When I first read Karoly's response, my inclination was to let this
drop, as I freely admit to not understanding the rationale behind
Karoly's initial response. But, given that my statement -- "But I am a
fan of meeting client expectations" -- has sparked some comments, I
wanted to take a moment to respond.
As I've been thinking about this, I have a hard time understanding the
reaction to the word "client." I suspect that this is largely due to our
client base -- we work mostly with educational orgs and non-profits; our
clients, frankly, are awesome, reasonable people, doing great work. I
feel very fortunate that our work (as a web development shop) supports
their work (as people doing great things to try and make the world a
better place).
But, to state the obvious, many clients are not like that, and I suspect
that when most people hear the word client, they think of corporate
types who think that real issues can be glossed over with better
marketing materials. In my time in the community, I have definitely seen
the tensions between the developer community, and those who think that
Drupal needs a makeover to appeal to a larger corporate audience. The
concerns that Drupal could become too corporate are, IMO, very valid,
and something that the community needs to watch for. In some ways, I see
this mirrored in the discussions about what DrupalCons should be, but
that's a broader topic than can be discussed here.
WRT Word, Oracle, and MS SQL: these are all proprietary apps. In very
general terms, when we look to support people (also known as users, or
clients), we should look for functionality that makes life better for as
many people as possible. The notion that "supporting people" equates
with accepting lower quality code is just not true; shortcuts are not
acceptable. So, any statements that "supporting feature x" will result
in bad code need to fall under the weight of their own inadequacy. Bad
code in pursuit of a real need is still bad code, and will always be
unacceptable.
In looking at the people who use Word, Oracle, and MS SQL, if an org is
using Oracle, they are likely to have some resources on hand, in either
the form of money, staffing, or both. In short, these folks are in a
relatively resource-rich environment. It takes a fair amount of money to
launch an app based on Oracle, and even more in recurring fees.
Word, on the other hand, is used by many people on the lower end of the
technology spectrum. In many non-profits/schools, the people typing in
Word don't have access to support personnel. They just want to get their
work done. In short, these are the people/smaller orgs who are *always*
disempowered by technology -- and there are a lot more of them than
there are Oracle DB Admins. When we look for solutions that help to
empower people, it's *good* to target things that make life easier for
people who have traditionally been shut out -- and this is more likely
to be true of your admin staff working in Word than your Oracle DB Admin
working for Monster Corporation X.
Stefan -- fwiw, I hope you make the choice to continue on with your
involvement in the community.
Cheers,
Bill
--
Bill Fitzgerald
http://funnymonkey.com
FunnyMonkey -- Click. Connect. Learn.
ph. 503 897 7160
