The end of Drupal? A look at the future João Ventura @jcnventura Innoflair@EUMETSAT

A bright future for Drupal With a little help from everyone João Ventura @jcnventura Innoflair@EUMETSAT

Come for the software. Stay for the community.

My Drupal journey ● Re-created personal website in Drupal 4.6.5 in Jan 2006 (18.5y ago). Static site since 4 months ago (was D7) ● Disappointed that Drupal didn’t have Joomla’s “Export as PDF”, took over the print module to do so. (~17y ago) ● Site builder for another personal hobby. First D7 and then ported to 8, 9, 10. Site already works on D11, but requires effort on contrib modules ● Started doing Drupal contrib work on my spare time. Kept porting print to Drupal 5, 6 and 7. Still “maintain” it… ● Drupal professionally in 2009-2011 in Portugal and then remote for Trellon ● Drupal professionally again in 2015-2018 (Wunderkraut) and 2018-2023 (1xINTERNET) ● Participated in local meetups in Lisbon, Munich and Frankfurt ● Helped to organize DDD2018 and Drupal Europe. Redshirt in many other camps ● Drupalcon speaker in 2012 and 2021. DDD speaker in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2024 ● (Co-)maintainer of 20+ contrib modules ● Contribution 831 credits (40 in core), several documentation pages (mostly about Drupal books)

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What will the end of Drupal look like? - a fictional story ● Diminishing number of installed sites ○ Usage for new version worse than the previous version ● Modules no longer maintained (even popular ones) ○ Many RTBC issues ○ Release intervals in years ● Fewer community events (DrupalCamps, meetups) ○ Events cancelled due to lack of sponsors / attendees ● Smaller attendance at DrupalCons ● Community getting older and smaller ● Better paying jobs outside Drupal ● Agencies dropping Drupal or adding other frameworks to their portfolio ● Maybe a fork taking Drupal in a completely different direction Slow evolution over many years

CMS market share (7.2% ⇒ 1.4%) https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/ms/y

“Classic” / Modern Drupal usage

Usage change vs year before

Drupal 7 > 8 > 9 > 10

Contrib Modules, increasingly unmaintained ● Drupal Starshot and the deprecated core modules all agree that innovation happens faster in contrib ○ Increased workload on maintainers of Starshot contrib ● Unlike Wordpress and Joomla, Drupal never developed a freemium ecosystem ○ Webform (~$9000/year) ○ Gin (~$1800/month) ● Can Project Browser help to create an extension marketplace? ○ Probably too late for that, and this topic is not new and never went anywhere ● Many maintainers have dozens of modules ● Issues are not reviewed (fewer RTBC than before) ● Project Update Working Group, good idea, but only a bandage

Fewer Drupal Camps

DrupalCon attendance

Driesnote Portland 2024

Hands up if you’ve been with Drupal for 🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋 ● 1 year or more ● 5 years or more ● 10 years or more ● 15 years or more

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PHP runs 80% of the Internet! https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programming_language/ms/y

TIOBE Index PHP https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/php/

PHP is not cool PHP was language of the year in TIOBE in 2004 (#3). It dropped out of the top 10 in March 2024. It is now at #15. In the JetBrains State of Developer Ecosystem 2023*, PHP is the only language that dropped >10% since 2017. Python grew >20% in the same period. Only 1% of developers replied that they were planning to adopt PHP in the near future. 69% of PHP developers have been using it for more than 4 years. * https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/ (biased to users of JetBrains products like IntelliJ IDEA for Java or PhpStorm)

Meanwhile those 80% (Top 10K, 100K, 1M) https://trends.builtwith.com/framework/PHP

WordPress pivoting to JavaScript…

Do not go gentle into that good night

PHP’s problems are ours as well ● PHP is improving, but suffers from bad image in web development ● Bus factor of 1-2 until very recently ● PHP Foundation (created in 2021) responsible for 10 Core Developers ● Foundation membership open to organizations and individuals ○ Acquia ($25K) ○ Your company ($1K)? ● Organization goals for 2023:

Growing the Drupal Community ● Local communities and camps are disappearing ○ COVID-19 ○ Drupal is now business ● If only we had a site that is used regularly by every Drupal developer and a field to ask that user for their location ● Or if we only build a software that could announce events on the site Dashboard ● Such a tool could allow local communities to broadcast within their radius about meetups and camps (after user agreement) ● Drupal meetups and Drupal Camps are tributaries to DrupalCon

Drupal is corporate ● Drupal development is not a “spare time” activity anymore ● Agencies employ 50 to 100s of Drupal developers ● Projects budgets can go into the millions ● How to get Drupal clients to demand makers and reject takers? ● Drupal Certified Partner will now require contribution credits (weighted) ○ Diamond (5000), Platinum (2500), Gold (1000), Silver (500), Bronze (150)

What can Drupal agencies do? ● Pledge to Starshot ● (Co-)Maintain the modules used in your starter project / distribution ● Be responsible for the modules created, even if no longer used ○ Or provide migration path to alternatives ● Give x% of time to Drupal contribution ● Sponsor module maintenance ● Organize / sponsor local meetups and camps

New developers ● Drupal is a 9-5 job ● Ticket-focused ○ Bug needs fixing: local patch and move on ● Free training on how to work on issue queues? ○ Free certificate to prove it? ● Certified Drupal Experts ○ But no requirement for contribution … ● How to make them interested in growing Drupal? ○ Value of Drupal knowledge

Drupal One Shot? ● In Starshot, we have a chance to break the cycle of decay in Drupal usage ○ Hopefully as popular as Drupal 7 ● Will there be another chance at making people take a 2nd (3rd?) look at Drupal? ● What would it need to be AWESOME?

Thank you! It has been a pleasure to be a part of this community.

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