Drupal shooting itself in the foot?

Views, Events, Image and Image Assist are important elements for a lot of basic sites but we are all hamstrung until they are rejigged. Plus, it should be noted that the ISP's who are providing people with access to drupal are moving with the latest version before any of the extra functionality has been developed.

Suppose that Drupal7 will be released in 9 months.
If I were a module developer, I would not port modules to D6 but wait till the new version is around. Otherwhise I would have to actively maintain 3 versions (5, 6 and 7, not to mention 4).

On the other hand, we want the new functionality! But what is Drupal without the contrib modules?
Hmmm, difficult.

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Joep
CompuBase, Drupal websites and design

If I had a dollar for every time someone brought this up... "You're going too fast"

"We love Drupal but with the new versions it strikes me that they are decimating the system."

By "decimating", do you mean "improving"? But seriously, what makes you think there's any decimation happening here?

"Every new release of Drupal reduces the number of modules available and thus is detrimental to the project."

No, people don't delete their modules when a newer version of Drupal is available. Nor do modules stop working.

"backward compatible"

See http://drupal.org/node/65922

Our company is still using Drupal 5 and we won't be moving to Drupal 6 until we can match what we can already achieve with Drupal 5, but it's not hurting us in any way, shape or form by waiting.

There's a number of reasons why slowing down development is pointless:

1. Everyone scratches their own itch - if Robert Douglass wants to add spelling suggestions to the search module then that's his choice, not yours or mine. Can you imagine someone who you've never met telling you what to work on next? Also, people won't update a module unless it's in their best interest to do so, people like chx aren't going to drop everything just to upgrade random modules to D6.
2. Drupal wouldn't be what it is today if it had to be backwards compatible with contributed modules.
3. The latest stable version of Drupal will always receive updates as long as there are bugs worth fixing. Drupal 5 received 7 updates (with numerous fixes in each update) over the course of ~12 months, as you can see Drupal 5 is still being worked on to this day. Likewise, Drupal 6 has received 2 updates already.

If you want a module to be updated sooner rather than later then do something about it! There's plenty of information and resources on how to upgrade modules, you can also test development snapshots and provide feedback.

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How to override HTML in Drupal 6

If you look in module downloads you'll find new modules for 6 every day.

When you use Drupal, you get the community.

That includes the wonderful things Drupal can do, and also the challenges that members of the community face. It should be said however that those challenges like rapid release time are really seen more as characteristics by those in the community. As a participant in the community there's a few expectations of you also. Those expectations revolve generally around working how those of us in the community work. There are ways to slow down in the manner you're describing while also moving forward.

As mentioned before, you can help with module upgrades, this is a 'going with the flow' approach. The main benefit of this is you stay in tune with the most vibrant drupal contributions.

You could also help maintain the release you're interested in keeping around longer. If someone really wanted to, they could go back and maintain Drupal 3. There's just no interest in it. I think Drupal 5 will be a different story though. The benefit of this is we could end up with an equivalent to Ubuntu's Long Term Support distributions that would make businesses happier. The drawback of this is that while core might end up getting supported, contrib modules will likely follow the first path, because that's where the richness of the experience is for a developer scratching their own itch. Also, there are fewer resources spread around many modules, and many will not be able to maintain their older versions.

Finally, the last option is to particpate to the extent that your concerns will be heard. If your argument is compelling enough and presents a rational conclusion that enough people will agree with, you can get your way in the Drupal community. It happens every day.

There might be other options, but I can't think of them. This is another area of Drupal where there's more than one way to do things :)

Clients need to be educated about this fundamental difference between Open Source projects and their commercial counterparts in general. Part of the cost of 'getting the software for free' is working with the community. Sometimes that takes effort and financial resources as well. My clients do invest in the intial development, ongoing updates and upgrades to keep things in line with the general directions of the community, and contributions back to the community. I explain how all this works up front, and tell them that's the trade off for using a commercial system. They get it, and they appreciate it.

@rwbutler, this is a great question, and I'm glad you brought it up.

Trevor Twining
http://www.trevortwining.com

The thing is this.

In the early days Drupal was an emerging technology. Each new release added a lot of vital functionality - I remember going from Drupal 4 to 5 and being pleased with all the new features that were added.

But going from Drupal 5 to 6 doesn't seem to be quite so compelling. Yes, some really good things have been added, but as Drupal becomes increasingly complex, each new feature requires a lot more time to develop and test. It's a great stable platform now, and as a result it needs to be treated as such.

I can see the points about backward-compatibility. I don't think it's necessary for Drupal 6 to support modules from Drupal versions 3 or even 4 - but my life would be much simpler if it supported Drupal 5 modules. After each new release, which is a punishing 12 month cycle, there's a 6 month delay whilst modules are ported to the latest version. I do my bit, by porting all of my own modules, and some parts of contributed code in testing - but I can't give that to my clients because it's a Beta release. Instead they have to take the older version and a risky upgrade in a couple of years' time.

Drupal is a mature project now, and it has become a thorough stable platform that we know and love. I think that there needs to be a way-path found to compromise between the regular new releases and compatibility - that way we can always use the latest version, something which I find to be one of the more important project aims.

David.

My concern is a little different. I have no problem with new versions coming every year, but I strongly believe Drupal needs to support older versions with security patches longer than they currently do. Discontinuing 4.7 the moment 6.x was released was a bad decision, IMO.

I really hope that when Drupal 7 hits, 5.x won't immediately become a security risk.

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John Forsythe
Drupal Modules - Find the module you need for your project!

but it what might possibly be happening is folks high up in the system might be driving this crazy schedule in order to build a for-profit product down the line. something like that.