Drupal Marketplace Prioritizes Trust, Standards, and Fair Governance

The Drupal Association is turning its focus to the foundation of a successful Marketplace: trust. As development progresses, the effort is now centered on ensuring that templates are high quality and secure, contributors are treated fairly, and policies are enforced with transparency.

Feedback from community surveys, Slack discussions, and the recent Hopes and Fears Jam has made it clear that trust will make or break the Marketplace. Contributors and users alike want defined standards for code quality, security, accessibility, and user experience. Without this clarity, contributors hesitate to participate and users won’t adopt. Many emphasized that if the Marketplace becomes flooded with low-effort or unsafe templates, it will harm Drupal more than help it.

Beyond technical standards, governance is a major concern. Contributors want to know who sets the rules, who reviews listings, and how violations are handled. The current Marketplace Working Group is drafting a governance model focused on enforcement, dispute resolution, and maintaining quality over time. The model takes cues from Drupal’s Security Team, aiming to create oversight that is both trusted and effective.

Contributors also raised questions about how recognition and revenue will be handled. There is support for monetization, but not at the expense of the open-source values that define Drupal. People want fair attribution, credit for upstream maintainers, and revenue models that sustain the ecosystem rather than exploit it.

The governance framework under development will outline listing guidelines, monetization strategies, review processes, and a mechanism for community input on future policy changes. This is still early-stage work, and community feedback is actively shaping what comes next.

The Drupal Association is inviting further input through Survey #3, an open Slack thread in #drupal-cms-marketplace, and a roundtable for Drupal Certified Partners and agencies scheduled for 15 May at 15:30 UTC. Register now.

This article is based on content shared by Tiffany Farriss and published by the Drupal Association. To learn more and get involved, visit www.drupal.org