Profile: Acquia / Drupal

Authors

Rationale

Katie has a lot of personal use with Drupal, and it is also what runs most of the Rochester Institute of Technology websites.

Organizational Details

  • Is the subject of your profile a corporate entity? Yes
  • What type?
  • When was it founded? 2007
  • By whom? Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson
  • Original founder(s) still active? Dries is still active
  • Publicly Traded? Since when? Initial Stock Price? Current stock price? It is privately traded.
  • Has the company made any acquisitions? If yes, which companies, and what were their core products? No it has not.
  • Has the company made any investments in other companies? If yes, which ones. No it hasn't, but Amazon has invested in Acquia.
  • Number of Employees? 600
  • Where is HQ? Boston, MA
  • Does it have any other offices or locations? No
  • Website? Acquia
  • Wikipedia? Acquia on Wikipedia
  • Does your organization file any annual reports? Please include links to any relevant documents (i.e. 990, Annual Report, Year in Review, etc...)

Communications

Social Media for Acquia / Drupal

  • Does your subject participate in social media? If yes, please list a URL for each account, and reach within that community. (i.e.Twitter: @RedHatNews - 61.9K Followers.
    • @drupal - 57.3K Followers

Communications channels for Acquia / Drupal

  • What communication channels does your subject use to reach their public? Briefly describe and include a URL for each.
    • They mostly use their mailing list to talk to the public.

Acquia / Drupal Conference Participation

  • Does your subject organize or participate in any conferences? If so, list them here, and provide links to any relevant sessions, keynotes, or content.
    • Drupal participates in and hosts a multitude of events ranging from user group meetings to their own convention. All of the upcoming events can be found at https://groups.drupal.org/events

Community Architecture

  • The project's IRC Channel: #drupal, #drupal-contribute, #drupal-support are the main channels. There’s also a long list of topic channels at https://www.drupal.org/irc. They’re all on freenode

  • Source Code repository : http://git.drupal.org/project/drupal.git

  • Mail list archive: Archives are set up separately. They can be found at https://www.drupal.org/mailing-lists

  • Documentation : All of the documentation is found at https://www.drupal.org/documentation

  • Project Website and/or Blog: Website at https://www.drupal.org/, blog at https://www.drupal.org/planet, the blog is an aggregate of multiple blogs having to do with drupal

  • Describe the software project, its purpose and goals.

  • Give brief history of the project. When was the Initial Commit? The latest commit?

    • It began as a message board in 1999. When more people became interested, the project became open source. The original commit for the project was May 14, 2000. The latest February 21, 2015.

  • Who approves patches? How many people?

    • Currently Dries Buytaert, Nathaniel Catchpole, Alex Pott, and Angela Byron make up the team of reviewers. The contributions are peer reviewed and then decided on by Dries or another of the core committers. Anyone can submit patches against Drupal core. https://www.drupal.org/node/21778

  • Who has commit access, or has had patches accepted? How many total?

    • The main reviewers are the only ones who have commit access. There are 37,610 people are counted as developers for the entire project.

  • Has there been any turnover in the Core Team? (i.e. has the top 20% of contributors stayed the same over time? If not, how has it changed?)

    • There has been a lot of turnover for each successive version. Dries has always been among these people but the branch maintainers have changed.

  • Does the project have a BDFL, or Lead Developer? (BDFL == Benevolent Dictator for Life)

    • Dries Buytaert

  • Are the front and back end developers the same people? What is the proportion of each?

    • For the most part they are different developers, because it’s broken out into different projects. Drupal Core is the back-end for it and the front end is constantly updating when new people make new themes for it.

  • What have been some of the major bugs/problems/issues that have arisen during development? Who is responsible for quality control and bug repair?

  • How is the project's participation trending and why?

    • Recently participation has been trending downwards, but it looks like it’s because the project is in an extremely stable state right now.

  • In your opinion, does the project pass "The Raptor Test?" (i.e. Would the project survive if the BDFL, or most active contributor were eaten by a Velociraptor?) Why or why not?

    • Yes, while he’s definitely a major contributor, there’s a ton of documentation, and there’s an active development community.

  • In your opinion, would the project survive if the core team, or most active 20% of contributors, were hit by a bus? Why or why not?

    • I think the project would survive, but development would definitely slow down. There is a ton of documentation.

  • Does the project have an official "on-boarding" process in place? (new contributor guides, quickstarts, communication leads who focus specifically on newbies, etc...)

    • Yes, they have a page in their community section that is specifically about getting involved. It talks about multiple different ways you can do this.

  • Does the project have Documentation available? Is it extensive? Does it include code examples?

    • Drupal has very extensive documentation. Quickly glancing through I couldn’t find any code examples, but there are links to a lot of other places you can look for help from.

  • If you were going to contribute to this project, but ran into trouble or hit blockers, who would you contact, and how?

    • The first thing I would do is hop into their IRC channel and ask people there. If the people who are there couldn’t help then I’d head over to their forums at https://www.drupal.org/forum and seek additional help.

  • Based on these answers, how would you describe the decision making structure/process of this group? Is it hierarchical, consensus building, ruled by a small group, barely contained chaos, or ruled by a single or pair of individuals?

    • It is currently a mix of hierarchical and ruled by a small group. While Dries Buytaert has the ultimate say in pretty much everything, there is a group of people who also help him make his decisions.

  • Is this the kind of structure you would enjoy working in? Why, or why not?

    • I normally work better in a more chaotic environment, but I could see myself putting out some decent work in this sort of structure.

Technology/Product (Section adapted from EFF Worksheet)

  • Who invented, created, or sponsored the technology?
  • What is the technology designed to do? How is it used?
  • Who would benefit from using this technology?
  • What kinds of companies or organizations (stakeholders) might have been concerned about the development of this technology? Why?
  • Does/Did an aspect of copyright law play a role in controversies about the technology? How?