Dries Buytaert Calls for Greater Open Source Stewardship Across Drupal Ecosystem

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert has called on companies operating within the Drupal ecosystem to prioritise stewardship, collaboration, and community investment over competitive attacks against rival vendors in the open source market.

Writing in a post titled “Grow the ecosystem, not just yourself”, Dries argued that companies built on open source platforms share responsibility for sustaining the software commons that supports their businesses. He said organisations should compete through products, services, support quality, and contributions rather than through campaigns targeting competitors. 

The post referenced recent messaging from Pantheon directed at Acquia, including criticism related to Acquia’s private equity ownership. Dries stated that he had “no quarrel” with Pantheon’s products or engineering teams but expressed concern over what he described as misleading or unwarranted attacks between companies operating within the Drupal ecosystem. 

Dries argued that customer trust in open source platforms depends on the health of the shared ecosystem behind them, including the software itself, community participation, security maintenance, documentation, events, and adoption efforts. He described this broader responsibility as a “social contract” that extends beyond the minimum obligations defined by open-source licensing. 

The article also referenced Drupal contribution metrics published through Drupal.org credits as one public indicator of ecosystem participation. According to Dries, Acquia engineers earned 26,331 weighted issue credits and 164 Drupal Security Team credits during the past year, while Pantheon recorded 243 weighted issue credits and two security credits over the same period. Dries also noted that contribution metrics do not capture every form of participation within the ecosystem. 

Dries said he rarely comments publicly on competitors but decided to address the issue because he believed sustained attacks between major Drupal companies could negatively affect long-term community culture and collaborative norms. He argued that open source ecosystems evolve through publicly expressed expectations around participation and behaviour.

The post concluded with a broader appeal for Drupal companies to focus on expanding Drupal adoption through stronger products, technical contributions, sponsorships, customer support, and community participation. Dries argued that Drupal becomes stronger when organisations invest collectively in the shared ecosystem rather than concentrating solely on competitive positioning.