Working on the major bug queue sure is a good way to participate in quickening the development of Drupal 8 AND at the same time let Drupal 7 shine even brighter.

Everybody, say hello to to Charlie The Bug-Squasher!

Stay awesome, CHX.

- jam.

I've read some of your comments in the WSCCI issue queue. I understand your frustration. Just don't give up and keep up the motivation, you're just invaluable for Drupal and the community.

The thing I inevitably do when a bug or its test has me stumped is type "seen chx" in IRC. :) And it does seem there are some majors and criticals that just. Will not. Die. They cause problems for D8 development, but more importantly, they're bugs in production code that affect anyone trying to build a site or port a contrib module. So I think that's what's most important right now anyway. Hugs!

For those of us who don't follow core development on a day to day basis, could you please summarize, or provide some links where you summarize your problems with Drupal development? I can read the debate in this or that particular issue queue, but I'd like to understand the big picture. Are your concerns related to some aspects of Drupal core architecture? Or the development process? Too many compromises? Featuritis? Hookitis? I'd like to understand what is at stake, and the opinions on the different sides of the debate.

Thanks. :)

Edith Illyés

I hope I'll be able to get your feedback also outside the major queue, nonetheless: I bet you can't find your place because it's just "everywhere"
:)

plach

I know we've not been and we'll not always be in line.

But let me assure you that these posts and your opinion mean the world to me. Like many many others, I innocently stepped into the world of Drupal core and learned tons of kung fu from you.

What you outlined as inconsistent and complex mess here needs to be put into relation. To my knowledge, all the "crap" we added was the very best and smartest we were able to come up with, in order to resolve particular, complex problems. Problems no one else was able to solve. That includes you. But it really means pretty much all core developers.

You've always been a constant source of simplicity, smart and pragmatic solutions. Some would simply call that "Drupalish", but reality is: Drupal wouldn't be the Drupal we know today without you.

Every time I see you struggling with a hard core topic, I see a Drupal star falling down. Some years ago, this merely meant that something needed more discussion and iterations in order to get into core. Fine. But today, even if I see you and others raising major concerns, people are defending the crap and still moving on as if no one would've ever raised concerns about a thing.

Let's be honest.

Drupal has established a pretty rigid management structure and hierarchy lately. Many core developers no longer know whether the project is worth to die for.

The community is losing its best contributors, one by one. While the powers in charge unofficially started to declare the act starting with "R", which not a single long-time member of this community ever wanted.

Let's be honest. Drupal has a battle plan now, and regardless of how much you or me or anyone else objects to a particular solution attempt, it's going to end up in core. For the pure sake of making sense of so called "initiatives."

You know, it would be huge "fail" if anyone called out to get 5+ major projects done, but only one and a half makes it. Really, that's a dead end. You won't be able to explain that to your stakeholders. Oh, and don't even think of the presentation you're going to give for the next release.

Forcing people to work on certain topics or even accept solutions for which no agreement exists is not only against the fundamentals of open-source. It also, totally contradicts Drupal's culture.

If those initiatives were meant to retain the open spirit of Drupal and open-source, then they wouldn't have been cherry-picked top-down. Top management wouldn't have secret, bi-weekly calls with initiative leaders, in order to report that NOT ANY substantial progress has been made on any front. They wouldn't be a total waste of badly needed contributor time.

Instead, "initiatives" wouldn't exist at all today. No expectations. Organic evolution. Fuck, do you remember that oldskool rap hit? "Ready? It's ready when it's ready."

Of course this matters. A lot. I can't tell you how many improvements I did not work on, or stopped to work on for Drupal 8. They don't map to any of these so called initiatives. And even if they did, I'd have no fucking idea what hypothetical vaporware I'd have to base my patches on.

In the end. If you're one of those few who'd like to contribute to the Drupal project, you're either told that your contribution isn't in line with the current goals or duplicates some epic efforts currently happening elsewhere. Or that your opinion just simply doesn't matter. Whichever of both, doesn't matter; you suck anyway, 'cos you're too late. Fundamental things were already decided on, man. You're not going to criticize something that required months of man-power and 20+ useless conference calls to get to, right?

No. This entire post does not blame anyone who's been working hard on any of these called out topics. You're awesome! :) Initiative owners and contributors, we love your ideas and work! This post criticizes the system and organizational structure we're operating in.

As a collective (or not), we seem to have taken the wrong direction. A direction that's not healthy for this community. We quickly and BADLY need to revert some decisions and adjust that direction in order to get back on track as an open-source project. We need to stop that commercial mindset taking over the lead of Drupal. We need to get back to Free and Open Source Software.

Thanks, chx, and everyone else, for being an integral part of this community,
- sun