They kind of frowned on commercial involvement, maybe it was confused with proprietary. In the early days, it was a renegade movement, anti-establishment. The second thing is less about the product but more about open source. Because of that, Drupal is still considered as a bit harder to use than competing systems. In the last 20 years the world has changed, the primary end-user for a content management system like Drupal is no longer a developer but a marketer, typically a less technical person.
" When I released the first version of Drupal, it attracted like-minded people, meaning other developers, and we got a bit of tunnel vision, it was for developers by developers. " I would lead with a strong user experience," he said. What would he do differently if starting the project today? Drupal is derived from the English pronunciation of druppel - Dutch for drop.īuytaert is now project lead for Drupal and CTO of Acquia, a cloud platform for marketing sites. When he graduated, he put it on the web, intending to call it dorp, which is Dutch for village. That was at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2000. " When I started Drupal 20 years ago I built it for myself, for me with my friends," Buytaert told us.
Drupal Turns 20 - The Register® Interviews Dries Buytaert Content management system Drupal is 20 years old, prompting its founder to talk to about its evolving role, why it shifted from a policy of breaking compatibility with each release, and concerns about JavaScript bloat causing issues for those with poor connectivity.