The Drupal project has experienced phenomenal growth over its more than 14 years, growing from a small hobby project to over 1 million known installations, over 1 million Drupal.org users, and more than doubling the active contributors and commits in Drupal core between Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, as well as thousands of people who depend on Drupal in some way for a living. This talk will "de-mystify" some recent developments in the community, from the technical direction of Drupal 8, to various project governance changes, to the increasing role of the Drupal Association on Drupal.org. We'll look at both the historical context that brought those changes about, and talk about how they'll help us scale to the next 1 million sites and users.

1. #DRUPALDEVDAYS
SPRINT UPDATE
(DAY 3)

2. what's happening?
• Sprints: D8 Cri.cals, Performance, Front-­‐End,
Documenta.on, Mutlilingual, Search API, Rules,
Commerce, others?
• Over half (26) of D8 cri.cal issues updated, 5 fixed so far
• 84 total patches commiNed, 134 (known) issues being
worked on
• Issue tag: "drupaldevdays" or (for the cri.cal and
performance sprint) "D8 Accelerate Dev Days"

3. 42 release blockers leG!
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐8.0/get-­‐involved

4. THE EVOLUTION OF
DRUPAL AND THE
DRUPAL COMMUNITY
Angie "webchick" Byron
April 14, 2015

5. About me

6. it's 2015.

7. Drupal has…
• 1,127,761 live sites that we know about
• 1,168,980 people in 229 countries speaking 180 languages
• 37,930 of them are developers
• 30,276 modules, 2,128 themes, 930 distribu.ons
• 2,782 contributors to Drupal 8 so far
• Hundreds of Drupal books, 1000s of documenta.on pages

8. i started in 2005.

9. Drupal had…
• A couple hundred live sites that we knew about (by word
of mouth, since there was no Update Status)
• Around 20,000 people; a couple hundred were developers
• A couple hundred modules, a couple dozen themes (all of
them ugly), distribu.ons weren't invented yet
• 50 core contributors
• Zero Drupal books; en.re handbook was about 100 pages

10. how did we get here?

11. and how do we ensure
we'll sVll be here in 2025?

12. 2005
bap.sm by fire

13. google summer of code

14. the server crash

16. in 48 hours, raised over
$10,000!(Plus a $4,000 server from Sun and
hos.ng offer from OSL.)

17. drupalcon amsterdam
(the first one!)

18. 2006
growing pains

19. drupal 4.7.0
May 1, 2006

20. big drupal 4.7.0 features
• AJAX
• Collapsible fieldsets
• Free tagging
• New XML-­‐RPC library
• Form API
• Updated documentaVon for all modules ;)
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐4.7.0

21. xml-­‐rpc: the origin of
drupal island
hNp://www.securityfocus.com/bid/14088

22. form api: drupal's first
BIG, scary api change
https://www.drupal.org/node/29465

23. hNp://buytaert.net/the-­‐pain-­‐before-­‐the-­‐payoff

24. hNp://buytaert.net/the-­‐pain-­‐before-­‐the-­‐payoff

25. 2007
laying founda.ons

26. drupal 5.0
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐5.0
January 15, 2007

27. big drupal 5.0 features
• Web-­‐based installer
• Usability improvements
• New theme (Garland/Minnelli)
• jQuery
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐5.0

28. drupal associaVon
hNps://assoc.drupal.org/node/87

29. Original Mission
• Infrastructure
• Money
• Promo.on
• NOT influence on the project itself

30. sVll fresh in mind…

31. state of drupal survey
hNp://buytaert.net/state-­‐of-­‐drupal-­‐presenta.on-­‐august-­‐2008

32. most desired drupal project
improvements

33. most desired drupal project
improvements
7
8
7
8
7 8
8
7 8
7
87
7

34. most desired drupal.org
improvements

35. most desired drupal.org
improvements
✓
✓
✓
✓
R
✓
R
R
R

36. 2008-­‐2011
ch-­‐ch-­‐ch-­‐ch-­‐changes

37. drupal 6.0
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐6.0
February 13, 2008

38. big drupal 6.0 features
• Mul.lingual
• New theme system (.tpl.php files)
• Improved security and performance
• Drag-­‐and-­‐Drop
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐6.0

39. formal usability tesVng
hNp://buytaert.net/first-­‐results-­‐from-­‐usability-­‐tes.ng

40. just a sampling…
• What takes a Drupal person 30 seconds to *do* might
take a new user 30 minutes to *find*.
• Lots of confusion on front-­‐end/back-­‐end separa.on:
where am I? Is this what I see, or my users see?
• Confusing terminology
• Page vs. Story? Create content vs. content type
• Collapsible fieldsets = goNa click 'em all!
hNps://www.drupal.org/node/1175694

41. d7ux

42. qa (before)
• *click*
• *click*
• *click*
• *click*
• *click*
• *click*

43. qa (aGer)
http://buytaert.net/we-have-a-test-framework-in-drupal-7

44. awesome tesVng party!

45. drupal.org redesign

46. drupal 7.0January 4, 2011
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐7.0

47. big drupal 7.0 features
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐7.0
• Ease of use
• En..es / Fields
• Image management in core
• Accessibility
• Automated tes.ng
• DBTNG

48. 326 parVes in 96 countries!

49. cvs => git migraVon

50. 2011-­‐2015
growing up and geong off the island

51. moar usability tesVng!
hNps://www.drupal.org/node/1175694

52. major findings
• Content crea.on/orienta.on problems from D6 fixed!
• Now, the next layer of the onion…
• Content = content, regardless of where it is
• People want edit in place and previews of
everything
• If users end up on Drupal.org, they are hosed. :P

53. state of drupal survey (v2)
hNp://buytaert.net/state-­‐of-­‐drupal-­‐presenta.on-­‐august-­‐2011

54. drupal's biggest challenges

55. a shiG in the "drupal
economy"

56. a "killer drupal 8 release"

57. drupal 8 iniVaVves

58. hNp://buytaert.net/announcing-­‐spark-­‐authoring-­‐improvements-­‐for-­‐drupal-­‐7-­‐and-­‐drupal-­‐8

59. a "killer drupal 8 release"
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

60. "geong off the island"
Composer
Services
Components
PSR-4
OOP
Twig
YAML

61. "geong off the island"

62. drupalci: next generaVon
testbot
hNps://www.drupal.org/project/drupalci

63. evolving drupal's governance:
do-­‐ocracy
The things that get done are the things someone actually does.

64. challenges
• Lack of clear decision-­‐making leads to frustra.on; appears
"cliquish" to "outsiders."
• Greatly favors those with a tremendous amount of free .me on
their hands; terrible for diversity
• Oren "he/she who yells the loudest wins"; can shut down good
ideas by people who don't want to engage
• If no one cares about a thing (or cares enough to fight a baNle), it
doesn't get done.
• "Bus factor" = burnout; key doers feel "trapped" in roles

65. soluVon: augment do-­‐ocracy
with formal governance
drupal.org
sorware
working group
drupal.org
infrastructure
working group
drupal.org
content
working group
hNps://www.drupal.org/governance
licensing
working group
branding and
marke.ng
commiNee
community
working group
technical
working group
drupal core
documenta.on
working group
security
working group

66. drupal core governance
performance
hNps://www.drupal.org/node/2457875
product
managers
release
managers
framework
managers
core commiNers
topic maintainers
accessibility usability
documenta.on tes.ng
subsystem maintainers
ini.a.ve coordinators
core contributors
project lead

67. benefits
• Focus on strategy vs. tac.cs
• More transparent decision-­‐making process
• Clear points of escala.on in case of conflict
• Improve "bus factor" by providing support for key
roles

68. example: project applicaVon
review process revamp
hNps://www.drupal.org/node/2453587
• Deploy automated code scanning tools for all projects
• All users create sandboxes first, get full project when
scan passes (non-­‐veNed limited to one full project)
• Non-­‐veNed users can request veNed status in issue
queue once full module passes scans
• Code review scaled back to licensing, security, or
major API usage problems only.

69. 2015+?
the bright, shiny future

70. drupal 8.0.0
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐8.0

71. big drupal 8.0.0 features
hNps://www.drupal.org/drupal-­‐8.0
• Mobile
• Mul.lingual
• Authoring experience
• Views
• More field types
• Configura.on
management
• Twig
• HTML5
• OOP
• Web services

72. one MILLION parVes? ;)
8

73. semanVc versioning
• New feature releases of Drupal 8 every 6 months
• Backwards compa.bility preserved!
• Core devs, contrib devs, site builders working on same code base
• Drupal 9? Not un.l there's enough done to warrant breaking BC

74. will we see the killer d8
release in 8.1.0? 8.2.0?
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
?
?
?
some other awesome thing?

75. *you* decide! :)

76. one final note…

77. d8 accelerate
hNps://assoc.drupal.org/d8accelerate

78. what are we funding?
• Performance improvements
• Upgrade path
• Security fixes
• Targeted sprints
• Testbot moderniza.on
• Awesome core contributors!
hNp://webchick.net/d8accelerate-­‐deep-­‐dive

79. why?
• Most core contribu.on done on volunteer .me
• D8 currently in "bug fix slog"; fun stuff is already done
• Contributors funded through D8 accelerate don't
need to find D7 work
• Targeted sponsorship like this also got D6, D7 out the
door, just less transparently
hNp://webchick.net/d8accelerate-­‐deep-­‐dive

80. please consider donaVng!
https://www.crowdrise.com/d8accelerate/fundraiser/
angiebyron

81. thanks. :)