Acquia, the commercial developer of open source publishing platform Drupal, has raised a $7 million first round led by North Bridge Venture Partners; also participating were Sigma Partners and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Funding will go towards the establishment of value-added software and services around Drupal. Drupal started as a hobby of Belgian developer Dries Buytaert, who co-founded North Andover, MA-based Acquia with Jay Batson, former CEO and founder of Pingtel. As recently discussed here, Acquia is to Drupal what Automattic is to Wordpress, the popular open source blogging platform. Both have established large developer communities, and count major web publishers among their base. Current users of Drupal include SonyBMG, Warner Brothers Records, New York Observer, Forbes, and The Onion. Release.

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