At First Light

I think the article misses the point. I don't really see the direct connection between toolset and innovation.

Did Apple innovate with iPhone because they used better silicon, glass, metal, etc than Motorola or Nokia? No, their innovation was based on their people and their vision.

To me, innovation is about ideas, not tools. You can innovate with either (or any!) platform. I, like many others, simply choose to innovate with Drupal.

If your target of change is the web itself, he may have a point. But if the target is anything else then the tools mentioned work pretty darn well.

They could certainly be easier to use, but with a bit of reading you can get quite a bit accomplished in a short time. Often, innovation isn't measured from the highest peak but from where you are standing.

The guy obviously knows little or nothing about the topic he's writing about. He's just another blogger with modest needs who doesn't understand why you may choose one technology over another.

I call that noise.

It's certainly not worth bringing this guy to anyone's attention. :)

Enough of these posts, see http://www.drupal4hu.com/node/145 for my opinion.

I noticed 2 things in the original post. First, Scott claims to not have used drupal and then goes on to give a critique about it. I find this untrustworthy as it's someone unqualified to render an opinion here doing so.

Second, he seems to have a fairly narrow and undefined definition of what innovation is and how it compares to tools. I don't think his post is very useful as he renders an opinion but doesn't give enough meat to see much beyond his opinion.

I agree that someone who hasn't used the particular toolset is a poor choice of critic.

Having used both RoR and Drupal, I think that the answer depends on what your goal is. I've had to price out projects in both, and the costs are usually similar. The timeframes are usually similar. So, given that the results, timeframes, and costs will be similar, the end result comes down to personal choice, like with anything else.

People knocking down other people's choices is bad karma, and speaks more about the individual making the criticisms.

I've commented on the post as well - the gist of my thoughts is, the extensibility of Drupal (and WordPress, and Joomla!, and Plone, and, and, and) makes it a lot more appealing as a platform for even the very narrow kind of innovation he's talking about.

Is it even necessary to compare Drupal to Wordpress as blogging platforms with regard to innovation, when what the end user achieves with the platform, or the development of plug-ins etc can too be counted as innovation.

Choice is king.

I don't think any CMS is bad for innovation, in fact I think the opposite is true. Look at all of the thousands of WordPress plugins available for download. Are none of those innovative?