian nature of Drupal was “almost the epitome of what 
the Web promised at the beginning. This is very much a democracy. It 
doesn’t have a top-down authority.”
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