On 24-25-26 February we'll have the first Drupal product summit in Rome. One of the discussions I'm personally really looking forward to having is the possible business model for a quadruple-win Drupal appstore.

Ever since Robert Douglass' controversial session at the Drupal Dev Days in Brussel, I've been thinking about how it would be possible to create a Drupal appstore that benefits Distribution owners, app developers, hosting companies and module maintainers alike.

In the mobile phone industry appstores have created a whole new ecosystem of application developers that earn a living off of inexpensive mass products where previously only very expensive dedicated applications existed. Something similar is possible for Drupal and could bring Drupal users more features at lower costs in a bigger marketplace for many more developers.

A Drupal appstore could be a solution for both the Drupal distribution commercialization (1) and the abandoned feature problems (2) and could make Drupal an even more interesting platform for hosting companies (3). An appstore could increase the amount of product companies in the Drupal ecosystem and product companies have traditionally been some of the strongest innovators and consistent code contributors (e.g. Development Seed, Acquia, Lullabot, Phase2, NodeOne, Pantheon, Fourkitchens, etc.) (4). I believe that done right, an appstore could be a win-win for all involved parties.

We have 30 places left for the Drupal Product meetup, we already have some of the most respected thought leaders in the community signed up. If you are a Drupal developer, working on or thinking about building a product in Drupal (a distribution, app, hosting platform or a web application) You should not miss this opportunity to be part of the start of something big. Register today.