Dries Buytaert

The numbers are settled. The questions are not. Following Drupal’s infrastructure cost breakdown, developers and organisations are now debating how open source systems should be funded—and who is responsible for keeping them running. ...more

Drupal’s 25th anniversary keynote in Chicago moves beyond retrospective framing to address a structural shift affecting the CMS ecosystem. Dries Buytaert outlines how artificial intelligence is changing how websites are built, where value is created, and how Drupal must respond through product changes, new workflows, and a renewed emphasis on structured content and governance. ...more

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert has called on developers to take responsibility for understanding code they submit, particularly as AI tools become more common in software development. Reflecting on earlier community practices such as “Don’t hack core,” he suggested a renewed emphasis on accountability, warning that unreviewed or misunderstood code can slow down collaboration and place unnecessary burden on maintainers. The message highlights evolving expectations in open source contribution as AI adoption grows. ...more

Drupal Developer Days Athens 2026 will feature a fireside chat between Drupal founder Dries Buytaert and Greece’s digital governance leadership, adding a policy and ecosystem perspective to the developer-focused event. The session reflects a continued effort to connect open-source development with public-sector digital strategy, as the Athens programme expands ahead of its April schedule. ...more

A month-long experiment by Dries Buytaert reveals how heavily AI systems crawl the open web while sending little traffic back to publishers. After making Markdown versions of every page on his personal site available to AI crawlers, Buytaert analysed server logs and found that bots fetched roughly 1,241 pages for every citation they generated. The findings highlight an emerging imbalance in how AI platforms consume online content while providing limited referral value to its creators. ...more

Dries Buytaert has published a blog post discussing the cost of operating Drupal’s infrastructure and the financial structure supporting it. The post estimates that maintaining the systems behind Drupal.org and related services costs roughly $3 million annually. It also examines how current funding sources cover part of those expenses and outlines possible approaches for improving long-term sustainability. ...more

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert has published a blog post inviting community members to a gala celebrating Drupal’s twenty fifth anniversary during DrupalCon Chicago. Scheduled for 24 March 2026, the evening event will bring together contributors, organisations, and long time community participants to mark the milestone. The invitation outlines ticketing details and encourages members of the Drupal ecosystem to join the celebration. ...more

A recent opinion piece by Wassim Ben Sassi examines Drupal’s AI Roadmap for 2026 and argues that its governance-focused architecture may distinguish it from other CMS platforms pursuing artificial intelligence integration. The analysis reviews eight planned capabilities and assesses their feasibility in enterprise contexts. ...more

Four years after publishing a simple Web3 “Hello World” page using IPFS and ENS, Dries Buytaert checked whether it still works. The site remains accessible, but the surrounding ecosystem has shifted dramatically, with several key hosting and pinning services shutting down or pivoting away from IPFS. ...more

Dries Buytaert has introduced Drupal Digests, a tool that tracks development activity across Drupal Core, Drupal CMS, Drupal Canvas, and the Drupal AI Initiative. The system monitors issue queues and uses AI to generate summaries of commits and code changes. ...more

The Digital Center of Excellence questions whether Drupal’s biggest challenge today is not technical strength but brand clarity, leadership alignment, and positioning in a WordPress-dominated CMS landscape. ...more

DrupalFit has confirmed it will participate in DrupalCon North America 2026 in Chicago as both an Exhibitor Sponsor and a Non-Profit Industry Summit Sponsor. The event, scheduled for 23–26 March at the Hilton Chicago, marks the first North American DrupalCon following Drupal’s 25-year milestone. ...more