In the smallcore debate we should focus on what our goal is. We don't want a smaller core as much as we want an independent core. To build a better teddy bear it doesn't matter so much that the openid module or blog module ship with core, but it does matter that the system or profile modules tie in with the node module, hard coded.

In his article Adrien says that "[a] large portion of time spent building something like Managing News or Open Atrium is spent undoing the assumptions that Drupal has baked into core directly." I agree with this. I don't agree that this means that we should never include a default wysiwyg in Drupal for instance. I think we should, but that it should be as a completely independent module that we can simply switch on and off. The main goal is to have a Drupal core which we don't have to alter in order to create our own distribution or highly customized site.

There will be a higher resistance against a smallcore because this means we're no longer working towards our goal of eliminating middlemen. It moves Drupal towards a framework instead of a user-friendly cms while it really can be both. If we see Drupal simply as a framework then why would we add cck or views in core instead of keeping them as a contributed modules? An independent core however would allow for the blog, openid, cck and views modules to be part of core as separate components. It means we can ship core with different installation profiles like a multiblog or a social network profile, while not getting in the way of more custom distributions like Open Atrium.

By popular demand I added tagging to Drupal Digest. This allows you to create your own rss feeds from all Drupal Planet content about drupalcon or views for instance. To implement this feature I enabled the core taxonomy module and Feed Element Mapper to save the feeds' tags as Drupal terms. Along with the simple voting mechanism this is an easy and useful way to personalize the Planet's aggregated content. These are really low-profile changes that can easily be implemented for the Drupal Planet so I hope they get picked up as part of the drupal.org redesign.

In my effort to make the Drupal Planet more efficient as part of the drupal.org redesign plan I've set up a prototype of a lightweight Digg-like Drupal Planet. I'm glad to present Drupal Digest. The concept consist of two pages. First there is the list of Unfiltered articles, which is basically what you get on the current Drupal Planet: the aggregated content of everyone on the Planet, with the newest articles listed first. So the people who are happy with the current Planet can still enjoy it as-is.

Drupal stands on three pillars: the Drupal community, the Drupal Association and the companies that support Drupal in whatever way they can. The distinction between these three pillars is becoming more and more of a thin line. The members of the Association are obviously passionate members of the community. Many companies hire active members to work on their Drupal sites, or members of these companies become more and more involved in the community. Active involvement of these companies and their employees is a wonderful thing. Think about the many modules that companies contribute to or maintain, for instance the contributions by CivicActions or by Lullabot. They also sponsor important events such as the Drupalcons that spread awareness and knowledge, that make the community to what it is and that turn outsiders into insiders.

Here's an interesting quote by Tim Millwood in his article on Is Drupal too general?:

Drupal offers all the features needed but many of them need installing via contrib modules. Community Server seems to offer all of the features out of the box because like Moodle and Wordpress it is build for a specific purpose.

I came across this interesting slide on Drupal Talk:

"Drupal 6 modules" by avorio