Authored by Nadiia Nykolaichuk.
Drupal modules often come with creative, inspiring names, and some even sound downright delicious. Join us on a culinary adventure through modules inspired by foods, and discover the rich features they can bring to your site! Each tool in this collection is powerful enough to supercharge your website’s capabilities, adding its own unique blend of flavors, nutrients, and zest.
The Drupal Association has published this guest blog on behalf of HeroDevs.
At HeroDevs, we’re no strangers to the importance of security—especially when it comes to open-source software. As the pioneers of securing deprecated open source software across various communities like AngularJS, Vue, and Spring, we’re excited to bring our expertise to the Drupal 7 ecosystem. We understand the challenges and vulnerabilities that come with maintaining legacy software, and our goal is to ensure your Drupal 7 websites remain secure, compliant, and fully functional for the long term.
When it comes to security vulnerabilities, having a guaranteed response is crucial for your business. HeroDevs offers a dedicated SLA that ensures your systems receive timely attention and resolution. Our service helps you stay compliant with important regulations such as FedRAMP, PCI, HIPAA, and SOC II. With HeroDevs, your business is backed by proactive security measures, so you never have to worry about delayed responses to critical security needs.
We know how important stability and reliability are for businesses managing content management systems such as Drupal 7. That’s why our terms and conditions are mutually agreed upon and remain unchanged throughout your Subscription Term. With HeroDevs, you can rely on consistent, dependable support without the worry of unexpected changes to your agreement.
Another aspect that sets HeroDevs apart is our Guaranteed Subscription Term. Unlike other providers, HeroDevs cannot terminate your subscription for convenience. This ensures that you receive full, uninterrupted service for the entire duration of your agreement, so you can have peace of mind knowing your Drupal systems are in safe hands for as long as you need them to be.
At HeroDevs, we stand behind the services we provide. Our subscription includes warranties and indemnification to ensure that the security services you receive are up to standard. Should anything go wrong, you’re covered—not just with fixes, but with assurances that keep your business protected.
By choosing HeroDevs, you’re partnering with a team of security professionals with a proven track record across various open-source communities. We’re committed to helping your business meet compliance standards, avoid costly security incidents, and maintain seamless functionality—all with the added benefit of faster support and more secure systems.
The Summary
To ensure Drupal’s stability and independence, the project is managed through a well-established, transparent governance system. Dries Buytaert, the Founder and Project Lead, helped design a model that distributes power and prevents any single person or entity — even himself — from making unilateral decisions that could alter the project unexpectedly. The independent Drupal Association oversees Drupal.org and other key infrastructure, free from commercial pressures. This approach ensures that Drupal.org is reliable and creates a fair playing field for all contributors, embodying true open-source leadership.
Just as the Drupal software has grown and changed significantly over its 23-year history, so has its governance. And, while there’s always room for improvement, it is safe to say that Drupal’s seasoned governance is what allows it to be one of the largest, independent open source projects in the world.
The Detail
Dries Buytaert, as the founder and project lead, ultimately guides the direction of Drupal, and is responsible for shaping the project’s philosophy and core principles.
While Dries started Drupal on his own, he has helped evolve the governance model over the years to be mature and resilient. To help govern the project's technical aspects, Dries established the core committer team and other supporting groups. To oversee non-technical areas, he co-founded the Drupal Association. These initiatives were intentional efforts to scale and strengthen Drupal’s governance.
On the technical side, the governance model for Drupal core is very mature, as described in the Drupal Project Governance. Technical decision-making is distributed among the core committers and other maintainers, promoting a transparent, structured, and collaborative approach to managing Drupal core.
Many other aspects of Drupal governance are managed by the Drupal Association, which is a U.S. 501(c)3 nonprofit organization formed in 2008 to support the Drupal project and the Drupal community. I am currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Association. Our mission is to drive innovation and adoption of Drupal as a high-impact digital public good, hand-in-hand with our open source community. A fundamental obligation of the Drupal Association is to ensure that Drupal is available to anyone, anywhere in the world free of charge. We primarily accomplish this task through Drupal.org.
The Drupal Association is a bona fide non-profit organization (not a pass-through), with assets of just over $3 million and an operating budget of over $4 million. We publish our finances annually (see: Find the reports in the Accountability section of D.org). The Association is not controlled or funded by any single entity nor does it pass revenues onto another entity. The Association’s revenue comes from hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals. No single financial contributor accounts for more than 10% of our revenue. This diverse support base prevents any one entity from having too much influence.
The Drupal Association employs a full-time team of 19 professionals located throughout the world. These people include engineers, marketers, accountants, communication staff, and program administration team members. I say all this to demonstrate that we have the capacity to legitimately, and independently, carry out our mission.
The Drupal Association owns and controls important components of the Drupal ecosystem that allow Drupal to be one of the largest independent FOSS projects in the world.
The Drupal Association owns and/or controls the infrastructure that powers Drupal.org. The Drupal Association has complete control over who accesses Drupal.org, how they access it, and what they can do when accessing it. These are covered by our Terms of Service.
In administering Drupal.org, the Drupal Association controls a number of services, including:
The Drupal Association also owns and controls the primary means by which the community communicates and gathers. We organize DrupalCons and manage Drupal Slack. We issue The Drupal Association Newsletter and TheWeeklyDrop (together with Bob Kepford). We control and manage Mastodon, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn (Drupal, Drupal Association, Drupal Jobs), Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Drupal has the Maker/Taker Problem that nearly all open source projects face. There are companies that profit off Drupal who don’t give back to help maintain the project. The Drupal Association has chosen to address this issue by restructuring our Drupal Certified Partner program to focus exclusively on those companies that give back to the community. The goal is to incentivize the creation of a culture of contribution within companies that work in Drupal that provide the Drupal Project with sufficient resources to innovate and grow. There is always work to be done in creating a more equitable program, but it is beginning to work as we have more than doubled the number of Drupal Certified Partners in the past 15 months.
The Drupal Association is governed by a 12-person Board of Directors that meets several times a year, including two public meetings at DrupalCons. Nine directors are selected by a Nominating Committee of the board and two directors are elected by members of the Drupal Association. The final seat is the “Founding Director”. This is a voting seat that can only be filled by Dries Buytaert. Like all board seats, this is an unpaid, voluntary role that carries with it a single vote on the board. It has to be approved annually by the Board of Directors. Except for the trademark licensing, the Drupal Association has no contracts or agreements with Dries Buytaert or the Drupal Project, and Dries receives no funding from the Drupal Association or its operation of Drupal.org.
Dries Buytaert owns the trademark “Drupal”. He has transparently communicated the Drupal Trademark and Logo Policy by which these are governed. Under the policy, any changes to the policy go into effect sixty (60) days after publication. Dries Buytaert also owns the domain names “drupal.org”, “drupal.com” and “drupalcon.org”.
Dries has granted the Drupal Association an exclusive license to use “Drupal”, “Drupal.org”, and “DrupalCon” and a non-exclusive license to use Drupal for non-commercial uses. This license allows the Drupal Association to support the Drupal Project by providing the infrastructure to host and maintain the official version of Drupal and to organize its contributors. It also allows the Association to support the Drupal Community in their work with Drupal.
The net effect of this arrangement is that Dries Buytaert retains ultimate control over what software can be named “Drupal” and what website can be named “Drupal.org.” He can thus ensure that any software that calls itself “Drupal” or website that uses “Drupal.org” conforms with his vision. This would likely cause the Drupal Association to fork the software and maintain it under a new name and url. The high cost of such an action to both parties makes this option highly unlikely and unable to execute quickly.
What the trademark does not allow him to do is to block any person or organization from using any component of Drupal core or any modules housed on Drupal.org. Those decisions are the sole discretion of the Drupal Association. To date, we have exercised this authority in a very limited manner to protect and safeguard the website and its content from attacks and misuse.
Twenty-three years ago, Dries chose to release Drupal under an open-source license, inspiring tens of thousands to build careers and champion an Open Web. However, fulfilling this vision required more than just a General Public License. By creating the Drupal Association, setting up Drupal core's governance, and licensing the trademark, Dries ensured Drupal remained open-source without commercial entanglements, securing a strong, independent foundation.
Along with Dries Buytaert and many contributors, the Drupal Association is focused on the future of Drupal (see: Starshot Initiative). How can we support its adoption through marketing and create sustainable revenue streams for Drupal to flourish? These are tough questions that confront many open source projects. Our governance allows us to move forward in this work with great certainty.
Previously, we wrapped up migrating configuration to match the content model we specified in our upgrade plan. Ready to start migrating content? Hang in there — it’s coming up next. But first, let's address one of the hardest issues to resolve when they arise - entity ID conflicts in content migrations.
mauricio Tue, 11/12/2024 - 23:18
Integrating Drupal with other systems is a common part of creating or developing a website or web application. Although Drupal offers many tools to facilitate this process, encountering minor or major difficulties is simply inevitable. Based on our knowledge from several hundred projects for clients, we’ve compiled a list of the common problems. It’s worth familiarizing yourself with them to effectively avoid them and speed up the implementation of integration projects.
In an increasingly globalized world, businesses are turning to multilingual solutions to reach an international audience. Drupal 10 offers a powerful multisite architecture that allows you to manage multiple sites from a single installation, ideal for organizations with a global reach.
In this week's Beyond Blocks podcast episode, I spoke to Jess Archer - Engineering Team Lead at Laravel.
We discuss Laravel Prompts which was released at Laracon US last year and added to Drush 13, but also about PHP, Laravel, Neovim, working in the terminal and bullet journaling.
DrupalCamp Berlin 2024 united 150+ Drupal enthusiasts, showcasing AI innovations, inspiring talks, and Dries Buytaert’s vision for the new “Drupal CMS.” From Splash Awards to collaboration highlights, dive into the full recap of this dynamic event!
Another year, another Drupal Camp, and I'm once again delighted by the community, its great atmosphere, and all the things showcased in the talks, informal meetings, hallways, and social events. The motto "Come for the software, stay for the community" remains as relevant as ever. This year, I noticed quite a few new faces. During the closing session, there was a raffle just for first-time attendees at Drupal Camp, and I counted about thirty people in the raffle, so at least 15% were newcomers who, I hope, felt that motto. Additionally, there was significant attendance at the Forcontu introduction to Drupal 10 course, partly because this year the Spanish Drupal Association found the right strategy to bring in students from various institutions.
As for me, I believe the community remains healthy and strong.
Since I still haven't mastered the art of being in two places at once and attending multiple talks simultaneously, I was only able to see a few and hear opinions on some others, so the selection I provide below is incomplete and biased, but I believe it's still interesting.
This year, Drupal Starshot initiative has been launched, aiming to create a new entry point for Drupal, which would be the default download from Drupal.org instead of the Drupal core. The…