Dries Buytaert

CMS code base comparison

Drupal

Code history drupal — Source: Drupal statistics at Ohloh.

Joomla!

Code history joomla — Source: Joomla! statistics at Ohloh.

Wordpress

Code history wordpress — Source: Wordpress statistics at Ohloh.

Plone

Code history plone — Source: Plone statistics at Ohloh.

(These graphs depict statistics for the core of each project, and do not include contributed modules, extensions or third-party plugins.)

Conclusions

All projects have been growing in size. No exceptions.
Drupal has, by far, the smallest code base. It's lean and mean. Joomla!'s code base is about 8 times bigger than Drupal's. Even Wordpress's code base is larger than Drupal's.
Of all tools, the WordPress code has the fewest code comments. Drupal and Joomla!, on the other hand, have the best documented code.

— Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert is a Boston-based Open Source advocate and technology executive. More than 10,000 people are subscribed to his blog. Sign up to have new posts emailed to you or subscribe using RSS.