Why Drupal and Joomla Are Good For Each Other?

Submitted by Dale on February 20, 2008 - 11:42pm
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One of the open source dynamics I find interesting is how associated communities borrow the best ideas from each other. It's true in the Drupal/Joomla/Wordpress space and true in the Python/Perl/Ruby space. It's been the observation of many that all the communities benefit from the diversity of their "sister" projects. Some say it's just healthy competition. Research highlighted in this Indiana University press release, The downside of a good idea, indicates it's deeper than that:

Goldstone found that the fully connected groups performed the best when solving simple problems. Small world groups, however, performed better on more difficult problems. For these problems, the truism "The more information, the better" is not valid.

"The small world network preserves diversity," Goldstone said. "One clique could be coming up with one answer, another clique could be coming up with another. As a result, the group as a whole is searching the problem space more effectively. For hard problems, connecting people by small world networks offers a good compromise between having members explore a variety of innovations, while still quickly disseminating promising innovations throughout the group.

My heart is with Drupal, may it lead the pack, but I hope our fellow communities thrive as well!

Tip of the hat to io9.

Comments

Submitted by Gerard on February 21, 2008 - 2:10am

Funny, something about Joomla always put me off. I don't think I've ever tried it. Drupal, on the other hand is becoming quite an interesting platform. I agree that competition between the two will help them thrive, but honestly I don't think I'm even interested in Joomla.

Maybe it's because I'm not picking up much enthusiasm or evangelism for it?

Submitted by Dale on February 21, 2008 - 9:26am

It's enough that Joomla and friends are out there and thriving so the communities can "idea jam" together.

Submitted by Elvis McNeely on February 21, 2008 - 10:07am

I think we are looking to narrow. In general OS organizations/companies all learn from eachother. I am sure that some Drupal devs have built modules off of other sources besides Joomla. I know the crew for Ubercart is pulling some code from OSCommerce.

In the end, other OS entities can grow from Drupal and vice versa. That is the beauty of OS. I personally don't like Joomla/WP, but I am very interested in understanding their popularity. See why:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=joomla%2C+mambo%2C+wordpress%2C+drupal

I think the study from IU is interesting but I am interested in knowing (will read later) more about the environment used.

Thanks for posting...

Submitted by Kieran on February 23, 2008 - 12:11pm

We have to work together with our friends at Joomla, and Wordpress. We are working side by side to create a new way of developing software, sharing information, and creating value. I can list 10 things that both do better than Drupal. It's helps me to get barrings about what their users value.

Great post.

Cheers,
Kieran

Submitted by Eugen on June 25, 2008 - 7:26pm

both cms are good and high performance. i used joomla,but finally I decided for Drupal. I cannot say why. perhaps because Drupal can be more easily served.