vBDrupal has just been released in Beta. It is a fork of the Drupal content management system (CMS) -- probably the most popular CMS -- that combines Drupal with vBulletin, which is widely regarded as the best forum CMS.

So if you take the best publishing CMS, and mix it with the best forum CMS, then you should have the best overall CMS, right?

Wrong.

The key consideration is that the true worth of a CMS is determined by the value of its community of developers.

When you fork a CMS, you are essentially acknowledging that you are to a large extent breaking away from the community of developers.

In other words, since it's sort of its own core, vBDrupal won't really be able to fully leverage the Drupal community or the vBulletin community.

It's a risky move. You're betting your most valuable asset. In order for it to pay off, you have to be able to jump start a better development community. Of course, if you can do that, the pay day could be very big.

I remain skeptical. In my opinion, vBulletin, despite the fact that it costs money and is visible source (i.e. not fully GPL), still has by far the best CMS development community, and the value creation opportunity via remixing the contributions of developers is rapidly accelerating.

Of course, if you're an open source remixer, the key thing to balance is how you can maximize the long-term value of your ability to leverage the edge. In other words, make sure you leverage the edge in a way that will reinforce the entire ecosystem -- not fracture it.