Shalimar:
In the early 2000s, a few visionaries looked at proprietary software and decided they were gonna do something different. It's a story our Moodle community knows well, but today we're exploring another angle on it from someone who lived it from day one, Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal and Acquia.

Dan:
So Dries is a software engineer, digital pioneer, and a genuine champion of open source everywhere. Drupal was born from an idea in his dorm room at the University of Antwerp, and first released in 2001, and today it's a content management system running millions of websites and applications worldwide. Uh, open, versatile, built to connect with powerful integrations, not unlike a certain LMS we know rather well.

Dries, uh, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dries:
Thanks for having me. It's an honor.

Shalimar:
And thanks in advance for making me feel very okay about the fact that my first website was on GeoCities and had a Comic under construction GIF.

Dries:
Well, I think my my first website was exactly the same. It was on GeoCities with some nice classic animated GIFs on as well, so you're not alone.

Shalimar:
Love that. Okay. Well, let's start at the beginning, because I think people forget that the founder of Drupal started out as just, you know, a guy with a laptop and a deadline.

Dan:
Yeah. So tell us, 20 years on, how has the open source landscape changed, and, uh, has that been how you kind of hoped it would, how you expected it to?

Dries:
I would say so. So, like I started Drupal as, um, as, as a hobbyist. Like, I just wanted to, as we say in open source, scratch my own itch, right? And so I decided to build a website to solve, you know, one of the problems that I had. And basically, you know, Drupal is more than 25 years old, and back in the day, you know, there was no social media.

Google was still a private company. Nobody had, you know, smartphones. And for me, I wanted basically like a WhatsApp group, you know, before WhatsApp existed. And so I ended up building a message board for me and my friends, so just we could stay in touch with each other, very much like how you would use a WhatsApp group or something today.

And so that was my itch to scratch, and I just decided to, to spend, honestly, a couple nights putting that together. And, uh, by accident, I, I feel like I'm an accidental open source leader, to be honest. Like, that, it ended up becoming Drupal and, you know, fast-forward 25 years, and here I am.

But, uh, somewhere along the way, I think maybe 10 years in, so 15 or so years ago, I felt like open source would evolve from something that was born out of volunteers, that would then be commercialized by companies, and eventually would maybe become something that, you governments decided to step in and help maintain.

And I built this kind of mental model, I guess, because I, at some point in the journey I realized that open source and Drupal was a public good, like in the, in the economic sense. And if you look at other public goods, they've basically followed this trajectory. If you think about, let's say think about the school system or something, like it, you know, it started as volunteers like maybe, you know, parents teaching their kids, and then maybe getting a bunch of kids together in the neighborhood, and eventually that led to schools being created, often commercial schools.

And eventually the government said, "Hey, actually, education is so important, we wanna have a say in this, and we wanna help." And like like the school system in, is an example, the road system is an example. You know, roads were just pathways between homes. Commercial interest led to investment in roads at some point, and it, again, at some point the government said, "Hey, actually, the road system is so important to society that we have to like help maintain it." And, uh, I forgot when I did this blog post, but, um, it was many, many years ago, maybe over 15 years ago, and I said, "Hey, open source evolve the same way." And, I remember obviously Drupal being born out of my dorm room as a volunteer project.

I remember when we started paying contributors, uh, to participate in open source, and it really did send shock waves through the system, you know, when we entered that sort of commercialization phase of open source and like companies being started, like, you know, Acquia or Moodle as commercial entities. That was like, that was kind of dicey at some point, you know?

And then now obviously with digital sovereignty, governments are starting to get involved. So I don't know, long answer to your simple question, but I do feel like the big arc of open source is actually playing out as, as I predicted it would.

Dan:
But so there's more of that arc still to come though, presumably. You know, are, you suggesting that open source will become fully kind of a public good, fully owned by governments?

I don't think it will be fully... Yeah, I think the, I think there's always gonna be volunteers contributing to open source, and that it's also really important. But I think at least if you look at Drupal today, I would say like 70-plus percent of all the contributions come from developers that are employed, meaning they, they don't come from volunteers so to speak.

They come from funded developers that work for these companies. And I think the next phase, and I think it could be sort of the next big moment of open source, is when governments decide that open source runs so much of the critical infrastructure that they actually have to help maintain and fund open source.

So like in the case of Drupal, uh, just to give you an example, the European Commission has, you know, hundreds of, uh, Drupal sites just within the commission. Somebody did a study, and just in France there's over 1,000 Drupal sites in the federal government. And yeah, they just use open source, you know, like, like anyone else that like they come...

I think governments now, especially in the current geopolitical climate, let's say, they want more independence and sovereignty. Their own con, you know, freedom of control so that they're not dependent on other nations or other um... And so they're all looking at sort of digital sovereignty and how can we, you know, take control of our own website so that we can get shut off or those kinds of things.

And so there's a lot of conversations now, especially in European countries around maybe mandating open source for critical services. And, um, it's actually really interesting because today they don't contribute all that much. Like just a few months ago I was in Belgium. I'm, I'm from Belgium, like you said, and I was biking, as you do in Belgium, and I biked past this sign on the road and, like they advertise kind of a public infrastructure projects.

And they were building, um, a a tunnel for bikers. And it, it says like on the sign, "Hey, we're investing 7 million euros to make this, uh, tunnel for bikers." And I mean, it's great. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't do that or that Belgium shouldn't do that, but it does...

It did make me think, it's like well, listen, you have like thousands of Drupal sites that power mission critical citizen services, and yet you're not contributing even a million euro to the maintenance of Drupal. However, you are spending 7 million euros to build, you know, a single tunnel for cyclists in like, you know, this small town that I was in.

And again, I've nothing against this tunnel by any means, but there is a big funding gap between how governments use open source and how much they help maintain open source. And I think the next phase of open I think in the next phase of open source, I think we'll see governments get more involved as they start to realize that, you know, maintain, helping to maintain open source is a little bit the same, like helping to maintain, uh, roads or bridges or school systems...

Dan:
So do you personally have a view of where that arc should end up? What, what is it that you're asking for or hoping for?

Dries:
I mean, I could, I could see open source projects that, again, not all open source projects, but those projects that are actually critical for, for society, let's say, or for the working of the government. I do think I could see this, a future where they get millions of dollars from governments around the world, so yeah.

That would be a good outcome, think, for open source. I know some people are very nervous about government involvement, but I'm not saying governments will replace the commercial contributions, and I'm not saying commercial contributions will replace volunteer contributions. I think all of these, all three will be working together in some kind of mix or distribution.

I don't know what the right distribution is, but I think a third, a third, a third would be pretty healthy as an example. Anyway, that's just the thoughts. And so I think that's been slowly playing out over the last two decades, you know.

Shalimar:
It suits me just fine. I would love to see some more government money in my pocket.

So you also went and built a company, Acquia, right alongside the open source project, and that always struck me as a bit of a tight rope to walk. How do you think about the relationship between Acquia and Drupal, money and mission living in the same house, so to speak?

Dries:
Yeah. It's a great question and, um, let me explain why I started Acquia and then secondly I'll try to talk about how to walk the line, so to speak. But I started Drupal seven years before starting Acquia. And so Drupal predated Acquia, which I don't know if that's unique or not, but for seven years I've been the project lead with zero commercial interest in Drupal.

Like, I had a, a job at the university. My university work had nothing to do with Drupal. So like all my technical decisions and all my decisions really had no commercial bias, let's say. But like five years into Drupal, you know, Drupal really started to take off. All these large organizations started switching to Drupal.

And I was so passionate about Drupal's reputation and brand that I often found myself helping these organizations free of charge. Like, I remember, for example, MTV.com switched to Drupal, you know, and like they crashed, like their site failed. And so I would spend my evenings on the phone with, you know, engineers at MTV trying to work through their problems.

And I mean, this was before Zoom, so it was like you, you know, dial the phone phone number and you would pay for an international call and I would not charge them anything. I just help them because I was so passionate about Drupal being successful. 'Cause, in my mind, if this failed, it would hurt Drupal's reputation, you know?

Um, anyway, after doing a number of those and getting more and more feedback that these organizations, that they needed some help, I felt, well, actually for Drupal to succeed, it needs an organization like Acquia that can help these organizations be successful with Drupal, you know? Because open source at the core is just a license.

It doesn't guarantee support. It doesn't offer some of these things that organizations wanted at the time. And so my whole vision for Acquia was really to help Drupal be successful, you know, with, with helping these large organizations. And, and so I started Acquia because of that. Now, when I announced Acquia, um, was kind of tricky because we had raised $7 million in Series A funding.

And so obviously, we actually got outed by a journalist. Like, you know, when we raised money in the US apparently you have to file that, and our team filed it, but then it's public and I didn't realize that was public. And so a journalist saw that We had raised $7 million, and, um, and, like, basically was gonna disclose it in, like, 12 hours or something.

So we scrambled, put together, like, a website in Drupal and wrote a blog post about Acquia. But, uh, the community's reaction was very mixed. Like, some people were excited, they saw the value of that. But many people actually were very nervous about, about that change, uh, because as I said, I'd be making all my decisions as a project lead without any commercial bias, and all of a sudden $7 million entered a project, so to speak, and also my, my relationship changed as well.

And, um, and for a while it was a little bit tough because people were so skeptical that it was good for Drupal. But I think in the end, well, we did a couple of things. Like, actually, with our first investors, I negotiated, like, a special contract. I don't know if this is public even, but I, I wrote, like, a one-page contract and it said, you know, "I, Dries, a project lead of Drupal, I can make decisions in the best interest of Drupal, even if they financially hurt Acquia." You know?

And I had them sign it, and they did. Which was a huge testament to them, because my biggest fear was they don't actually understand how open source works. And my whole belief was, for Acquia to be successful, Drupal needs to be successful. And also vice versa, as I explained.

I felt like for Drupal to be successful, Acquia need to exist. Well, not only exist, also be successful. But it did mean that sometimes I would have to make decisions that are solely in the best interest of Drupal and maybe hurt Acquia. And it was really important to me that I could walk that line, and I could make those decisions without getting into, like, you know, a problem or, like, into trouble, so to speak, with my investors.

Dan:
That's not just hard for, that's not just hard for your investors and your community, the other side. It must be hard for you personally as well. Uh, making those must be, must be difficult time, at times.

Dries:
Sometimes it's difficult, but always, I always felt like, you know, there, there are so many win-wins, you know? Things that are good for both, and that's what we focused on. You know? And, and like, to this day, we only do the win-wins, you know? Like, if it... We don't do anything that's, I would say or argue, bad for Drupal, good for Acquia, or vice versa.

So we constantly look for, you know, what can we do that helps Drupal and us? And that, that has been part of our DNA from day one. And of course, the skeptics in the room don't believe you. So we, we took a lot of pride into, like, like for example, we said we are gonna contribute to Drupal.

And, like, for the last, you know, 18 or so years of Acquia, we have been, like, the top contributor to Drupal. We would say, like, "Here's what we're gonna do," and then we would live up to our promise and commitment. And slowly but certainly, I think a lot of skeptics started to see, like, actually, they're doing the right thing, you know?

And they're consistently doing the right thing. So I think we started to win over sort of the hearts and minds of the skeptics more and more. And then also in our journey, a lot of great things happened. So for example, during the Obama administration, you know, uh, President Obama basically switched, uh, whitehouse.gov to Drupal, and it was the first time in history that the White House used open source.

And then we also got them to contribute back to Drupal, which also a first time in history, that the Office of the President actually became an open source contributor. But that was a big moment for Drupal and open source. And I can tell you, every Drupal agency, like, you know, a digital agency using Drupal, they would use the example of whitehouse.gov in their sales pitches.

Like, even though they had nothing to do with it, they, they would say, "Hey." 'Cause, you know, back in the day, right, open source was like, you know, can we trust this? Like, it's kinda, like, a bit hippy-dippy, right? It's built by people all around the world. Like, how can it be secure and scalable?

And literally everybody in the Drupal community started saying, "Well, if it works for whitehouse.gov," which obviously is very large scale, and it's probably the most attacked website on the internet. Like, you know, 15-year-old script kiddies tried to take it down. Other nations tried to take it down. I mean, it's sort of a sport, I think, for some people to try and take down whitehouse.gov.

Sadly, I'm not endorsing that. But, so all of a sudden, all these agencies are like, "Well, if it's good enough for whitehouse.gov, it's good enough for you." And it really helped so many organizations in the Drupal ecosystem win deals, and that would not have happened, would not have happened without Acquia, you know? And so moments like this started to shift the mindset a little bit of all the skeptics.

Like, we, we were true to our word. We kept doing what we said we would do. We contributed, contributed, contributed, and still today we contribute, contribute, contribute. And we would create these tipping-point moments for Drupal that helped everybody. And it's like the MTV story, like, the big M, you know what I mean?

That really just helped everybody in the ecosystem. So it's, it's been a difficult line to walk. 'Cause honestly, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I could have done what Moodle did. I could have made the company Drupal instead of Acquia. And, but I felt like, because Drupal predated Acquia, uh, I felt like I really need to keep the playing field level.

And like, why should I have a unique benefit even though I started the project and I own the trademark? I felt like I, I should not have the special benefits that other people in the project don't have, which is being able to call my company Drupal, you know? And so I actually took the harder path in many ways by creating a second brand, Acquia, and building that brand, and constantly having to tell people Like, yeah, we're just, like, one company in the whole Drupal world, and you can work with us or you can work with all of our competitors, you know?

And so we gave up, like, strategic advantages, if you will, in order to do the right thing.

Dan:

You, you've spoken in one of your blog posts recently, I think, about nowadays Drupal fighting a bit of a reputation for being a bit outdated, a bit overly complex. And we definitely hear a version of that, too, at, at Moodle. Aside from, I guess, working with MTV and the White House.

What's the advice you have for a community trying to shake that narrative? Is it just about the organizations you work with, or how do you, how do you kind of...

Dries:

I think you only are the shiny object once, right? And so, like, there was definitely a time in Drupal's history where we were the shiny object. We were, like, whatever the next JS of the time or the lovable of the time. And like anything, it kinda, it passes and it, then it kinda enter a more mature phase, I think, of being a, a company.

You see it with startups, too. Like, startups when they have, like, let's say less than 10 million in ARR, they get so much media attention because they're new, they're like, it's... They're growing fast. But then, like, a company doing 200 million in ARR is kinda boring, you know, even though it's the better, more mature company.

So open source has kinda the same thing, where at some point you're no longer the shiny object. And, and I think Linux is a great example. Like, I remember in the early days, I actually started my open source career as a small contributor to Linux, believe it or not.

So before I started Drupal, I just was kind of in love with Linux, and, uh, I contributed a little bit to it. But, like, I would... All these websites every morning to get the latest and greatest on Linux. It was so exciting, you know. Some drama there, too. And, um, and Linux was small and unproven at the time, but it was interesting and, uh, there was like a rebellion piece to it, you know?

It was disrupting the kind of traditional, uh, Unix world and what have you. Uh, but, like, fast-forward to today and, you know, Linux is, like, 10,000 times bigger. It basically powers everything in the world. Like, you know, every non, uh, Apple phone, uh, you know, all the servers. Yet it's no longer that interesting to talk about, you know, even though it's, like, now critical infrastructure and, like, so much more established, so much more well run.

It's just not that interesting anymore. And I think, and I think Drupal suffers a little bit from that as well. Like, it's, you know, we're 25 years old, we've, we've been around, we're reliable. By the way, we keep innovating, we keep improving, we keep adding features. Like, every year we have just a Drupal core.

Our core platform, we have over 1,000 contributors. Like, most, you know, small, shiny object open source projects, they would, like, dream to have 1,000 annual contributors. and we have it, you know? And so we're in this very fortunate position, but that doesn't make it that interesting to talk about us anymore.

So even though we are a modern, you know, CMS, like we have, you know, rewritten Drupal many times over. It's, you know, we're, like, 97% object-oriented, using modern design practices, using latest and greatest, um, standards like HTMX and, like, all of these things. But yeah, just less interesting to people now and, 'cause it kinda quietly runs in the background, I guess.

You know, it kinda does its job.

Dan:

Like roads and schools, to go back to your previous analogy. 

Dries:

Exactly. And then open source does have a marketing challenge, I will say. Um, like, we've never had a marketing budget or barely had a marketing budget. So like in open source, marketing is usually word of mouth, to be honest. Usually. And so Drupal got well known. It's, like, one developer talking to another developer, and like, it kinda spread that way.

But now it's like, all right, how do we keep educating, you know, people about all the great things happening in Drupal? And it's a little bit harder when it's not, when maybe you're not that interesting to talk about anymore, um, even, you know. So it's an interesting challenge.

Shalimar:
I have a question that's off-roading. It's a little bit of a tangent, but I, I need to scratch this itch of curiosity. Now, you shared that you, in the early years, started helping MTV.

Dries:
Yeah.

Shalimar:
And I'm wondering, was it Dan specifically that you were helping? Because a bit of Dan lore is that he used to work at MTV.

Dries:

Oh, you... I didn't know that, actually, Dan. I don't think we...

Dan:

I was on the other end of the phone. You probably don't remember me.

Dries:

No, no. It's so funny.

Dan:

I was the one breaking the Drupal website. No, I worked in a very different part of MTV a long, a long time ago, but yeah.

Dries:

Oh, okay.

Shalimar:

Thank you for satisfying the curiosity. I just had to know.

Dries:
I honestly don't remember. I just remember my phone bill.

Shalimar:
All right, back on course here. So at Moodle, like with Drupal, contributor community is everything. It's such a big part of what we do and what's brought us all together and all the relationships that we've formed over decades at this point. Drupal has pioneered some genuinely clever ways to recognize and reward contributors.

Credit systems, contribution tracking. So what's been the hardest part of building that, and how did you actually solve for it, not just talk about solving it?

Dries:
Yeah. It was actually not that hard to build. So let me back up and give you the context. But, like, um, you know, as, like, as a project lead of Drupal, actually, obviously I've helped with the technical and product leadership of But like one of the themes, I guess, that I've been thinking and writing about for 20 years is like the concept of open source sustainability and like how do we sustain a project like Drupal?

Like how do we get more people to contribute to it? And, and honestly, I think it's the hardest problem. Like, I feel like open source as a license has won. Open source as a technical innovation or development methodology has won. Like, and by the way, when I started Drupal, it hadn't won these things yet.

But now I think open source as a technology is just everywhere, right? Um, people understand the benefits of it. But the thing that we still have to solve is open source sustainability. It remains very hard to fund contributors to open source, and I honestly believe if we can solve that, I think maybe most software companies in the world could become open source companies, which to me would be incredibly exciting, uh, thing to happen.

Like today, I would argue less than maybe a percent of all software companies are open source companies. I mean, probably a fraction of a percent. Can probably count the number of open source companies, like it's maybe less than 100, let's say, um, versus the total number of software companies is measured in tens of thousands of them, right?

But like imagine a world where almost all all software companies are open source companies. To me, that's like what I wanna contribute to making it happen. But I think in order to get there, we need to actually solve the sustainability challenge of open source. Anyway, and so for many years I've been thinking about, like how do we scale Drupal?

How do you get more people involved? And by the way, in Drupal, Acquia is the largest contributor to Drupal, but Acquia contributes less than 5% of all contributions. People don't realize that because often, and I don't know whether it is for Moodle, but like often, so like in sort of the Moodle configuration, let's say the company will maybe contribute 90% of all the codes and the community, let's say 10%.

I don't know if that's the case for Moodle, but like Drupal is very unique. It may be like Linux where it's like very distributed and contributions come from many different places. Uh, but that also meant that I had to think long and hard about like how do we get so many people to contribute?

You know, how do we, how do we get thousands of people to contribute? And how do we help fund some of that? So anyway, spend a lot of my time thinking and writing about that. But one of the things that it led to is a credit system that you mentioned.

So when you're small, you have a social contract. Imagine you're a family of four and everybody has to participate in doing the dishes. It's hard to get out of it, right? Like if one person doesn't do their share, like the other people will say, "Hey, come on, you haven't done the dishes in days.

It's your turn to do the dishes." And so like when communities are small, the social contract does a lot of the heavy lifting. But as you get bigger, and Drupal got to hundreds and thousands of contributors, it's so easy for people and organizations to be makers not takers, is the words that I use for this.

And so like how do you get people to contribute becomes a lot harder. And so the credit system is basically, um, a way for us to do that. So what, what it, what does it mean? So I created the credit system as a way to track who contributes, which individuals contribute, but also who are their sponsors.

So we can, for example, say Dan contributed this, but he was sponsored by Moodle. So Moodle actually paid for him to contribute it, which is, I think, important 'cause too often the credits go to the individual, and I mean, they deserve credit, but the organization behind the individual also deserves credit.

And then there's actually a third layer that we can say. So it's like Dan contributed it for Moodle, but on behalf of MTV, 'cause MTV is actually paying Moodle, you know? And so we can track all of that. And then with that information, what we do is we give the makers unique benefits.

So like we increase the visibility of the maker. So for example, we have a marketplace, if you will, a page where if you're looking for a Drupal agency, a company providing Drupal services, you can go to drupal.org/, I think it's, I don't know, /services or /marketplace or something. And there you will only find companies that have contributed, and the page is ranked by how much they contribute.

And there's like a a decay on it. So like if you stop contributing after six or nine months, you disappear from the services marketplace. Anyway, the credit system has given us insight in how the Drupal project works. That's why I can say things like 70% of the contributions are paid for by companies, right?

But it also has given us a tool to promote those that contribute. So it's interesting because open source is a public good, meaning everybody can use it, and by the way you use it, it's not restricting me from using it. And that's one of the characteristics of a public good.

It's like the radio. Like you listen to the radio does not prevent me from listening to the radio. It's not like you take away the radio waves for other people, right? And

Yeah, exactly. It's not pie. I like that. Um, and, but that also that, the fact that it's public good also leads to, you know, the tragedy of the commons kind of challenges. But I think one of the realizations is that customers are not public goods. People that come to your website, if you win a customer, I can't win it anymore.

You know what I mean? Typically, right? It's like, uh, somebody wants to build a website, they're gonna find an agency to build it. And if they pick agency A, it None of the other agencies can win the same contract. So by definition, customers are not public goods, for lack of a better term.

And so they are pie, yes.

Shalimar:
Yeah, they are the pie.

Dries:

Yeah. And, and so therefore, one of the things we can do is we can send leads to the makers, because in my mind, and I, I use this term like it's an open source dividend, for lack of a better term. So if we have, let's say, $100,000 in leads and we give the $100,000 to a taker, the taker will build a Drupal site, but zero will come back to the project, or, you know, close to zero.

Maybe some marketing. But if we give the leads to a maker, we know that maker will maybe, of the $100,000, will basically give back $5,000 in contribution. So it's basically like a 5% dividend, if you want to think about it that way. And so we said, "Well, why would we ever give a lead to a maker if we can give it to our takers and we get something back in return?" Right?

The contributions in return. And so that's how we use the credit system for. And it has helped us. It's always hard to measure these things, but we believe it has helped us to scale, and we've tied it to also a certification kind of program. And we tell, like we try to coach customers that are going through an RFD process to ask for, you know, makers or, like we call them Drupal certified partners really.

And so we're trying to educate the market too. Like, hey, if you do Drupal work, if you contract with an agency, make sure to check how much they contribute. You know, and everything is public, so you can go to Drupal.org and you can look up, like even Moodle, you could say, "Has Moodle contributed to Drupal?" And it would say yes or no, and how much, and like their standing and their ranking.

And then we encourage customers to actually mandate contribution through their procurement process. Or actually not just look at who's the cheapest company to work with, but also who's giving back to the project. So anyway, again, a very long-winded answer, but like that's how we use the credit system.

Shalimar:
I have a question and a comment.

Dries:
Sure!

Shalimar:
Comment/question. It's a question and a comment. It's wrapped together.

Dries:
Okay.

Shalimar:
Okay. In my career, I've noticed a, somewhat of a divide, right? Uh, which this is not the rule, but by and large, our developer community skews male.

Dries:
Yeah.

Shalimar:
And we, Moodle, operate in a very education-forward space.

Dries:
Mm-hmm.

Shalimar:
Which is a space where a lot of women are also truly contributing to the world of Moodle, whether it's through language translation, right? Making Moodle available in languages all for all over the world, or teaching people how to use a product. While I know that developers are at the absolute core of the product, right?

Like we need the developer community, and we're, we're constantly trying to look for ways to reward and compensate and share the value that is created by that development. I worry that we sometimes are a little shortsighted in how we talk about that contributor community.

To just focus on the development and not looking at the wide array of types of contributions people can make in our communities. And I'm, because I'm a little bit of a axe-grinding feminist, I do kind of see that like gender divide and I want it to be just as equitable for people who don't have coding skills, but who are contributing so much to our, our communities. And I just wanted to throw that out there.

Dries:
Yeah, no.

Shalimar:
Respond if you want.

Dries:
And, and you're spot on. Like I think it's actually really important and, and maybe I didn't explain it well, but we do actually recognize non-code contributions through the credit system...

Shalimar:
Love that

Dries:
...we've got that covered. So if we contribute, let's say writing documentation, you can earn credits. If you contribute with the marketing of Drupal, you can earn credits. If you help put together a Drupal event, you can get credit. So it's definitely, uh, not just for coding, you know, or technical contribution at all.

And so we try to... but it's also hard, you know? Sometimes it's hard to measure, like do you give one credit or two credits for something? So it's not perfect, the system, but it has helped us a lot, so yeah.

Dan:

You've satisfied Shal, that's good. She's, she's, accepting that. 

Dries:
Yeah, nice

Dan:
Um, and there's one other, I guess one other part to this ecosystem, which again, I've heard you talk about. We talked about governments, you've talked about agencies and so on, but then you also have kind of big companies that use open source software for free and you, I think you, the term you use there is that it's a subsidy flowing in the wrong direction.

So how do you, how do you shift that in, in large enterprise?

Dries:

So the context I wrote that in is, uh, needs a little bit of unpacking as well. I'm sorry. You're asking great questions that I think my answers are maybe nuanced. But so first, I think open source is a license, right? Like really it's like a legal license, if you think about it that way.

And actually at the bottom of every open source license, the license waives all responsibility and liability. It says, "Use at your own risk." Like, "We're not responsible." And so and that's great because it actually allows people to contribute without exposing themselves to, you know, major legal, uh, you know, risks or something.

And I, and I call that license only open source, you know. Like there's a lot of open source, they just throw their code out there and say, "That's it," you know? But the difference between sort of a license only project and what I'd call stewarded open source is that Some projects, Moodle included, Drupal included, we take on responsibilities beyond what the license requires, and it's actually a big deal.

So, like, we have a security team. The license doesn't require us to have a security team. The license does not require us to manage security fixes well. And so as a project, we've taken on additional responsibilities. It's kind of a tax on relevance, I call it sometimes. Like, if you want people to use your project, you have to do these things that you actually don't have to do legally.

That actually costs money, and that work is not necessarily open source work in the traditional sense. So I'll give you a concrete example. So in Drupal, we have security notifications, you know? So, like, if there is a security update or release, if you have a Drupal site, you get kind of like a, a pop-up or a message inside your website that says, "Hey, you got a update." That's actually something that costs us money to deliver, you know, in the sense like we have infrastructure, we have servers that send out these messages.

Or, like, we have, we have every Drupal site kind of ping home to see if there's a security update. When I said that, that the quote that you just gave, I forgot the exact words that you said, that's like a subsidy, uh, thing. It's actually we're paying for this, you know, so that you have security updates.

And we're giving this away for free, like literally free. And we did some calculations, uh, not too long ago, and in the case of Drupal, so, like, we spend about 3 million a year, uh, as a Drupal association or nonprofit on the infrastructure, the web, the web servers, the servers, the security notification, like a whole bunch of other things that we pay for so that you have a better Drupal, even though the license is not required.

When we look at the cost and we look at the number of what we call modern Drupal sites, so it's a cohort of Drupal sites, we actually said, "Well, we're actually paying $10 a year per Drupal site for the..." Like, the Drupal Association is paying $10 a year for every Drupal site that's part of the modern Drupal cohort.

And we're not charging for this, and so we're asking people in the community to to donate. Like, some people say, "Here's 20 bucks." And, and then we take the 20 bucks that comes from, you know, a caring person somewhere in the world, and we say, "Hey, um, whatever, Apple, we're gonna give you 10 bucks" so you get basically security updates.

And so that's, when I felt like it's a subsidy going in the wrong way, that's what I meant. Like, why would we take money from, let's say you, Dan, so that Apple can get security notifications versus Apple paying us 10 bucks so that we can make Drupal better for you, Dan, right?

Like, so it's going... That's the right way in my mind. And so again, long story, but, like, we're trying to figure out, we're not changing the license of Drupal, just to be really clear. Drupal will always be GPL and open source. But we are questioning should we charge money for some of these additional services that the license does not require from certain users, like, let's say, large scale users, you know?

So that we can actually take their money, pay for our services, and if there's any surplus, use it to make Drupal better and fulfill our mission, like make Drupal better for everyone. But that's a, that's a controversial topic right now. It's a little bit like you go back 15 years when I said we started the people to contribute to open source.

That sent all kinds of shock waves through the open source community back in the day. Now it's normal, um, as you know. But yeah, we're starting to trailblaze this concept of actually charging, or we're evaluating it I, I should say. Like, could we do this? How would we do this?

And we wanna do it in a fair, uh, way so that small users, individual developers, they don't have to pay. You know, we wanna offer these services to them for free. But is there a category of users that actually can afford to give us a little bit of money in exchange for a valuable service?

Like, they know if their sites are secure or not. That's something that they need and want, and, um, why would we subsidize it from using the money of, uh, you know, thousands of individual contributors?

Shalimar:

On that note, when you're designing software that you hope will last for decades, how do you build in that stability today while knowing that, with total certainty, everything changes tomorrow? Like, genuinely, if you have a real answer to that, I want that for my own career.

Dries:

I don't know the, the solid answer, but I, I know, I think there's certain things you can do that will survive for a long time, as well as set you up for change. So, like, I'll give you an example. So in Drupal, we are pretty obsessive about automated testing as an example, and, um, we have pretty good test coverage and we have rules, like every bug you fix has to come with a test.

And so over the years, we've built this very rich test, uh, environment, I would say. And I think it helps us actually stay around for a long time, because what it means is a couple things. Like, one, a new contributor comes into Drupal and wants to make an improvement.

Um, they can actually run our tests and have, you know, a decent guarantee that the test is good. Like, if we did not have tests, it would actually increase the barrier to contribution quite dramatically, because, like, you change one thing here, it could break something, you know, over there, and you would probably not know unless, you know, you have these tests.

And, like, I think in the, in the current world, AI is rapidly changing how people build as well, right? And so same thing, like AI agents, they love our testing framework. Like, we have tens of thousands of tests in Drupal now. And so, like, an AI agent can make a change.

Maybe they don't have the full context, the impact of a change, but because of the test system, um, you know, it becomes safer. Not entirely safe to make those kinds of changes. And so that, that's like an example I think of, like, a, a durable concept that helps also, like, with the longevity of Drupal.

And so it's like a technical thing, but I think there's other things like that. Like, we've rewritten Drupal, like, five or six times over the years, but some of the core concepts, the architectural concepts, they have always survived every rewrite. So I think gotta, gotta focus on the long-term kinds of things.

Dan:
Yeah.

But there's, I think there's something in Shal's question around AI and open source coming together, and those worlds colliding and, and, you know, AI, as you've seen, can change open source without asking anyone's permission, and can just run, run with that, and that's only gonna accelerate. That's exciting, but it's also very challenging for the model. So, so what, what do you think that does to open source business models maybe? The, the, the kind of stuff that we've been talking about so far.

Dries:
Yeah.

Dan:
Plus changes to stop that.

I'm not too worried about it, actually. I mean, I think a lot about the impact of AI and have written extensively about the impact of AI, so I need to, I need to be honest about that, I guess. But, like, the other way I look at it is, like, so let's take, uh, you know, Vibe coding, right?

Basically Vibe coding, you know, for let's say $5 in tokens, you have some kind of application. So basically commoditizes the cost of production, of creating applications. And then the question is, how do you make money if things become so cheap? But the funny thing is, like, we have figured this out 18 years ago at Acquia, 'cause if you think about it, Drupal is open source.

The application is free, and it's not entirely unlike a Vibe coded application, you know? The difference is Drupal was coded by hundreds of people in the community, but it is free for me to use. A Vibe coded application, yes, I have to spend some money on tokens and it was built faster, let's say, than it is free to use.

Okay. That's pretty much the same thing, and I don't wanna, like, rub people the wrong way, but, like, from a business point of view, the application is free or nearly free.

Dan:
Yeah.

Dries:
So then how do you make money? And so we have figured this out at Acquia. So we monetize not the application, but the operations of the application, the hosting, the security, the scaling, the accountability. You know, like as I mentioned, the Olympics use Drupal. Well, guess what? Comcast spends, like, over a billion dollars in their rights for the Olympics, every Olympics, just to buy the rights to broadcast it.

If their website goes down, it costs them millions of dollars of minutes, right? And that's just for the rights, if you think about how much they spend. And so what do we do for them? Well, we guarantee that their website stays up. So they don't have to pay for the application, but they, they sure pay for the operations of the application so that nobody can hack their site, their website stays up and running.

When I think about the impact of AI, I worry really deeply about the impact on the agency business model, 'cause I do think their business is very disruptive, like professional services. Uh, it's tough, and we're trying to give them the tools to help transition. But as it relates to Acquia, we're actually kind of safe, interestingly enough, you know?

Because we've always had, like, the application is kind of free. How do we make money question, and we did the hard work to build a business around it, which now applies to... Well, actually applies pretty well in an AI first world.

Dan:

Fascinating. Well, thank you so much, Dries. Uh, we are out of time there, um, but thank you for being.. covering, covered an awful lot there, and you've been very candid in all of your answers about building the ecosystem, building the, you know, all the contributors towards that, making the whole thing sustainable. And, and I loved all the stuff around ultimately it's about the win-wins, right? The decision-making process has to work for, everybody.

Dries:

Thanks for having me.

Thanks. And I forgot to mention, as a fun fact, been, been a big fan of Moodle. Like, in, at Acquia, we have, um, we have all of these conference rooms in our office, our headquarters. And, they're all named after open source projects. And we have one very large conference room, which is our framing room, and we appropriately named that Moodle many, years ago.

So we have a Moodle conference room. So we're big fans of, what you do.

Dan:
Very good. Very good.

Shalimar:

It's a mutual appreciation society is what I'm hearing. Also, and just to kind of put an end cap here, my big takeaway from our conversation today is that open source isn't just a license. It's a decision people keep making on purpose over and over, year after year. And that takes real work from you and me and everyone in the community.

Dries:
All of us.

Shalimar:
Yeah, people with a lot of patience, a lot of humility, and hopefully a healthy dose of humor.

Dan:
Thank you for spending time with us today. Um, please check the show notes. Um, we'll include links to Drupal, to Acquia, to Dries's blog. You can hear all about his, uh, adventures in open source and in the, in the wild as well, talking about your, hiking journeys as well. 

We've also got a brand-new strategic playbook out now that's on building adaptable learning ecosystems, so you can access that content in the show notes as well. Um, and we will catch you all at the next Moodle Podcast.