Winning the open web, owning our infrastructure, and how Drupal as a Service can save us all
Drupal is—as always—better and more successful than ever, but Drupal is threatened from two sides. On the one, we risk discouraging new users and contributors, who face too much of Drupal's complexity early on. On the other, proprietary platforms increasingly squeeze out custom web development through sheer economies of scale. Retreating into Drupal's new fortress, the enterprise, aside from leaving many of us behind, doesn't change these dynamics, which will continue until there's nowhere left to hide.
Building on a different economic model, that of software as a service, can make Drupal the best choice for small organizations that can drive innovation and contributions. Instead of waiting for proprietary SaaS companies to slowly add features and come eat our lunch, we can swoop in and eat theirs. At the same time, a well-designed Drupal SaaS provides many more people with the traditional entryway to web development and Drupal: hacking around with HTML and clicking together functionality. So long as we continue to adhere to the principles of Free Software, it's only going to make the Drupal software and community better. And if we organize SaaS-providing businesses as platform cooperatives, we'll be putting people in control of the software that controls our lives, which, in an age of flying killer robots, may be almost as important as the health and happiness of the Drupal community.
Anyone with some professional experience in Drupal and an interest in its future should come, and expect to leave with new insight into what leads to long-term success in a software project, and some new thoughts on areas where making the leap from services to product may make sense for you and the individuals and organizations you serve.
60 minutes