HAPPY BIRTHDAY DRUPAL

Drupal turned fifteen on January 15, 2016.

BEFORE DRUPAL

In 2001 only 7 percent of the world's population

had internet access. The price of connection was

very expensive at the time.

THE YOUNG MENACE

“At the time I lived in a really tiny room with just a

desk, a bed, a sink, and a microwave.”

MISSION POSSIBLE

“We drilled holes in the floor to connect people

below and at night we'd run wires to the people

next door.”

MESSAGE BOARD

“So we needed a private message board. If the beta

ADSL connection dropped, or if I turned on the

microwave and the wireless disconnected, I'd post a

message on our intranet letting people know.”

dorp.org

“I had intended to register “dorp.org”, as dorp is the Dutch word

for village and seemed a fitting name for our small online

community. I accidentally typed 'drop.org'; it was available so I

bought it instead. Drupal was then word play based on the Dutch

word “druppel”, which means drop.”

DRUPAL TIMELINE

DRUPAL 2.0watchdog.module

DRUPAL 3.0watchdog.module

DRUPAL 4.0

taxonomy.module

FIRST DRUPALCON

“I helped organize the first conference in

Antwerp, and I was completely flabbergasted that

30-40 people showed up!”

DRUPAL 4.7

“Drupal 4.7 will go down in history. It was really

tough on me personally to push that release out.

That's when the Form API was born, and I

committed it late in the game. It took ages to

flush out the bugs, convert modules, and get

documentation written. That was a really hard

release.”

DRUPAL 5.0

The installer became one of the biggest features

in Drupal 5.

DRUPAL 6.0

DRUPAL 7.0

DRUPAL 8.0

Acquia started in 2007.

The Acquia Network combines various support

and cloud services.

Acquia Search, New Relic (performance

monitoring), heartbeat monitoring, Mollom, etc.

Mollom is a web service that helps website

owners moderate their websites by filtering out

spam.

Currently Mollom is used by about 60,000

websites on which we've filtered nearly 10 billion

spam messages.

COMMUNITY

Do you see yourself telling “Drupal

stories” to your grandkids?

Yes. The entire story of Drupal and its community is fascinating.

Little did I know when I started a message board in my small

student dorm in Antwerp, that it would grew into a worldwide

phenomena built by thousands of people and used by millions,

including many of the world’s governments and some of the

largest media organizations. At the same time, I believe that

we’re only getting started, and that we have so much left to

accomplish it is too early to start telling stories.

Author: Orest Androshchuk

E-mail: orest.androshchuk@lemberg.co.uk

Drupal.org: KittenDestroyer