The end of Drupal? A look at the future

Session Room
Room 207 (1xINTERNET)
Time Slot
Fri 14:15-15:05
Speaker(s)
jcnventura
Session track
Open Web & Community
Experience level
Beginner
Duration
50 min

Drupal has been around for 23 years, and as community, we have built an amazing product that powers hundreds of thousands of websites, and especially in the top most visited sites.

However, every single indicator indicates that Drupal's market share is decreasing, and the upcoming end-of-life of Drupal 7 will probably accelerate that decline.

Drupal agencies should prepare the future, both by injecting new blood and ideas into Drupal, in order to make Drupal great again, and by making sure that their employees engage with the community. In my personal experience, companies talk a lot about "community", but rarely there is any real effort to make new hires belong to that community (and asking to pass Acquia exams does not count as "community").

More importantly, as developers, we need to be advocates for open-source to restore the community spirit with our colleagues, and we should seek to collaborate to make existing contrib modules the best they can be, instead of making dozens of weak solutions that compete with each other.

Most important, as a community, we should have a deep look at our current state. Many issues sit abandoned for years in the "Needs Review / Needs Work" limbo, or the bike-shedding is big enough to hold all the bikes in a small city. Many modules are effectively abandoned since the maintainer has moved on from Drupal, and no one else steps up for the role.

The presentation will start by showing the current indicators of Drupal's market share, and then focus on the challenges at community / agency / individual levels, and some proposals on how to address them for a bright future for Drupal.

I will specifically ask the audience to develop this theme further, as my presentation is only meant to be the start of a conversation that we should all really have.

I believe that bright future for Drupal is still out there. But only if we as a community do something about it. Otherwise, at the current rate, Drupal will not be around for another 23 years.