What the History of Photography Teaches the Cloud [June 4, 2014]
By Sean Michael Kerner
The founder of open-source Drupal content management system details how the 100-year evolution of photography can inform open-source development and the upcoming Drupal 8 release.
It took more than 100 years of evolution for the modern photography industry to reach its current state, and there are lessons from that century that apply to the modern world of cloud and Web development too. That's the message delivered by Dries Buytaert, founder of the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS), during his keynote address at the Drupalcon conference June 3 in Austin, Texas.
Drupal is one of the most widely deployed content management systems on the planet and counts big-name deployments including WhiteHouse.gov among its users. Buytaert (pictured) is also the CTO of Acquia, a company he helped to create that delivers commercial support and solutions based on Drupal. Acquia closed a $50 million funding round on May 27, bringing total funding to date up to $118.6 million.
Buytaert noted that the first camera in history over 100 years ago was big, bulky and very difficult to use, with a complex process to actually take a picture. Within a few short years of the first camera, the Kodak company came out with a camera that made the technology easier to use.
"They [Kodak] had this notion that, 'You press the button and we do the rest,'" Buytaert said. "It encapsulates how they simplified photography."
Over the course of 100 years, Buytaert explained, photography and cameras were simplified drastically in a number of phases. The introduction of 35mm photography provided a form of standardization to the industry that also made things simpler for users.
"The industry standardized on a common format and, as a result, there was a whole ecosystem born of different cameras and tools to project photos," Buytaert said.