Building the Drupal Economy

We were gratified last week at DrupalCon London to see the positive response to the Open App Standard initiative we introduced there, along with our collaborators at Phase2 Technology.

We believe that apps are going to become a crucial future component of Drupal, making it easier than has been previously possible to add discrete pieces of functionality to a Drupal website.

Using apps saves time for Drupal developers, and makes it possible for others to build for Drupal, even if they don’t know Drupal. Apps also make it easier for end users to add functionality to their sites, without needing to get down into the code layer or to pay a developer to do it for them.

For SubHub it’s had an obvious benefit -- apps enable our customers to easily add and manage features on the websites they build using our Drupal 7-powered platform. We can also charge for apps, creating a revenue stream for ourselves and our partners.

The Open App Standard provides a standard framework for creating an app, enabling developers to build an app once and know that it can be made available across any platform that conforms to the standard. We hope that other Drupal players will join us, and Phase2, in adopting this standard.

Over time we plan to expand our app store into a full-blown marketplace, that similarly enables service providers to directly offer their services to our customers. Service providers -- such as web designers, developers, SEO experts and others -- will be able to set a price for their services and be rated and ranked based on the quality of the services they provide.

All of this contributes to a Drupal economy, which is what’s needed if Drupal is to succeed as anything more than an enterprise solution.

To compete with the likes of WordPress, SquareSpace and other more consumer-focused solutions, Drupal needs to build something bigger than its current enterprise-focused orientation. Drupal needs to improve its usability, enabling people with little or no technical skill to easily manage the complexity of Drupal. And it needs to provide a way for people to make money from Drupal other than by undertaking contract development work.

At SubHub, we’ve been leading this effort ever since we launched our app model in November 2010. Apps address the usability issue by making it easy for anyone to add and manage new website features. And they help create a Drupal economy by providing third-party developers with a way to make money from Drupal, without learning Drupal.

We’re excited by the Open App Standard and glad that companies such as Phase2 also appreciate, as we do, some of the benefits of creating a Drupal economy.