Magical thinking &
the reputation gap
A four-year-old in a backyard tent. A toilet hideout with comic books. The European Commission. And the question that stings: “Oh, Drupal — is that still a thing?”
Someone else will do it… until that someone is you
“As kids we don’t always realize how much work it takes to look after us. This is me at the age of four, camping in our backyard. Back then life was magical: the fridge filled itself with food, the dishes somehow got done, clean clothes appeared in your closet, dinner arrived on the table.”
“I was the eldest of three, and as I got older I had to do a few chores — the dishes, weeding the garden. But sometimes I would hide in the toilet with my comic books, waiting for the moment I came out and the dishes would just be done. How many of you have done that? Yeah. A lot of us.”
“I thought: someone else will do it. And it turns out that someone else… ended up being me.”
✿ Magical thinking, adult edition
- “Someone else maintains the infrastructure we depend on.”
- Today’s example: Europe’s dependence on American and Chinese technology.
- Policymakers are finally waking up — digital sovereignty is a challenge worth decades of work and billions of euros.
⚙ Drupal, ready
- “It’s a challenge that Drupal is ready for.”
- The government summit the day before the keynote made it explicit: Europe needs Drupal, and Drupal needs Europe.
- The fix isn’t magic — it’s showing up and doing the dishes.
One blog post, read by the European Commission
“When the European Commission solicited feedback on their digital sovereignty work, I took it to heart — I wanted open source to be a big part of it, and I was worried that it wasn’t. So I blogged about it, and submitted the blog post as official feedback.”
“To my surprise, they actually read it. They listened. They referenced my blog post in their official policy recommendations. I’m not sharing this to brag — I’m sharing it to tell you that we have quite a bit of power and influence on these matters.”
Stewarded open source. End users like the European Commission don’t just get software, Dries explains. They get the bits plus ongoing maintenance and care, security releases, and people — a community helping each other and improving the system. “The point is: we don’t ship and forget.”
“There’s something in our DNA — an invisible power inside this community, something about our collective energy that keeps us moving forward. Twenty-five years long.”
“Oh, Drupal… is that still a thing?”
Despite 25 years of stewardship and collective energy, the reaction Drupal gets is not the one it deserves. Dries names the problem.
“Maybe you’re at an event and you tell somebody, ‘hey, I’m contributing to Drupal’ — and instead of ‘wow, that’s so cool’, they get this puzzled look. ‘Oh, Drupal… is that still a thing?’”
“I believe they’re judging an old version of Drupal — one they saw ten years ago. They haven’t seen what Drupal can do today.”
“I’ve come to believe that our reputation gap is our number one challenge as a community. It’s frustrating — because we deserve a better reputation. We’ve spent 25 years providing reliable, secure, scalable software. We’re innovating, we’re leading — other open source projects think of us as role models.”
“And yet so many people judge us on an older Drupal. I’ll come back to that later — because we have to fix this.”
Moving like Rotterdam, judged like a ruin
The community keeps rebuilding around the future while the market keeps grading it on a ten-year-old snapshot.
Two payoffs later
The reputation gap pays off twice: Chapter 07 shows what modern Drupal can do; Chapter 09 launches the program to make the world see it.
What changed in the last 6 months
Before fixing the reputation, Dries says, let me show you what’s actually been shipped. On to the growth chapter.
Continue to Chapter 03 →