Drupal Open App Standard Initiative Launched
Two leading players have announced the Drupal Open App Standard Initiative in an effort to help create an improved user experience within the Drupal content management system and to help spur the development of the Drupal economy.
Phase2 Technology, based in Alexandria, VA, and SubHub, based in Cardiff, United Kingdom, have been collaborating on the initiative to achieve interoperability for Drupal apps and thus make it possible for any developer to write an app that would then be deployable across multiple app market implementations.
“Our goal is to make trying out, adding, or removing Drupal functionality simple for site users,” said Jeff Walpole, CEO of Phase2. “Through partnership within the Drupal community, we've seen these aspirations become actualities in our own products. We look forward to seeing app marketplace growth match the pace of Drupal adoption world wide.”
“The ability to easily create and add apps enhances the usability of Drupal and therefore helps to make Drupal more accessible to a wider audience,” said Evan Rudowski, CEO of SubHub. “We view apps as being crucial to the growth of a Drupal economy, making it easier for developers and others to distribute, sell and profit from the functionality they build.”
The Open App Standard defines an app as a discrete package that solves a specific, well-defined task and can execute the task without the need for further coding or development. An app can then be added to a website to enable the specific feature or action.
SubHub launched its own app market in late 2010 for its subscription content platform built using Drupal. The SubHub app market includes apps for MailChimp, Google Analytics, content feeds, Disqus and YouTube.
Phase2 earlier this year launched an app console for OpenPublic, a Drupal distribution for public sector clients. The companies then formed a working group to compare their respective “app” implementations and to consider ways to ensure that apps might be made to be interoperable.
Discussions around the Open App Standard were facilitated by Robert Douglass of Acquia, a leading provider of commercial hosting solutions for Drupal. Douglass will make the public announcement of the Open App Standard to the Drupal community on 23rd August in a session at DrupalCon London.
About Phase2 Technology
Phase2 Technology designs and develops enterprise Drupal platforms for publishing and media companies, government and non-profit organizations. Phase2’s team of creative designers, business analysts, software developers, and project managers also are passionate contributors to the open-source community building several widely used Drupal distributions including OpenPublish, OpenPublic and Open Atrium. Find out more at Phase2Technology.com.
About SubHub
SubHub makes it simple for anyone to build their own money-making content website. Thousands of individuals and small businesses use SubHub to profit from their passions, publishing content to their communities and making money through subscription and membership. SubHub can be found at www.subhub.com. Developers can learn more about SubHub’s app market implementation at http://open.subhub.com