Blogger touts SharePoint, but uses Drupal
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Baris Wanschers has posted a great review of 10 cool Web sites running Microsoft SharePoint, apparently to prove how good SharePoint is as a Web publishing tool. But I can't help but smile at the irony that Wanschers' site runs Drupal, not SharePoint.
Wanschers writes:
Because so many friends and colleagues of [mine] think of SharePoint as a boring, team-site-only Document Management System I decided to show them some great-looking SharePoint publishing sites and prove them otherwise.
He then provides several examples (Ferrari, Starbucks, and more), but the best counterexample to his post is the "paper" his post is written on: Drupal, an excellent open-source Web content management and publishing system.
To be fair, Wanschers describes himself as both a SharePoint and Drupal developer, so it's natural that he use both (though his blog has exclusively covered SharePoint since its March 2009 launch). But for me it's instructive that however much he may talk about SharePoint as a Web publishing tool, Drupal is what he actually uses to do the job.
Actions speak louder than words.
He's not alone. In fact, with over 1 million downloads each year, it's safe to say that Wanschers is in good company in preferring Drupal for Web publishing. FedEx, Nike, R.E.M., and many others share Wanschers' preference for Drupal for Web publishing.
Disclosure: My company, Alfresco, both partners and competes with Microsoft SharePoint and Drupal.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I thing Sharepoint is no good but compare apples and bananas isn't the answer
I"m not trying to say that open source is inherently anti-capitalist (if companies can make money from it, so much the better). But, for instance, 'love' or 'happiness' are free - that doesn't make them worth less than buying happiness in a bottle...
But there's a good reason. They're using the right product for the right job at the right price point. Shock horror, Microsoft and members of their developer ecosystem don't have to always use Microsoft products. Perhaps it's a good thing. We learn about other tools too.
I unsubscribed from the influential 37signals blogs some time ago because of the pointless jibes at Microsoft but praise only for open source and Rails. This blog often sounds very similarly closed minded.
It isn't about the platform, it's about the content. Pretty tasteless to attack someone in this fashion.
First using Sharepoint to publish a blog would like using Photoshop to just rotate your pictures to the right orientation.
Next, perhaps Drupal is just what is offered by his hosting provider and he may be limited in provider selection by other factors not available to you.
I use both MS and Open Source products in conducting my business, with our external systems mainly being Linux, Apache, etc. and our Internal components primarily being MS and those decisions are based on *actual* business needs, not some friggin' high minded ideals. So, if you want to call me hypocrite for liking, and even espousing, some MS products but using Open Source as well, then my opinion of you has dropped to zero because you just become another Fanboi and hater in my eyes.
And if you consider this to be a personal attack, then go back and read your column again. I was much nicer.
I actually thought it was funny, and c'mon, kids - Matt was fair about it (he could've just shouted j'accuse! and not mentioned the duality involved).
Drupal can be expanded to do most of what SharePoint does (if suitably modified), and SharePoint can be expanded to do most of what Drupal does (ditto).
OTOH, if you're going to outright evangelize about something? It kinda helps to -- as Steve Ballmer Hisself puts it -- eat your own dogfood, yanno?
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But Matt... you missed a perfect opportunity to do something: to better open a dialogue about the relative usefulness of the two suites or their applicability across SMB and enterprise, and not just about sermon vs. habit. ;)
Yup. Just as bad.
- by cacharbe August 7, 2009 10:45 AM PDT
- Coming up next, Local Machete manufacturer fails to us own tools during sensitive eye surgery. After the break, we'll discuss how to wash your infant in HCL...the gentle way.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (41 Comments)What an idiot.