This post is a confession. I confess that I'm a control freak!
There's a good reason why Drupal is rocking the Education Website world. There's a good reason why Drupal is rocking the Social Networking world. There's a good reason why Drupal is rocking the worlds of Social Causes, NGOs, Not For Profit orgs, Churches, Arts, Sciences, Foreign Governments, Political Campaigns, etc.
I believe that Drupal's appeal is first and foremost to the basic human nature of CONTROL. I have long said that Drupal is for Control Freaks, and its so true!
You want a calendar in exactly a certain location of the page? You got it!
You want to add a field to any form that changes value based on other fields? You got it!
You want to add a whole new level of access so you can restrict portions of the site to certain groups of people? You got it!
You get the picture. In a world where I can't control my boss, my landlord, my neighbors, etc... It's good to know that I can control my CMS. When a client wants to do such and such on their site it's good to know that I don't have to pay $39.99 for some one's module or component, or plugin, or extension, etc. only to find out that it's not quite what I expected. I go to a free repository and wade through many options and if the one I pick doesn't get me 100% to where I want to be, I can write my own custom function outside of that module to modify and/or extend the functionality of the module that I just downloaded.
I'm not going to lie to you folks. Drupal is a refuge for me. The community is full of amazingly diverse people that I am proud to call friends. As a piece of software, Drupal is the the most flexible, documented, community supported framework I will ever come across.
This control freak is in the right place at the right time, with www.lullabot.com providing incredible training and www.acquia.com widening the already open door to even larger potential clients and those with misconceptions of Open Source Software.
OK. Now I'm done wishing the rest of my life were as controllable as Drupal is. But, BOY the rant was fun!!