BOSTON, MA, Mar 03 (MARKET WIRE) --
Today Acquia provided new details on plans to deliver a commercially
supported distribution and value-added network services based on the wildly
popular Drupal open source social publishing system. The company also threw open
the
doors on Acquia Projects, a collaborative environment for Drupal community
members to participate in the direction of forthcoming Acquia products and
services.
Acquia plans to ship a commercially supported distribution of Drupal,
code-named
"Carbon." The Carbon distribution will include the Drupal 6 core release and
essential extension modules for rapidly assembling compelling social publishing
sites and applications. With Carbon in hand, web developers will have fully
integrated and tested building blocks for user management, web content
management, single or multi-user blogs, wiki collaboration, discussion forums,
user-generated content, social networking, and more. In keeping with the spirit
of the open source development model, all Acquia-developed Drupal code will be
freely licensed under the GPL v2 license and the company will work continuously
to
mergenew features and patches into the main line Drupal project through the
established community process.
"Having a commercially supported distribution like Carbon is an essential
step in
the maturation of the Drupal project," said Dries Buytaert, Acquia co-founder
and Drupal creator and project lead. "I am personally committed to ensuring that
this distribution works to the benefit of the entire Drupal community."
Acquia plans to provide a range of maintenance and support subscriptions
designed to
meet the requirements of both individual developers and organizations
utilizing the Carbon distribution. Acquia subscriptions will enable customers
to harness the full open source power of Drupal without sacrificing the
accountability and support of commercial software.
Finally, as part of the initial Acquia subscription offerings, the company
plans
to introduce an enhanced electronic update notification service, code-named
"Spokes," that will automatically provide users of the Acquia distribution with
specific and actionable information to maintain system performance, security,
and stability. While the current Drupal update module provides unfiltered
notifications for all Drupal updates, the Spokes update notification service
will provide notifications for updates that have been reviewed for security
and compatibility and are supported by Acquia.
"We are on a mission to make Drupal the industry standard open source social
publishing system," said Jay Batson, Acquia co-founder. "For that to happen,
we must offer the accountability and support businesses have come to expect,
and Carbon and Spokes are just the first step in meeting this demand."
"We're seeing a clear convergence of content management, social media, and
web frameworks in the marketplace," said Geoffrey Bock, Lead Analyst at
Gilbane. "Drupal is at the center of this trend, and backing from Acquia will
solidify that position."
The Acquia subscription offerings, Carbon distribution, and the Spokes
update
notification service are expected for public release in the second half of 2008.
To learn more, and to participate in the direction of these and forthcoming
Acquia development projects, visit http://acquia.com/projects.
About Acquia
Acquia is a ground-breaking open source software company providing
value-added
products and services for the wildly popular Drupal social publishing system.
The people of Acquia are motivated by the belief that the open source
development approach and social publishing technology have the power to
connect people and unleash their collective creative potential in order to
achieve
great things. Company founders are Dries Buytaert, original Drupal creator and
project lead, and Jay Batson, previously founding CEO of open source VoIP
software
company, Pingtel.
About Drupal
The Drupal social publishing system has been downloaded over 2 million times
since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several
years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including
single
or multi-user blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web
content publishing and management.
Assisted by a thriving ecosystem of consultants and developers, a diverse
list of
organizations are using Drupal including SonyBMG, Warner Brothers Records, New
York Observer, Forbes, The Onion, Harvard University, and Amnesty
International. A huge community has grown up around Drupal, with thousands of
active contributors to the open source technology, including nearly 2000
community-developed modules for extending Drupal functionality.
Contact:
Jena Murphy
Citigate Cunningham
617-374-4216
Email Contact
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