I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time this evening tinkering with Drupal. I’m impressed with the thought that went into the database design, with flexibility and extensibility always the obvious priority. However, when you make something extensible, people extend it. And it seems that half of the modules out there have, as documentation, a README file that says “Install as normal”, and offer very little else in the way of help.

When I asked a question on #drupal, I was apparently a little too frustrated, and the tenor of my question sparked a lecture on the nature of open source documentation. It was the fairly standard bit about how one is supposed to fix the documentation (or software) rather than complaining about it. All true, and completely worthless and time-wasting. There are times when open source people can be very tiresome. When stuff is good, it’s because we’re brilliant. When it’s bad, it’s because you don’t contribute enough.