Today is Drupal’s 25th birthday. While I haven’t used the software to build anything significant since the days of Drupal 6 & 7, I still try to periodically check in on the project from a 30,000-foot level.
One of my first ever freelance projects was to migrate two Drupal 5 sites to a new server and handle the general ongoing maintenance. I was way over my head but I figured it out. I upgraded those sites to Drupal 6 soon after and created a new third Drupal site for that same client. I eventually ended up converting them all to WordPress sites, but learned a lot. I still have that client today!
Learning From Each Other
I am heavily involved with the tooling behind tracking contributor “props” to each WordPress release and over time. I often look to see how other projects solve similar challenges. Drupal’s credits system is quite nice and there are a lot of good things within that system that WordPress could take inspiration from.
I do think we need to take a step back and find a way to track WordPress contributor activity in a way that’s more project-wide. Noting “props” within commit messages is great, but every contribution to the project does not end up with an associated commit. The various contributor teams also work on different cycles and their outputs are not always contributing directly to a given release. I’ve spoken about the challenges around properly recognizing contributors to large open source projects in the past. If this interests you, I recommend checking that out.
When I was in New York City last November to attend EvolveDigital, I met a number of Drupal contributors, including someone that had previously organized Drupal Boston meetups. I’m the lead organizer of the Boston WordPress meetup, and we’re always trying to find new or interesting speakers. I think that having some hybrid WordPress/Drupal meetups could be really neat, and I’m looking forward to trying to make this happen in 2026.
Open Source = Open Source
When it comes to WordPress and Drupal, we are more alike than we are different. In the battle of open source vs. closed source, we’re on the same team and stronger when we’re aligned together.
The most important part of any Open Source project is community. At a time when a political and economic uncertainty affects us all at both a local an global level, defending the ideals of Open Source and the four essential freedoms is critical. As innovations in AI continue at an ever accelerating pace, preserving these human connections and learning from each other is more important than ever.
We should celebrate the major milestones of other OSS projects, even when they are our competitors. Open Source often impacts individuals and communities in life-changing ways that cannot be predicted. And this will always be worth fighting for.
When Open Source wins we all win.
Making it to a quarter century is something to celebrate. Congratulations to Dries and everyone who has ever contributed to Drupal! 🎉
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