BlogsWeek.com

A few days ago Dries Buytaert announced Acquia, my Drupal startup.

The main reason to start a new company around Drupal products and services? Examining the open source projects that have had big impact on the technology industry, Dries concludes that successful projects usually have a well-capitalized company behind them. The presence of a well-capitalized provider makes projects palatable to users who might not otherwise try them.

The new company’s current working name is Acquia. “Acquia’s software products will include a number of Drupal distributions — for community networks, digital media properties, corporate websites, and others. In addition to providing Drupal distributions, Acquia will build the Drupal-tuned analogue of the RedHat Network, over which we can deliver a wide variety of electronic services intended to be useful to people developing and operating Drupal websites. An example such service is an automated upgrade/update service, an uptime and performance monitoring / reporting service, a configuration management service, etc.”

Will Acquia fork or close-source the Drupal code? Fear not, answers Dries. Since Acquia’s success is directly tied to the overall success of the Drupal project - and to how widely-used it becomes - the new company will contribute to Drupal development just as other companies or individuals do today.

So we wish all the best to Dries and Acquia, and we hope for a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship between business goals and free software!