Microsoft says sorry to the Drupal community

MICROSOFT HAS PULLED an advert telling punters to "Forget Drupal", which is an open source website software framework and content management system, and has said sorry to the community for the aggressive ad.

In a blog post packed with "Download Drupal on Windows" adverts, the Vole's Mark Brown was clearly embarrassed by another part of Microsoft's marketing efforts.

He wrote, "I woke up this morning and over my coffee while reading Twitter I came across a Tweet from Dries that Microsoft had run an advertisement that said, 'Forget Drupal'."

The Vole has been working closely with the Drupal community to get the software running on Windows and Brown was a bit cross.

"I have contacted Google and we are working on having this ad pulled as soon as possible. In addition we are working internally to ensure this doesn't happen again," he said.

Drupal was among the first communities Microsoft started buttering up when it launched its Web Application Gallery this year, which now provides easy means for downloading, installing and configuring Drupal on Windows.

Brown continued, "Finally, we are indeed working to promote Drupal on Windows here at Microsoft and are running advertising in countries around the world to promote Drupal."

Brown asked for forgiveness from the community, which is not something we see from the Vole that often.

It is not clear where the advert came from. Initially Brown thought it was put out by Microsoft India but it turned out to have been placed by an advertising team in another country, he said. µ