Interviews

How the Drupal Association raises money can shape who influences the project and which work gets sustained. James Abrahams makes that tension central to his board candidacy. ...more

Drupal’s openness is tested not only by software choices, but by who carries the maintenance burden and whether institutions support the commons they use. ...more

Drupal’s automation tools solve different problems. The harder question is how they can exchange work without weakening their execution models, permissions, or auditability. ...more

Matthew Saunders links his board candidacy to a question now facing Drupal: how the Association can earn community trust through measurable listening, accessible participation, and public accountability. ...more

Scott Falconer links his board candidacy to a question now facing Drupal: how the project can grow without allowing AI adoption, enterprise influence, or vendor dependence to weaken community control. ...more

Chris Kelly links the board candidacy to a question now facing Drupal: how the project can make installation and upgrades easier without weakening security, independence, or open-source safeguards. ...more

Darren Oh links his board candidacy to a question now facing Drupal: how the project can expand adoption without adding friction for maintainers, smaller projects, and new users. ...more

The debate over open-source infrastructure often ends at agreement. Matthew Saunders wants it to continue into budgets, governance, and contributor support. ...more

Boerland links his board candidacy to a question now facing Drupal: how the project can expand institutional support without narrowing the path for contributors, local communities, and site owners. ...more

Accessibility failures often surface after budgets, architecture, and delivery plans are already fixed. Mike Gifford argues that public agencies can reduce that pattern by contributing fixes upstream. ...more

Shibin Das explains why visual workflow tools need visible execution, audit trails, runtime ownership, and clear boundaries between deterministic workflows and AI-assisted decision-making. ...more

Provider costs, agent behaviour and multilingual support are becoming practical governance questions for Drupal sites adopting AI workflows. In written responses facilitated by the DrupalCamp Tokyo 2026 organisers, James Abrahams told The DropTimes that Drupal AI is relying on pluggable governance, Drupal CMS-aligned work, outside-in agent workflows and collaboration with Symfony AI. His answers frame Drupal’s AI direction around maintainability, structured site building and multilingual production readiness rather than isolated feature development. ...more

Inherited Drupal sites often leave teams with scattered checks, uncertain configuration, and limited visibility beyond the repository. Robert Menetray Caballero built DruScan from freelance audit scripts into a contributed module and optional dashboard that reviews configuration, logs, module updates, code quality, security-related signals, and score history. The tool’s privacy boundary is central: detailed reports remain inside the local Drupal environment, while DruScan receives only the data needed for cross-site monitoring, keeping it as an oversight aid rather than a replacement for Drupal judgement. ...more

For organisations still running Drupal 7, the challenge is often less about whether to upgrade and more about how to modernise without disrupting critical business operations. Niels de Feyter, founder and lead developer of CodeLift, argues that successful upgrades depend on preserving a system's observable behaviour while modernising its underlying platform. In this interview with The Drop Times, he discusses verification, migration complexity, ageing infrastructure, AI-assisted development, and the risks organisations face as legacy systems grow older. ...more

Johanna Bates reflects on Drupal’s nonprofit ecosystem, the value of structured content, and the long-term stewardship required to support contributors, clients, and mission-driven organisations. ...more

Dan Frost brings a maintenance-first view to Drupal’s evolution and the realities of AI in production environments. In this interview, the Adaptive Managing Director reflects on the Drupal 7 to 8 shift, why structured architecture matters for AI readiness, and how “controlled AI” depends on guardrails and observability. He also discusses headless Drupal as an emerging direction, how charities are adopting conversational interfaces, and why SEO strategy in 2026 increasingly means being present inside AI-driven search surfaces, not only ranking in traditional results. ...more

As a maintainer of DDEV, Stas Zhuk works behind the scenes to ensure thousands of developers rarely have to think about their local environments. In this interview with The DropTimes, he reflects on reliability, open source responsibility, AI-assisted development, and what it takes to keep critical infrastructure stable even during power blackouts in Ukraine. ...more

Council Insight analyses thousands of user journeys across UK council websites to reveal how content performs in real use. In this interview, David Bishop explains why journey-based analysis matters, how automation and AI can support everyday content work, and what Council Insight offers local government web teams. ...more

In this interview with The DropTimes, Michael Fanini reflects on more than a decade of Drupal contribution, the evolution of the UI Suite Initiative, and the thinking behind Display Builder. He discusses design systems, Drupal core APIs, and how UI Suite positions itself alongside initiatives like Canvas, offering a grounded perspective on where Drupal’s front end is heading. ...more

The Drop Times spoke with Witze Van der Straeten about his AI-driven Figma-to-Drupal workflow and how experimenting with SDCs, Canvas, and MCP shaped his approach to front-end work. He also reflects on how the Drupal community influenced his growth as a developer. ...more

With Oaisys 25 just days away, QED42 Engineering Manager Vidit Anjaria sits down with The DropTimes to talk about the evolution of engineering culture, the lessons that shaped his approach to architecture, and why this weekend’s open-source AI practitioners’ event could mark a turning point for the community. ...more

With nearly 14 years at Open Social (via GoalGorilla), engineering lead Ronald te Brake has shifted from writing code to shaping how teams think, collaborate and solve problems. In this interview with TDT’s Alka Elizabeth, Ronald explains why he views AI not as a magic bullet, but as a teammate that demands context, guardrails and documentation. He shares how governance, decision records and meaningful standards help developers stay effective in a world where automation and intelligent systems are growing. ...more

On the sidelines of DrupalCon Vienna 2025, full-stack engineer Anish Anilkumar shares insights on the power of grassroots organising in the Drupal ecosystem. From hosting two-person meetups in Kerala to leading DrupalTVM, Anish reveals what it takes to build sustainable local communities. In this candid interview, he reflects on friendships, philosophy, and the quiet work of keeping community alive—beyond code sprints and global conferences. ...more

Fons Vandamme, a long-time Drupal developer and agency co-founder, created Webhaven—a pre-configured starter kit designed to simplify and speed up Drupal project development. In this interview, he shares why he built it, how it works, and what it means for developers, agencies, and the Drupal community. ...more

Dominique De Cooman, Founder and CEO of Dropsolid AI, speaks with Alka Elizabeth of The DropTimes about the remarkable growth of the Drupal AI Initiative—from its formation at Drupal Dev Days in Leuven to becoming a $175,000 community-driven effort with fifteen dedicated contributors. The conversation explores Drupal's strategic positioning in an AI-first world, the evolution of digital experience platforms, and what lies ahead for the open-source community. ...more

Jorge Tutor, CIO and co-founder of Metadrop, shares what he’s learned from two decades of building digital products, leading teams, and bridging the gap between business goals and technical execution. In this candid conversation, he explains why clarity—not code—is often the deciding factor in whether a project succeeds or stalls, and how systems thinking, coaching, and open source all play a role in getting it right. ...more

Christopher McGrath, founder and CEO of Esteemed, discusses his journey from launching Celebrate Drupal to building an AI-driven human capital platform. In this interview with Alka Elizabeth for The DropTimes, he shares insights on Drupal’s shifting role in enterprise tech, the rise of coding agents, and what companies expect from developers in a changing job market. ...more

Technical co-founder and cloud architect Colan Schwartz speaks with The DropTimes about his long history with Drupal, his work on Aegir and Drubernetes, and the transition from open source contributions to SaaS product development. The interview covers automation, infrastructure, DevOps practices, and the practical challenges teams face when adopting Drupal at scale. ...more

In this in-depth conversation for The DropTimes, sub-editor Alka Elizabeth interviews Kevin Quillen, Platform Lead at Velir and co-author of the Drupal 10 Development Cookbook. With 16 years in the Drupal community, Quillen reflects on the platform’s transformation from his early days leaving ColdFusion to leading its AI integration. He shares insights on community collaboration, onboarding improvements, and why he believes Drupal is entering its strongest era yet. ...more

From translating Drupal into Ukrainian nearly solo to architecting one of the platform’s largest distributions, Andrii Podanenko’s journey is anything but ordinary. In this conversation with The DropTimes, he and Zhanna Khoma of ITCare talk about building AI-integrated Drupal projects, mentoring without ego, and why empathy, not just code, drives lasting impact. ...more