"Hopelessly and Inseperably Entangled with Drupal"

Beyond the code, beyond the contributions, beyond the responsibilities—there are a few people who are hopelessly entangled with Drupal. One such soul is Karoly "Charlie" Negyesi. When asked about a life without Drupal, Karoly confidently asserts that "It is impossible!"

When I sat down for this video interview with Karoly Negyesi—or as most people in the Drupal community know him, Charlie—I wasn’t just talking to a developer. I was talking to someone whose life has been intertwined with Drupal for over two decades. A man who has written code that millions rely on, yet most of them don’t even know his name. Someone who has seen the community grow, change, and at times, struggle with its own identity.

Karoly’s journey is fascinating—not just from a tech perspective but from a deeply human one. He stumbled upon Drupal almost by accident, fell in love with it, and poured years of his life into making it better. But open source isn’t just about the code; it’s about people, collaboration, and sometimes, conflict. In our conversation, Karoly opened up about the highs and lows of his career—from the excitement of early contributions to the challenges that led to his departure from the Drupal community, and eventually, his return in a new role. He spoke about mentorship, burnout, and the evolving culture of open source, and he didn’t hold back his thoughts on AI, job hunting, and the future of Drupal.

But what struck me the most was how personal this journey has been for him. This wasn’t just a job—it was who he was. And even after all the ups and downs, he still can’t imagine a life without Drupal. We laughed, we reflected, and at times, the conversation got real. This interview isn’t just for developers; it’s for anyone who has ever poured their heart into something they love, faced setbacks, and found a way to keep going.

TDT [1]: Okay, we shall jump into this. I think the first formal thing we need to do here is Charlie. Someone who has written codes that millions rely on and yet most users are unaware of such a person. So I would like to begin by asking, would you introduce yourself? Like where are you from? What are your likes? How did you come into Drupal?  

Karoly Negyesi: So originally I'm from Hungary, and back in 2004, a friend of mine and I had a very small search engine marketing agency, and we were looking for a CMS. Because at the time, it was practically impossible to optimize the very badly written websites of our clients. So we branched out into creating websites, and we needed a CMS for that.  And that's when I almost accidentally stumbled upon Drupal because Gabor Hojtsy was talking about it, and had a session at a PHP event. He went on to become a Drupal Core committer later. That's how I found it.  

Then I became a Drupal consultant. I basically dropped out of this company because actually creating websites with Drupal turned out to be much more interesting, and that became my focus.  In 2005, I got employed by a startup in Vancouver to do a Drupal website for them. This was called Now Public, and I actually moved to Vancouver in 2008. I actually got to the city first, thanks to DrupalCon Vancouver, which was in 2006. That was the reason I went there, not the startup. So, I moved to Vancouver in 2008, and I spent a real lot of time contributing to Drupal.  

A little bit later, there was a survey after Google Summer of Code asking how much more time have you spent with your project because of your mentoring in Google Summer of Code. And my answer was that I haven't spent more. I am already spending all my time there is, so it's not possible to spend more. So that was how those years went. I was working as a Drupal consultant for various companies, and I was working on Drupal Core and contrib.  

Eventually, MongoDB sponsored my work on these until 2015, when that contract ended, and just a little bit later, in 2016, things broke. I got banned from Drupal.org because of my rather—yeah, let's call it what it is—my rather toxic behaviour. I don't think anybody, including me, understood what was going on at the time.  It wasn't until much later that I understood what happened. However, things somewhat got mended in 2019 when I returned with a new account in a much-diminished role.  

That's where we are today. After 20 years, I'm still a Drupal consultant, although right now I'm looking for a job, and I still contribute a little to Drupal Core. This got a little bit higher level last year because Kris Vanderwater had a great idea about how to modernize the Hook subsystem. I took that idea and ran with it and have rewritten the entire Hook subsystem. So that's a fairly sizable contribution, something like I haven't done in a decade. But I think that turned out relatively nicely.

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So that's where we are today, I believe.  

TDT [2]: Okay, so what other than Drupal, are you focused on? I understand you were spending a lot of time in Drupal, almost all of your time in Drupal. But what else interests you other than Drupal?  

Karoly Negyesi: Well, that is where some of the problems lie. I have tried to find other things, and I have mostly failed. I have never found a community like Drupal, aside from Drupal. I play video games, read books. But still, what is most fun is writing Drupal, because that's what fundamentally moves me. It's fun. It is great fun doing it.  

TDT [3]: You asked me to address you as Charlie, but when I was trying to read your name here, it's written Karoly. I was going through your LinkedIn profile and I also noticed that many people call you Charlie. Is it something people find comfortable calling you? Or is it easy to pronounce, so you went along with it?  

Karoly Negyesi: It is the same name. In German it's Carl. In Spanish it's Carlos. In English it's Charlie. In Hungarian, it's Karoly. And so because I talk to people in English, I just tell them to use the English form.  

It is the easiest, I think.  

TDT [4]:  I was going through your background and realized that you started as someone, as a tech columnist, then you transformed to the technology field. So do you think your writer experience shaped your perspective towards technology, your approach towards technology?  

Karoly Negyesi: Well, somewhat, yes, because, the documentation, the comments—that you need to explain and perhaps more than people who just know abstractly that you need to comment on your code.  I know very well that you need to do it because I have some experience in doing that in a much longer format than just a few code comments. So yes, it definitely has affected me in this way.  

TDT [5]: You are someone who has been constantly involved with open-source communities—open-source projects always have a line that blurs when it comes to community and authority.  In your experience, what makes a healthy open-source culture? Where do most communities go wrong when it comes to this culture, this blurring of lines between community and authority?  

Karoly Negyesi: I would say that most communities don't go wrong per se. I would rather say that a lot of projects just don't have the sort of community atoms that Drupal has.  In Drupal, we often say—and it is true—that there is no core team, right? There is not a small set of people who write Drupal core.  Everybody can contribute to it. And this reflects in our tools. Most projects use GitHub. If you do GitHub and you start a feature, then you work on that feature.  

No one else can work on that feature. It doesn't—it just cannot be done. It just doesn't work that way. It is only you who can push into that form. This is a mindset that was very different in Drupal from the very beginning. You start working on something, and someone else can add to it—maybe just help with the documentation, or maybe they have a good idea and can rewrite it.  So, this creates a much stronger bonded community. And, of course, the other difference is that there are few communities of this size, right?  

Code is written by over a thousand people. Most open-source projects are made up of just a few dozen people at most. There are very few that are this big. And once again, that are so closely bonded. This is why I was never able to find another—because I don't think there is any other.  

TDT [6]: You practically breathe and live Drupal. The Drupal community even made a COD website about your passion.  Then, due to some unfortunate events, you had to walk away from the community. If you're comfortable speaking about it, do you think leaving was a response to a change in culture, or was it a natural consequence of pouring yourself into something so much?  

Karoly Negyesi: This is probably a result of size. Over a certain time, certain behaviours just cannot be tolerated anymore, and they're completely right. Some behaviours can be tolerated in a smaller community because when you have just a few dozen people and each other very well, you understand that you shouldn't take certain comments too harshly. But when you have something as big as Drupal now, people don’t know who is talking. They just see a harsh, perhaps insulting comment, and that might drive them away. That just cannot be tolerated. That shouldn’t happen. 

So yes, the culture did change. Of course. I’d say it was just a natural shift due to growth. And, of course, there's always been some presence of very large clients, very large corporations but that has also changed. Now, Drupal is used by quite a large portion of Fortune 500 companies and governments. If any of those just look at what is going on on Drupal.org, it needs to meet certain standards.  

TDT [7]: So, considering how big the Drupal community is, it is often possible that the feedback you give or the conversations you have can be misinterpreted by other people. So, it is important to focus on better discourse where criticism isn’t mistaken for an attack. From your own experience, how do you think we can foster better discourse in a community like Drupal?

Karoly Negyesi: That is something I myself wish I knew the answer to. I really don't know. I don’t think the project knows either.  Something I have observed over the last few years is that communication has decreased greatly—probably again due to the size of the community.  It’s just not the same anymore. If you remember, maybe up until 2010 or 2011, Drupal development felt like a close-knit circle of friends. Even though it was already quite large then—maybe around 100 to 120 people—it still felt small.  We were hanging out on IRC almost day and night, talking—not just about Drupal but about everything, just being friends with each other.  That is mostly gone.  

Now, of course, Drupal Slack exists, but there is extremely little conversation happening. And honestly, that bothers me. But it is what it is.  If you look at the contrib channels, there are just a few threads every day. It’s different. It’s just different.  But still, I personally miss those days. Others probably don’t. Things have changed, things have matured, and we need to live with it.  

TDT [8]: Coming from someone who has always put the pursuit of better code above everything else, you’ve seen firsthand that open source is not just about the code—it’s also about the people involved.  So do you think the idea of "egoless programming" is realistic? Or is passion always destined to clash with the community?  

Karoly Negyesi: That is a question I believe the project currently struggles with greatly.  It comes down to motivation—why are you writing open source? This has always been an open question.  For me personally, my primary motivation is still to have fun. A lot of other people write open source because they are paid to.  Of course, that creates very different dynamics; very different goals.  But at the same time, perhaps in the long term, that’s more sustainable.

If you are not paid, then most people will just turn to other things. They will have a job that is paid, and they will have hobbies. Not many people are like me, for whom writing Drupal is primarily fun.  

TDT [9]: Okay, speaking about modern Drupal—Drupal CMS has been released, and Drupal 11 has been released.  How do you feel about the trajectory that Drupal is on at the moment?  

Karoly Negyesi: Oh, I am extremely glad that I am no longer in any sort of leadership position and I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I am extremely happy about that because navigating Drupal in the current era is a task I do not envy.  It is almost impossible. The world has gone practically mad, drunk on this so-called AI. Some people even think it’s going to reach human intelligence, which is quite obviously nonsense.  So, navigating Drupal and its role in this changing and rapidly evolving landscape is extremely hard.  

I very consciously have no opinion whatsoever on that. I work on the technological aspect.  Let the people who understand these shifts—especially Dries—steer the project.  

TDT [10]: But out of curiosity, let me ask—after the transition from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, Drupal shed many customers, let’s put it like that. Many people are still stuck with legacy Drupal.  So isn’t it inevitable that Drupal had to change—to get a makeover, to meet the standards of competitors, to become more accessible to the wider user base, not just the community? Isn’t that what Drupal CMS is offering now?  

Karoly Negyesi: I mean, I think Drupal CMS is going to be extremely successful. But that is just an accident. I mean, Drupal CMS, completely outside of Drupal, came out at the most opportune time—just when the WordPress leadership, which, as we have learned, is essentially just one man, decided to kill the project.  There’s no better way to phrase what is going on at WordPress. And when Drupal CMS was started, nobody thought that was going to happen. But now that it is happening, it is an extremely fortunate coincidence.  

I don’t wish bad for WordPress, but it is such serendipity that Drupal CMS came out just when a giant hole opened in the market.  

TDT [11]: Okay, so yeah, I’ll add to that as well. Usually, when I have this conversation with people about AI integration into Drupal, they are quite optimistic. People are very curious. They feel like AI is going to take Drupal to the next level.  But from the conversation we’ve had so far, I get the sense that you are more of a sceptic when it comes to AI integration into Drupal. Where do you stand on that?  

Karoly Negyesi: So, I am extremely sceptical of this whole AI thing. From the very beginning, when ChatGPT was released, seeing how it was presented and how much it was hyped—I was sceptical. We have seen these bubbles come and go. The previous one was the cryptocurrency, which, of course, is still around, but most people have now realized that the whole cryptocurrency thing is just a scam.  Eventually, AI is going to find its place as well.  

It has its uses, especially when you are working in an unfamiliar territory. AI-generated answers may not be particularly high-quality, but they can provide a springboard—a starting point. That’s what I think AI is good for. Using AI-generated answers as they are, without critical evaluation, is a problem. I think people don’t understand what they are getting from these systems. It will take some time for them to find their place.  It is probably going to be really bad in the short term. AI hype might be one of the reasons why we are heading towards a global recession soon. Once that passes, people will come back to their senses. These cycles come and go.  

The biggest one was the dot-com bubble around 25 years ago. People thought that everything that could be a website should be a website and that it would change the world completely. Insane valuations were going on. Then, from one day to the next, people realized: It’s just a website. Hundreds of billions were wiped out on the stock exchange.  A lot of companies just disappeared overnight. It’s going to happen here as well.  And then, just like websites remained useful, AI will find its proper place.  

Right now, though, I’ve tried AI multiple times.  I tried using it to write code. I tried it for everyday research. And I maintain that when you use AI answers as a springboard, it’s useful. Otherwise? There’s nothing there. People say that AI is going to replace junior engineers, and I’m like—You don’t know what you’re talking about.  

TDT [12]: But what about updated versions? Right now, I think ChatGPT is on version 4.0 for premium users. And recently, China’s DeepSeek- AI made big news. So, as AI models keep evolving, don’t you think there will be meaningful progress?  

Karoly Negyesi: Well, even framing this as "AI" is misleading. The entire field is essentially based on a short paper written by John von Neumann in the 1950s. In that paper, he declared—without a single shred of proof, and yet people readily believed it—that the human brain is obviously digital. People have believed this so strongly that even today, neuroscientists struggle to describe how the brain works without using digital metaphors. But the truth is, the human brain does not work like a computer.

So, calling these statistical pattern-matching systems "artificial intelligence" is just misleading. 'Retrieve a memory', your brain doesn’t retrieve a memory. It’s not a computer. It never was. Everybody knows this. You never retrieve a memory the way a computer does. You do not store your memories as a computer does. That whole concept is just not true.  

There was a brilliant book about this a couple of years back that described how, in different eras, people compared the brain to whatever technology was available to them. Descartes compared it to a machine. Von Neumann compared it to a digital computer. None of that is true. Of course, we still don’t quite know how the brain actually works. So then we pursue something called artificial intelligence, and by that, we mean something that matches this completely misplaced and untrue metaphor of the brain.  

The whole premise of artificial intelligence is broken. It’s just not true. You are building a castle on quicksand. There’s nothing there. And beyond this, there’s just so much wrong with it. Almost blindly trusting whatever a large language model spits back at you—because, once again, I don’t think people fully understand or even partially understand what they are getting.  

So, no, I don’t think AI is progressing in the way people think it is. I mean, obviously, there’s some progress, but it is not going where people think it can go.  It’s never going to match a human brain—at least not this way.  And quite likely, not within our lifetimes. Probably not even within a few centuries. We will not have a machine that is capable of doing what the human brain is capable of. Mostly because—we still have no clue how the brain actually works.  

TDT [13]: Moving on, you have over 200 endorsements on LinkedIn. Some of the most respected names in the industry vouch for you. I read somewhere, "If you have an issue, you get Charlie." Yet, you also have an Open to Work banner on your LinkedIn profile. So, as a veteran, as someone endorsed by so many top experts, how do you find yourself in this unpredictable position? Does this say something about the nature of the tech industry and how professionals are treated? Or does it reflect how we value expertise in open source?  

Karoly Negyesi: This is, once again, about how Drupal has evolved. The reason I find it hard to find work is that almost all available Drupal jobs right now are for various U.S. government entities—work that is only available to U.S. citizens. Right now, the industry is in a downturn.  

I think this is largely because, during COVID, when everyone went remote, there was a mini-bubble. Everyone over-hired because there was so much demand for online services. Now, demand has stabilized. We’re going back to pre-pandemic levels, and instead of hiring, companies are laying off. Of course, there are other factors. I don’t think AI, at least at my level, plays much of a role in this—not in the jobs themselves.  

But in hiring, AI is playing a huge role. Trying to find a job is practically impossible unless you personally know someone who wants to hire you. A company posts a job listing—maybe it’s AI-generated, maybe it’s not. Most likely, it is. So it’s terrible. Then, hundreds of people—who couldn’t possibly do the job—apply with AI-generated résumés full of lies. Companies know this, so they deploy AI to filter applications. If you don’t lie, you never get through. You need to be skilled at lying in a way that tricks the AI to even get past the initial screening. So, the job market right now—it is a very bad time to be looking for work.  

My company was acquired by private equity. And well, you know how that goes. I don’t want to speak ill of them—I still like them—but that’s just how these things go. This is a particularly bad time to be job hunting. My hope is that I will go to DrupalCon Atlanta, talk to people in person, and hopefully walk away with a job. Because, honestly, these online job boards? They are absolutely hopeless. Just plain hopeless.  

TDT [14]: Do you think we, as a community, have failed to create a system that supports the people who laid the foundations for Drupal?  

Karoly Negyesi: Oh, yes. But I wouldn’t say that we, as Drupal, have failed. This is something that the entire open-source movement struggles with.  Aside from extremely few individuals—people doing such fundamental work that they must be funded—the entire open-source model is broken.  And we have seen the consequences.  

Last year, a massive security hole emerged because of this lack of support structures. I still don’t know how to fix it. There are some solutions, but most of the time, the incentives just aren’t there. It is extremely hard—if not impossible—to convince large companies, the ones with the most money, to fund open-source work. Because those companies also have massive bureaucracies. It’s nearly impossible to get through that bureaucracy and convince them to treat open source as an investment in marketing or R&D. To get them to see the value in employing people who work on open source. This kind of long-term thinking is just not present in today’s corporate culture. Because right now, every major company is obsessed with short-term shareholder value. There is no short-term shareholder gain in funding open-source developers.  

The benefits are long-term and indirect. So yeah, the entire open-source model is creaking under this pressure. It doesn’t break completely—because there are always people who work on open source out of passion. But yes. There is a total failure here. But once again, this issue is so much larger than just Drupal. It’s not something that can easily be fixed.  

TDT [15]: As someone who has been involved with Drupal for so long and as one of the pioneers of the community, what is your most cherished or most proud contribution?  

Karoly Negyesi: People.

I was lucky to mentor some people who had potential but went on to achieve so much more. They went beyond just being coders—they became successful entrepreneurs, community leaders, DevRel directors, and more. So definitely, those mentorships are what I am most proud of.

Writing code? That’s nothing. Everybody can write code, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s ephemeral anyway. You write some code, time passes, newer versions come along, and you remove it to replace it with something better. But people. When you contribute to people, that is always meaningful. So yes, my mentorships—that is what I am most proud of.  

TDT [16]: In present-day Drupal, what is something you would like to see happen? Something you have envisioned for a long time but hasn’t happened yet?  

Karoly Negyesi: Well, going back to finances—of course, this is just a pipe dream. But if I were able to dream freely, there would be much more money going to the Drupal Association, or maybe a Drupal Foundation, so that they could fund a couple dozen people to work on Drupal full-time. That would be amazing.  

But as I said, it’s quite obvious that it cannot happen. I’m fairly okay with the current situation. It is what it is. We can make the most of it. I also think that Drupal CMS is a big win because it re-energizes the community. It gets people excited. It makes more people want to contribute. That’s a good thing—it reignites passion.  

TDT [17]: You once said that your life is hopelessly entangled with Drupal. Having gone through so many ups and downs within the Drupal ecosystem, do you think there will ever be a life without Drupal for you?  

Karoly Negyesi: That’s impossible.  

I tried. For three years.  It’s just not possible. I tried to untangle myself, and I couldn’t. Even if I end up in a non-Drupal job, I know I will still contribute in some way. I don’t work on Drupal as much as I used to, as I said, but still. It’s so deeply ingrained in me. I always find it hard to explain this to other people because, obviously, they don’t feel the same way. But it’s just sheer fun doing this. I think people underestimate the importance of fun. It’s something that keeps us going.  

But in the last few years, I’ve come to understand why it feels so fun to me—and to certain kinds of people. It’s ADHD. That was also the cause of my past toxic behaviours—because of something called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), which I only learned about a year or two ago. If I had known about it sooner, things might have been different. But yes, the reason Drupal is so fun to me is because people with ADHD have dopamine dysregulation. This causes a dopamine hit—and once you find a good source of dopamine, it’s practically impossible to walk away from it. The same thing happens with video games for me. I always try new games, but I always come back to my old favorites. I just checked—I have 2,700 hours in Civilization VI. This always happens.  

TDT [18]: I have just one more question for you.  You’ve been through so much. You’ve worked with so many people.  Do you have a motto that helps you move forward, that keeps you hopeful?  

Karoly Negyesi: I read a lot of fantasy books, and they have helped and I’ve found a few lines in those books that I find profound.  Maybe they sound cliché, but they resonate with me.  

There are two quotes I’d like to share. One is from Brandon Sanderson:  

"I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man."  

That’s one.  And the other is a bit darker, but it has helped me through difficult times:  

"Keep your head down and inch towards daylight."  

I find that really motivating.  It helps when times feel dark.