Interview with Dries Bytaertom: About Drupal 8, Open Source, Business and India

Dries Buytaert, creator and leader of the Drupal project, recently visited India. Linux For You talked with him about his plans to expand the scope of Drupal in India, about Drupal 8, about companies that specialize in Drupal and their business model, about Open Source, etc.

There are many content management systems, where exactly do you position Drupal and how are you different?

Drupal is an interesting animal if you look closely. It runs two percent of all sites in the world. But the most unique thing about Drupal is that it scales from large web sites to very small ones. It runs blogs, but it also runs large sites of media companies. It is also unique in its capabilities and functionality. And all thanks to the Drupal community, in which tens of thousands of people develop Drupal. We have over 10,000 modules. Therefore, we are in such a position that we can create any kind of site on Drupal.

This makes your question especially interesting because you can use Drupal for blogging, in this case we are competing with WordPress, and you can also use Drupal for creating large corporate web sites, in this case we are competing with proprietary software solutions. At the same time, you can use Drupal for collaborative sites. In this case, we are competing with Jive. It turns out that Drupal is unique and unlike any other platform, it is applicable to all these different formats.

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There are two areas where Drupal stands out. One of them is media and entertainment, where we see a large number of Drupal implementations. Government may be the second area. At least in the US and Europe, we see a huge number of government sites that have switched to Drupal. White House website powered by Drupal. And, I also want to say that education is another significant sector. Someone has done some research recently and looked at domains in the .edu zone, which contains educational sites in the United States. The survey found that 26 percent of the web sites in this zone are powered by Drupal. Another study reported that of the top 100 universities in the world, 71 use Drupal. Therefore, we believe that Drupal has penetrated well into this area.

How many people work in Acquia and how many of them develop for Drupal?

Let me first talk about development. If you look at the core of Drupal, which is the base platform, and on Drupal 7, the current version - patches from thousands of people are accepted into the core of Drupal. Some make many patches, while others make only one or two. I mentioned earlier about more than 10,000 modules. Each of these modules is also supported by developers and, in some cases, by development teams. And then, there are people who work on other functions, like organized events ... so if you connect all these people, it is without exaggeration tens of thousands of people who help to create, promote and develop Drupal.

Acquia, my company, has a staff of 160 people. All of us help grow Drupal. As you can see, in a community of tens of thousands of people, 160 is a relatively small part. We have influential people in our company and we are trying to distribute our people to areas where help is more needed. As a company, we make a very visible and important contribution to the Drupal community.

Who decides strategic plans for Drupal: community, Acquia or all together?

This is basically my task as a community leader. I prefer a collaborative approach when I do this. I talk about this to the community and members of the company. I travel around the world as I traveled to India. I listen to people, developers, small end users and large end users, and I try to get an understanding of where everyone wants to send Drupal. Then I run these ideas through various media to get feedback from the community. So this is a joint effort in formulating a development strategy.

We mentioned that the White House site is powered by Drupal. When the Obama administration decided to redo the site on Drupal, this led to a lot of criticism from all parts of the world. You have decided to remain silent at this time. What were the reasons?

The fact that they chose Drupal is great proof for free software and for Drupal especially, since people are usually afraid of open source and Drupal because of their scalability. Such a web site as the White House has hundreds and thousands of visitors on any given day - this is a large-scale project.

Another question people ask is is it safe? The fact that the White House chose Drupal a year and a half ago and the fact that it has been working smoothly since that time is again a great achievement for open source. This proves that open source is at least, if not more, safer than proprietary CMS.

What do you mean when you say "at least, if not more, safer than"?

Drupal is safe for a variety of reasons. The first is the open source development model. By the time I apply the patch to the core of Drupal, the usual situation is that already 20-30 people have seen this patch. This is an extreme preliminary review, which I think you will not find in any proprietary company. In proprietary firms, at best, one person will look at the code and if it is nearby. Another reason is that we have a dedicated security team. We have 30-40 people in the security team, which is much more than in any other proprietary company.

The third reason is the reach of Drupal. Drupal is a basic platform for more than 2 percent of all web sites in the world. A lot of government structures use Drupal. Because source code is available, which happens for many important projects, government agencies and entrepreneurs use Drupal and conduct a formal audit of code security. So if you look at this, it turns out that Drupal audits were conducted more times than anywhere else.

The whole area of ​​open source is questionable when it comes to security, not just in Drupal. Thousands of Wordpress blogs have been hacked. Even the Linux Foundation site fell due to attacks. Not that proprietary products are safer, but when it comes to open source, security becomes a problem. How do you protect it?

Well, one of the important things: since WordPress and Drupal are very popular, this makes them prime targets. In addition, Drupal was accepted by the US House of Representatives and some defense structures, so it continues to be checked and inspected constantly. The adoption of Drupal is accelerated when compared with proprietary systems. In the Indian context, I came to the conclusion that people do not like to be updated, this is one of the main problems. Whenever websites were hacked, this usually happened because people were not updated.

Open source projects generally do a wonderful job. If people do not apply security patches, they become targets. This usually happens. Each software product has security issues. Security teams do a better job in the world by offering security patches, but if users are not updated, they can be attacked. Users need to apply those fixes. For people who do not want to be updated, but focus on content and creating real functionality of the site, hosting solutions are a good answer. At Acquia, we have a solution called Drupal Gardens - mostly software as a service, in which we apply all security patches for you.

If a Drupal user encounters an error, how can he fix it?

Everything that we do in Drupal is open, so you get a complete picture of what is happening. Updates are available at different levels. This is very similar to an update like Windows or an update like Mac, Drupal will notify you when new versions of Drupal modules are available. We tell you what mistakes have been fixed. So you will know why you need to be updated.

But if you do not want to wait for official releases, you can visit the Drupal site. We have an open bug tracker in which everyone can look at all the errors and their statuses. So you will know the bug fixed or not. If not, you can help fix it of course. This is an open source USP where you can track all these things.

Do you see Alfresco as a competitor?

We never competed with Alfresco. Truth be told, we usually work with him. In the core, Alfresco is a document management repository, while Drupal is a content management system. Our document management component is very easy. Organizations with more complex documents should use Alfresco and Drupal together. Alfresco manages documents, while Drupal manages the presentation and brings many features to these documents. We are actually partners. We know their management team very well.

So who are your competitors?

We consider many CMS as competitors. In fact, Drupal as a platform can do many things. Some people use Drupal for blogging, like me, and here we are competing with WordPress. At Acquia, we focus more on entrepreneurship. In this case, proprietary CMS become our competitors.

Is there one CMS that you are equal to when it comes to improving the quality of Drupal?

I think we would like to learn something from all these CMS. Honestly, we learned from WordPress and they also learned a lot from us. In the open source community, I will not say that we are competing. I think we all fight in one battle against the sellers of proprietary products. We learn from each other. I’m on friendly terms with the Joomla CEO and with the WordPress CEO, we share notes and our opinions on building a community. We are very active in communicating with the open source community.

How easy is it to integrate Drupal with other open source projects?

It depends on each project, to be honest. Available a huge number of modules for integration. In some cases, it is enough to turn on the modules and configure both systems. If the module is available it can be very simple. It also depends on what you want to achieve and on the complexity of the other system.

You say that if you started a Drupal project today, we would make it more mobile than PC-oriented. Any good reasons or were you just attracted to the growing market of mobile devices?

When I started the Drupal project about 11 years ago, there was no mobile market. Laptops were very fashionable at the time, which were peculiar mobile devices along the way. But now with portable devices such as a mobile phone, this is a completely new world.

Every modern CMS should work in this multi-platform world. Drupal actually does a good job here. With the help of modules, we can do almost anything you want. For example, there is an HTML5 module that converts Drupal output to HTML5. There is also a Web services module that allows you to create mobile programs that can be run on your phone.

The reason for my statement is that, I believe, there is a future for tablets and mobile phones. Through them will use more web sites than through desktops. Another reason is that I wanted to be a bit controversial to give the community mobility, because in Drupal 8, the next version of Drupal, this will be our main theme - as well as usability was the main theme in Drupal 7. I want mobile devices were a big part in Drupal 8. So, it most likely had a wake-up call to say: “Hey, this is what will happen next.”

Drupal 8 Penetration

So what will mobile Drupal look like?

The most interesting thing about mobility is that there are many different views on it from many people. For some people, this is the ability of the site to work on phones. In this case, we have to do HTML5, because some HTML5 features allow you to optimize this feature. It also indicates a specific design, such as images reduced to a screen resolution. It also means that you need a device type definition. This is a very long list of requirements.

On the other hand, for some people, mobility means a native application running on iOS or Android. In this case, we should have a completely different set of technologies. When I said that we should move on to mobility, I really meant all these things. So we are developing the Drupal architecture and expanding the range of features, so that Drupal can become one of the de facto platforms for creating mobile applications. That means we have to do a lot of different things.

When should we expect all this from you?

We do not know yet. If we make an assumption, then I would say that in a year or two from this moment. This is a rough assumption. The reason I don’t know is that I want to give Drupal time. I want this to be the default release. It gradually appears there. I want everyone to be comfortable with Drupal 7. I want all the talents of Drupal to really understand Drupal 7. I want a single ecosystem, a single community that Drupal 7 fully mastered before we set the release date for Drupal 8.

Mobile will really be the highlight of version 8. Will there be any other innovations?
Drupal 8 will focus on a number of things. Number 1 will be mobility, as I mentioned earlier. It also brings configuration management, which is especially important for many organizations. This will allow them to better manage their configuration settings. Drupal 8 will have improved usability, which is important for small and large users. Some entrepreneurial opportunities will be added, which will make it attractive for large organizations to better manage their Drupal sites.

Drupal can make big money ...

You said that Drupal can be big business. Could you tell us the details ...

Drupal started out as a project and it is developing now so that it turns into an industry. There are hundreds of Drupal companies worldwide. Together, this means millions of dollars. That's what I meant when I said that he could be a big business. I see him growing even more. I think this could be a multi-billion dollar industry. I want it to grow from two percent of network sites to, I hope, ten and more percent of network sites. To do this, we need to grow as a whole ecosystem. Thus, trips like this will be necessary.

What business model does Acquia have?

When I ran Acquia, my first thought was to make a Drupal support company like Red Hat for Linux. We started with Acquia Network, as well as the Red Hat Network or JBoss network. Acquia Network allows you to receive commercial support with a service level agreement, as well as a number of electronic services, such as performance monitoring - just like the Red Hat model.

However, we quickly discovered that there are additional products that we want to make. So, at the moment we have three products. Acquia Network is our main source of income. The second product is Acquia Cloud, a scalable hosting solution. We can dynamically scale Drupal websites between multiple servers. In addition to flexibility, we also developed many programs that help you manage your Drupal site, so you get open source management software and you get a production and development environment. This is a complete solution to help you manage your Drupal sites, from hosting programs and development programs to support programs. We also have Drupal Gardens, software as a service, which is a fully hosting solution. It is fully focused on enterprises that want to create micro sites, small and medium-sized businesses. So we have these three products.

We also conduct hands-on consultations where we give advice on architecture, security audits, scaling audits and training. Training is a big problem, especially in India, in which we have found a huge interest from the community.

Are all these decisions being made in India or the USA through partners or does Acquia make them themselves?

We, as a company, do not create websites ourselves. We always work with partners. Sometimes partners come to us with a task like this: "Here is a client and we would like to present him with several special services." Sometimes clients come to us themselves and we find partners for them depending on what they need. We mainly manage the situation in these cases.

For some of our clients, the location of the partner is not important, but their technical capabilities are important. In this case, we take into account their requirements and find them a suitable partner with a certain experience. As in some cases, customers want a partner who has completed many government projects, while others want their partner to have an office in their city. Be that as it may, we find them the right partner depending on their requirements.

So, essentially, we have partners involved in creating web sites. We have more than 300 partners worldwide. We intend to significantly expand our partner network next year (not only in India, but also in other countries all over the world). We receive a large number of requests from our site from customers, which we refer to our partners for service.

Drupal and India ...

How do you plan to expand your training program in India?

We have already done several trainings in India. One of the reasons for this is an understanding of the position of Drupal in India and the needs of the community here. One of the things we discovered here is a strong desire to learn from both small companies and large players. Everyone expressed a desire to get professional training in Drupal. We also work with a huge number of partners. We have a lot of small companies working for Drupal. We found that the demand for qualified Drupal specialists does not stop.

So do you offer a certification course for Drupal?

Right now, we have Acquia employees who create and support full-time training courses. We provide training in all areas of Drupal. We use this training material and share it with all our partners. We also train teachers effectively. We help our partners transfer these trainings, because we feel it is more expandable and by this we help thousands of people to grow in Drupal. We do not have any official certificates available, but I think it is a matter of time before we do it as a company, or how someone else from the community does it. At some point, the demand for Drupal and its choice will be so large that it will become a necessity.

How do you plan to expand training in India?

If you look at North America and Europe, you will see that Drupal is growing there for two reasons. First, a large number of developers and engineers work in large organizations that have begun to organize congresses and conferences on Drupal. This is one of the ideas that I want to promote here. One of the main reasons for this trip is that we want to help people organize these meetings. We also try to use the “top-down approach”. We are meeting with partners and exploring the possibility of how they can make it more efficient. We already have 8-10 strong partners and we also work with large SI. Some of them do architectural work, work on development and training. So we already have 2-3 training partners in India.

Have you set any goal about how many people you want to train in this period?

We are here to evaluate how far there really is a big field. We would like to work with as many more partners in India. Obviously, there is a demand for thousands of Drupal professionals. Now we have to see how to satisfy such demand. This is the reason why learning Drupal in India is so important. The biggest challenge is finding Drupal developers and training Drupal professionals. This is one of the obstacles to the growth of Drupal in India, so there is a huge opportunity for every engineer in India to be associated with Drupal.

What did you like most about the open source community in India and what is missing here?

First, I had a wonderful experience working with the community in India. Being in Delhi, we were expecting a hundred people, and more than 250 arrived, this is amazing. This proves that there is a real interest in Drupal and people's passion for open source. Another thing worth telling is that more than 10 companies in Delhi specializing in Drupal come together. They got the opportunity to share their best experiences. The good news is that they come together as a community. I have seen such a scenario before - that is why I know what the result will be. I am very happy to see an early community impulse.

This may seem like a very strange question, but I'm just wondering - how many visitors do you see from India on drupal.org?

The last time I checked a couple of months ago, the Indians were the second largest group of visitors on the official Drupal site. I am sure now also. The first group was North America. The share of Indian traffic to Drupal continues to grow, this is one of the most important reasons why we are here. I see an interest in the Drupal community.

What about the physical presence of Drupal in India?

With this visit, we changed the temperature of Drupal in India. We need some time to decide whether we need a presence in India or if our presence will help the Drupal community in some way. We understood that it would help us if several people were present in India.

Google recently launched a service that makes life easier for SME (small and medium businesses). The company plans to develop more than 500,000 web sites for SME in India. Users just have to go to the site where they can create their own web site in three simple steps. Does this format, which came from the giant, compete with Drupal?

Now it is difficult to say what this will result in. I heard about it, but did not try. But I can imagine that it allows you to create very simple web sites. I think the area where Drupal will shine is the creation of more complex and functional websites. Many SMEs will someday realize that they need all these capabilities.

The Google platform is a good way to bring people to the Web, give them the opportunity to see and feel the benefits of the Web, but I think at some point they will want more. And I hope that when they want more, they will be conquered by Drupal. Therefore, I will not be sure if I call it Drupal competition. In a sense, this is true, but at the same time it can represent the Network to many people, who can later join Drupal. So, ultimately, I think it will be good for Drupal.

There are currently 100 million internet users in India. I see this as an opportunity for Drupal to flourish in India. And also Drupal has never been useful for miniature web sites. People never use Drupal for a five-page static site. Therefore, I believe that this is quite a convenient coincidence for us.

Dries and Open Source ...

What do you think about open source software in general?

Every part of my body strongly believes in open source. I think open source is the best development model. I think that open source software is convenient to destroy many software technologies, especially those that I describe as consumer technologies, such as web sites. There are millions of websites and, I think, open source can be a real market player. Another example is operating systems. Millions of people use operating systems. Because of its reach, I think open source can be very destructive. This has been proven by Linux, obviously.

As long as the proprietary industry is interested, it will always exist, especially in some niche areas. So, if 100 people are interested in the project, then it will not be possible to apply the development model with the source code. Open source is suitable when there is scalable participation.

However, the share of open source in the market is very small. What exactly hinders the growth of open source technologies?
I think it depends on how you evaluate things. In the mobile field, open source has a big role in the form of Android. But it usually converges to marketing, to be honest. A typical open source community is good at engineering solutions, but it doesn't necessarily have the same strength in marketing issues. Marketing is really needed to help push technology to the masses. With the passage of time and the advent of technology, I see the fear of lowering security and this will give open source the desired impetus. It will get accelerated in the next three years.

What are the real problems in the implementation of open source technology and how can you overcome them?

Things like documentation come to my mind when I try to find flaws. I think open source projects do not always have good documentation. It also depends on the stage of the projects. Large projects have documentation, but when it comes to small open source projects, the documentation has obvious problems.

A bit of criticism ... and fact checking

Drupal difficult for users?

Drupal has a reputation as a complex system to use, compared to WordPress, Joomla and other corporate solutions. This criticism, in a sense, is right - and we are working on it too. Since Drupal 7, we have tried to simplify everything. It is now much easier to use, but this does not mean that we have stopped in our efforts. We continue to invest in usability. Drupal 8 will be the answer. We want to lower the barrier.

Drupal hates change?

No, absolutely not. This is fun because Drupal enjoys a reputation for CMS, which changes a lot. Compared to WordPress and Joomla, we are changing backward compatibility. We always change our API and our architecture. In Drupal 7, we made many fundamental changes to the architecture. Unlike other open source CMS, we accept changes.

Is Drupal disorganized?

Well, I think all open source projects are like that - and this is the beauty of open source. I think this is the nature of the beast, since all open source projects have hundreds of volunteers all over the world. It is quite difficult to organize such a number of people. I think this is a strength, because many people work on Drupal and improve it. This is a huge advantage, but it is also an interesting challenge. But I am not saying that this is a bad task. This is a fascinating task. It looks like chaos, but the creativity that comes out of it is truly amazing. The fact that it is disorganized makes it accessible.

PS Send remarks on the transfer to the LAN.