Invitation to an informal “AgriDrupal” meeting in the context of the IAALD Congress in Montpellier
Over the last few years there have been quite a few developments around the opensource CMS “Drupal”.
Drupal itself has had a boost through venture capital and by being taken up by implementers like the “Economist” and “Whitehouse.gov”.
In our community, there are more and more implementers of Drupal solutions:
- Cornell libraries have been working for years with Drupal, also linking it with their VIVO system;
- Drupal plays a role in the “Rangeland West” project aiming at providing global access to rangeland information;
- AgroPedia Indica is based on Drupal and the websites of ICAR agricultural faculties are moving to Drupal;
- At least 3 CG Centers are porting their websites to Drupal;
- Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou is working on the integration of ontologies into Drupal;
- Our team in FAO has ported the AIMS website and community to Drupal and is working on various specialized applications to use Drupal also for repository management;
- Condesan has developed websites in Drupal.
This is only an incomplete list. We would be happy to get more information also from others.
We think that we should create a community that exchanges solutions. Many of the tasks, methodologies and standards that all of us want to integrate into Drupal are the same. If we collaborate, we can enhance our productivity.
We have given the “AgriDrupal” title to this collaborative effort, but we look forward to your feedback on this and your suggestions on the way forward.
We take the opportunity of the IAALD Congress in Montpellier to convene a first informal meeting of this community and all those interested are invited to participate.
The meeting will take place in the library rooms at "SupAgro" in Montpellier on Sunday April 25th from 3 pm to 6 pm.
Convenors
Adam Sanchez (Condesan)
Valeria Pesce (GFAR)
Imma Subirats (FAO)
Johannes Keizer (FAO)
John Fereira (Cornell)
Update: attached is a draft information sheet to be used / discussed at the meeting.
Comments are welcome!
| المرفق | الحجم |
|---|---|
| AgriDrupal info sheet | 117 كيلوبايت |
Array
I have some observations:
I have some observations:
-I opine that slogan of Agridrupal could be : 'Agridrupal: Drupal for Agricultural Information Management'. It is according with names of profiles built in CMS Drupal and shortest :)
-I think that we don't confuse sustainability of Drupal with sustainability of Agridrupal. I think that the majority of reasons identified in 'How is the AgriDrupal approach sustainable?' are referred to Drupal, not Agridrupal necessarily.
-I think that sustainability of AgriDrupal as tool depends on technical support 'just in time'. We can be very naive if think that it's not necessary to have a institution or person directly responsible of everything tasks related with maintenance.
But, what kind of tasks of maintenance are necessary? I think that is important define this point because you can talk about this in Montpellier.
In order to have more ideas about this topic, I was reading information about Presflow and Open Publish (very importants profiles based on Drupal) and I found their activities of maintenance are:
Presflow
[http://fourkitchens.com/pressflow-makes-drupal-scale]
'Following each Drupal core release, Pressflow is “reset,” and all enhancements undergo review. In many cases, new major Drupal releases integrate enhancements that were once exclusive to Pressflow. In such cases, the corresponding Pressflow releases use the standard Drupal implementation to preserve module compatibility. Older major versions of Pressflow continue to support the Pressflow-exclusive implementations.'
Open Publish
[http://openpublishapp.com/roadmap]
'We intend to keep the OpenPublish distribution up to date and compatible with Drupal core and our selected contributed modules as they become available. We'll continue to work closely with core and module maintainers and the Drupal security team to contribute issues and patches. We plan to release new versions of OpenPublish several times a year. In the case of critical security releases, we will create patches as soon as possible.'
I know that these enterprises are privates but tasks of maintenance are the same. The Drupal community can support each module that is part of Agridrupal but not compatibility between them for example.
Well, I suggest you take in account the following:
- Preservation of module compatibility.
- Follow up of patches.
- Release of profile several times a year.
- Keep up updated documentation about Agridrupal
- Coordinate tasks of Localization related with portability to other languages.
- Search sponsors for upgrade or patching of modules.
Please, don't forget that if Drupal is very strong not only is because have a big community. Drupal is very strong because have great leaders like Dries. It's very important implicate developers in this project that take it personally. In addition, many modules are result of sponsors that pay it by them.
In attachment can find more information about presentation of Open Publish. I opine that is a good example of introduccion to a profile. This document have three parts, in the first part you can read a wide explanation about state actual of Drupal, very interesting. In the second part (pages 18,19), you can read about arguments to use Open Publish. Finally, in the third part you can find case studies about use of Open Publish.
Cheers,
Adam
AgriDrupal sustainibility
Thanks for your comments,
I am also especially interested (concerned) about sustainibilty of Drupal and will be interested in hearing more about the PressFlow approach. Beyond that, a discussion on how a formal approach to how those in the AgriDrupal community can contribute the project would be worthy.
Since the workshop does not start until 3:00PM and I'll be arriving on Saturday I'll have some free time prior to the workshop for anyone that wants to chat more about Drupal in general (Imma?).