Over at Collaboration Loop you can find a very nice article about Drupal. Apart from the fact that it is well written and very positive about Drupal, the thing that I liked the most is the fact that the author (Larry Cannell) directly puts Drupal head to head with The Big proprietary systems.

The core developers also incorporate significant user contributed innovations into the platform itself enabling the development of the next generation of extensions that continue to outpace offerings from competitive products such as those from Microsoft and IBM.

Not only Larry puts Drupal head to head, he also thinks Drupal is better then most of the proprietary systems out there.

There is probably nothing in Drupal that products from the big vendors can't do and may have implemented somewhere. The difference is companies using Drupal are meeting customer needs faster and cheaper because they are sharing innovations within the community.

Faster and cheaper. Leading to better.

With articles like this out on the web, is has become clear for that Drupal now is widely seen as platform of choice for implementing sites that are business critical, not just a tool for some hackers at the dorm. And now it is widely known that the product of our community is "the answer", we should prepare ourselves to enter the corporate arena with different rules, while still keeping our roots down deep in the hackingcommunity and the dorm.

The proprietary vendors have to change according to Larry:

Many smart system integrators are recognizing the power of an open community like Drupal and are effectively competing in this new environment. Time will tell if the large software vendors can adapt.

But does Drupal as a community has to change as well now we can expect unfriendly fire from larger software vendors? Or is it still community plumbing with just bigger pipes? Share your thoughts in a comment about if and how the community has to change.

Drupal version: Drupal 5.x