The 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report is bigger and better this year, with a much more detailed analysis than its 2008 debut. This time it is based partly on survey data through a partnership with CMS Wire. The report was produced again by Ric Shreves of Water & Stone and this time carries advertising from sponsors: Drupal Acquia, CMS Expo, Cylogy, and Water & Stone. The report itself disclaims making any qualitative assessments of the products it concerns, but it is not exceptionally useful for assessing their market either. This is mainly a popularity/brand strength study.

That is the major drawback with this report--the misleading way it is labelled and pitched. It really is not about "market share." The report treats that concept as if it means how much Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress are being used. With open source products, this is like saying China has a dominant "market share" on air because there are so many Chinese people breathing it.

Market share is typically calculated according to total sales revenue or units sold. With a free product, there are no unit sales, but there is revenue--and this report doesn't attempt to measure it at all. The only effort to do so that I have seen is Webology' survey, which showed that Drupal developers who took it tend to work on projects that are worth more than twice the average Joomla respondents' projects. So much for the value of popularity.

Internally the CMS Wire/Water & Stone report notes it is only about brand strength based on usage, search and social media traffic, and other data. The major sections cover "rate of adoption" and "brand strength." There is no attempt to assess product quality, each respective development community's health (cohesion and productivity), and the big question of who is making money, and how much?

If you could quantify the approximate revenue generated for and with each brand, you could call that the bulk of the OSCMS market's approximate total size. But what portion of the total does each brand command, and within its own share, where does the money flow?

A report on "market share" would also note that each of the "Big 3" OSCMS brands has its own market and sub-markets, which are not identical in structure. Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress all have commercial template/theme markets and independent design/build developers. Joomla alone has a commercial extension market--which also has no direct return for the trademark holder. This is not true of Drupal and Wordpress, but they offer services that provide direct revenue to the trademark holders. Additionally, there is no single person who is the Joomla trademark holder, as is the case with Drupal and Wordpress where the trademark holder is also the lead developer of the core product. The Joomla core team touts this as a strength, but it looks very much like a liability for core development progress and core development supporting revenue. (Could they be related?)

It would be extremely valuable to examine and assess with a good, quantitative instrument how each brand works as a market, and how big it is in terms of revenue. Doing so would likely confirm the most probably reasons for Joomla's extreme popularity despite its undeniable third place position on key features and pace of development. Core deficiencies and slow development almost certainly account for Joomla's 25% dissatisfied user base, but the reason they are still Joomla users at all is probably due to the ease and low-cost of developing sites with Joomla. The core Joomla product is not a definitive limitation; it is something that can be improved and its obstacles overcome with little or no technical ability.

That is due to the nature of Joomla's extension market. Want a website with an integrated group calendar or social network? Want it to look super and be ready fast? Wordpress is great for design but is unsuitable for sites with needs for features beyond content management. With Drupal you can deliver these features in a technically superior way that is perfectly tailored to client specific needs, and more efficient--which is why people who want those qualities probably pay so much more for it with Drupal. They'll also have to pay a lot more for theme design, which is hell in Drupal and not served by a robust commercial template market. More, however, are probably drawn to Joomla where you get an equally good result, at least as far as the end user will be concerned--and a more usable administrative interface. In the near future, however, Joomla will be up against Drupal with a professionally overhauled user interface, two SaaS platforms, and the increasing loss of extension developers' market share to other SaaS providers for applications to handle customer service, forums, calendaring/event registration, etc.

• Drupal vs. Joomla: a frank comparison from an IBM consultant
• Fotis Evangelou's presentation of K2 at the 2009 Joomla Day in the Netherlands involves much discussion of Joomla, its pace of development, and its features--implicitly and sometimes explicitly in relation to Drupal.
• A typical Joomla community kludge solution: "bridging" and "integrating" other applications: "Why Integrate Joomla and Wordpress?"
• Barrie North on "How to choose between Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress."
• C. Murray Consulting on the 2009 Open CMS Report.