Condensing my previous post and other happenings into a shortlist.

1. We cut out the really unused product modules immediately. This is ongoing and a consensus is forming around the imminent death of blog, dashboard, php, profile, shortcut, statistics and trigger.
2. We find maintainers or do a quick refactor for the modules listed in the previous that stay. The goal here is the stabilize bleeding patients but nothing more. This seems to be ongoing, yesterday I saw a guy on IRC who was contemplating on taking the forum module maintainer hat.
3. With the "kernel" team now free, we focus on reworking our "kernel" (don't call this a framework -- maybe later, maybe never) to something nice. This is ongoing with the Configuration Management and the Web Services initiative.
4. Meanwhile, people rally around onramp profile (nee snowman). This seems to be a rather nice idea with a proper process: list of personas, user stories, specification before coding. The works. If this comes to be, we can cut more of the current product modules. This seems to be ongoing, there are people interested in this enough to give it a good name instead of a joke. This is something we definitely need help with and there are people who do these steps day in, day out, please head over to the group and participate.

All wheels are rolling finally. We understand where we are, what are the pain points and how to help them.

Because, no matter what, Drupal needs to be a product and the only product we have right now is the unfocused mess Drupal always had. We need a product to "sell" Drupal to people and we can't kill it right now in the hope that a better product arises. The Drupal product is, indeed the onramp. People set up personal websites (which is not necessary a blog) and then tell their bosses how cool Drupal is. Look at the product as a marketing tool.

And as things are right now, this simply can not be contrib. With all of its flaws, core still has a culture of quality that contrib doesn't match. For example, we have an iron hard dedication to documentation and test coverage which seems to be lacking in contrib. I am not here to offend contrib authors when I have participated in the march that lead core into this swamp of complexity -- but at least it's a well-tested swamp :) Using the analogy from the previous post, while Linux could afford to lose the desktop Linux game and be satisfied the kernel conquers the world, our kernel, in itself, is not shiny to say the least.

Also, remember, remember the fate of PHP 5.3.7 -- this is what happens eventually if you have a culture of releasing with broken tests.

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