tl;dr: As of the summer of 2026 I'm stepping away from Drupal, whose mission is now to be the leading AI-focused opensource CMS for enterprise customers. Like everything, Drupal has succumbed to growth for the sake of growth and lost its soul.
Thank you all
Let me start by acknowledging the hard work many, many people have put into Drupal (the software and the community), and continue to do so. You are all amazing human beings, and none of what I am about to talk about is meant to diminish your individual contributions in any way.
Except this one particular guy who can get bent. But otherwise you folks are all fabulous.
I discovered Drupal around 2006, a little before Drupal 5 was just released. The first version with fields in core (no more flexinode!) and started working on projects for non-profit organizations soon after.
I came for the software, and stayed for the community.
Then followed 20 years of building Drupal projects, organizing events such as Drupalcon Paris, and Drupalcamp Dakar, and training hundreds of people across a dozen countries, for various UN organizations, EU institutions, and public sector clients.
The absolute highlight was meeting Simon at a Drupal event in Paris, where we would strike up a friendship that resulted in us building a Drupal agency together with offices in Senegal and France, and him ultimately finding his way to Acquia where he is, at the time of writing, Vice President of Global Expert Services.
An amazing ride, but not one without being frustrated with the Drupal Association (DA).
Drupalcon & the DA
Drupalcon is getting bigger, more expensive, and more US-focused every year. The DA keeps organizing it in the US even after all the political trouble in the US, hiding behind "we already committed to the event years ago" excuses. The EU event seemingly has to follow suit: Bigger, Better, Faster, More (expensive).
Both events are now purely marketing-driven, aimed at (landing) the biggest clients in the largest sectors. Unsurprisingly, this follows (or drives) the trend of making Drupal ever more complex, ever more large-scale, ever more enterprise-ready. I guess the next logical step was to integrate AI to help users and developers navigate this complexity. Keep reading, I'll get there.
On another note, I expected my people-driven, opensource community and leadership to stand for something. Yet it took many months to get someone of the DA to even acknowledge an issue about getting off X/Twitter, let alone discuss it and state a position. It took the DA 11 months to formulate a response.
What about taking a stand elsewhere?
A small banner in support of Ukraine.
Not a word about Palestine.
Not a breath about the horrible political situation in the US where the DA keeps organizing events and inviting foreign developers to come over, exposing them to the clear and present danger that Trump and his ICE goons are.
Not a whimper about the US attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a so-called cornerstone of Drupal's core values.
Here's what if feels like: the stakes have grown and the bucks have become big, so the voice has become small and the principles have been hushed. Can't step on too many toes... too much shareholder value that needs increasing.
GenAI
Not a thought about the dangers of GenAI, which is destroying our planet, destroying the fabric of society, destroying our ability to reason, destroying our software, destroying our creativity, destroying what it means to be human. On the contrary, let's fuel it some more.
And this, dear reader, is where it ends for me.
I am immensely disappointed both in Drupal's leadership and most of my former colleagues and fellow community members. The scale at which AI is being embraced in this community is astounding. Literal millions are flowing into making Drupal the flagship AI-ready opensource CMS.
A core commit (AGENTS.md) was added a short while ago. While it implores that AI not be used for any prose (cleverly leaving out actual code contributions, or am I reading that wrong?), it then happily adds instructions for agents, knowing full well nobody cares, and everyone is going to use their favorite AI agent anyway.
Even if AI is not in core (yet), the entire community is pointing in one direction. At every single event, AI holds the spotlight. On Drupal Planet, it's hard to find posts not talking about AI. On slack, people respond "here's what {{ LLM }} said". Podcasts. Blogs. News feeds.
AI is in every corner of the Drupal community. It's everywhere. It cannot be escaped. It's impossible to interact with the community without being confronted with it. Every day. Every hour. Relentless.
If that's the direction leadership and the vast majority are taking, so be it. The handful of like-minded souls I've encountered is not enough to keep me motivated (I appreciate you, though. You know who you are).
I've made a mental disconnect. I've fallen out of love. I've ceased to care, really care, about Drupal and its community. Your incessant AI adulation has killed my joy.
The next 20 years
I don't know what's next.
Maybe I'll build my own theme park, with games of chance and ladies of the night, as the saying goes.
So long, Drupal. And thanks for all the nodes.