As Acquia CMS is an open source software, its cost of ownership is minimized through:
Strong community maintenance of selected projects
Minimization of open source dependencies
Acquia’s community module selection in curating Acquia CMS reflects these principles. Acquia aims to provide the most comprehensive functionality from projects that are mature and well-supported.
Composable architecture using starter kits
Acquia CMS 2.0 introduces starter kits in place of installation profiles. This approach helps reduce dependencies on Acquia and tie dependencies more directly to the curated community modules that deliver the underlying functionality of Acquia CMS.
The Acquia CMS composable architecture provides a series of starter kits to create sites that match common business requirements. These starter kits include standard Drupal sites, low-code sites, and headless sites.
For Drupal developers, it is a concept similar to installation profiles with the exception that no code executes during the Drupal bootstrap, and there is no direct effect on configuration stored in the database. Using this approach to install Drupal, you are not locked in to a custom profile that is managed by someone outside of your team. Instead, the core installation profile “Minimal” is used by default.
A Starter kit cli tool enables you to:
Select a starter kit upon installation
Configure additional options about what the installation includes
Using open source software
Acquia CMS is licensed under GPLv2 and is free to use, modify, and distribute with no liability or warranty from Acquia or any other contributing or maintaining party of the software. For more information on the GPLv2 license, see the LICENSE.txt file in the source code.
Acquia CMS is a version of the open source Drupal CMS, complete with curated community modules and Acquia-specific feature modules.
When you choose to start your Drupal project with Acquia CMS, you are choosing to accept the upkeep and maintenance of the open source software within your CMS project, including the open source software dependendencies added by Drupal core, community modules, and Acquia CMS.
Support of open source software
Open source software comes with no liability or warranty. With a Cloud Platform subscription, you receive platform support for your hosted application. For more information on support for Cloud Platform subscriptions, see Support Users Guide.
Issues of specific open source projects must be filed and discussed in their respective community issue queues. Many can be found on drupal.org or github.com.