Not all of my comments in this article still stand. I realized this after becoming more involved with the Drupal community.

If you ask anyone that knows me well about how I feel about Drupal then they will tell you that I'm obsessed with it. My fervor to Drupal is the equivalent to outwardly passionate Christians to the Bible. I find very little negative to say about it and I take the time to point out the faults in other Content Management Systems. Now I will admit that Drupal is not for the faint of heart. If you are only looking to write a blog then go get WordPress. If you want to create a content rich site that is fully controllable and dynamic then Drupal is the way to go. I have now found a major fault with Drupal, not the CMS itself but the foundation that built it.

Drupal Funding

Over the past year Drupal's exposure and user base has grown tremendously. I believe the figure was 250%. Major search engines have recognized this and have been catering to the decision makers behind drupal. Drupal was recently featured at Open Source Content Management Systems, which was hosted by Yahoo at Yahoo! campus in Sunnyvale, CA. A couple months later they received a huge funding for 20 projects from Google's Summer of Coding. Not too long after that Knights Foundation contributed $200,000 to Drupal related projects.

Drupal Membership

Now here I am having alot of pride for the best CMS in the world and the fact that I was on board before it took off really big. This was until I read these two articles, Drupal.org advertising proposals requested and Drupal Association membership pricing survey. Here are a few questions from the survey so you have the idea of what Drupal is looking to do.

• 9. At what price would you say the Drupal (individual/corporate) annual membership is EXPENSIVE but worth considering?
• 11. At what price would you say the Drupal (individual/corporate) annual membership is TOO CHEAP to be of value?
• 13. On a scale of 1 (least likely) to 5 (most likely), how likely would you be to purchase the Drupal (individual/corporate) annual membership at the EXPENSIVE price you mentioned?
• Would you pay for a free T-Shirt

I'm sure you understand what they are getting at. To sum it up for those that don't. The main goal for Drupal is to find out what's the most money they can get from someone for a membership. And I find it even more insulting that whoever decided to create this survey did not have the decency to create it using Drupal. It's using Survey Monkey and it looks like crap.

What really happened here? Did the funding from all those projects go directly to hire a financial planner? Did this financial planner convince the once open source minded individuals from Drupal to milk the community that has helped make Drupal what it is today? It feels like Drupal is falling away from it's foundation and segregating it's communities into those that can afford or are willing to pay for membership and those that are not.

I was keeping these feelings cluttered inside for about a week, but tonight when I logged on I saw that top left block which screamed "Help Drupal Grow, DONATE NOW". Last time I checked, the reason that Drupal grew so much and so rapidly was because of the brilliant and passionate programmers that saw the full potential of using Drupal.

Better Decisions

I do not disagree that advertisements and donations will help Drupal grow, my biggest concern is that it could have been done in a much more respectable manner. The changes should have been staggered so it did not feel as much like a culture shock. Advertisements first, mild references to donations, and then memberships if the first two options didn't provide enough funding.

This does not mean I'm going to end move love for Drupal or keep preaching it's glory to everyone that lets me. When I'm financially sound enough I may even pay for a yearly membership. But till then I'm going to need the resources available so I can grow myself as a Drupal developer, as I sure others will too.