Dries in Lille: Storytelling or Escapism for Drupal’s Challenges?
A deep dive into Buytaert’s unconventional keynote and why there is an urgent need for a NEW product: a lean, modular, and API-driven platform.
But first, you NEED to read Dries Buytaert’s (Drupal’s creator), keynote from DrupalCon Lille 23. Please read it first, entirely. It's worth it, some teasing:
“Drupal, our central character, decides to follow the young builder, embarking on a journey that takes them to four unique villages: Reactopia, Contentville, Squarix, and Edoby Heights. Along the way, Drupal gathers valuable insights from each of these unique villages. Despite uncovering some of their shortcomings, Drupal also came to understand why these villages hold allure for young builders. — Dries”
— Dries
Or this one:
“Sadly, the Open Web Manifesto alone can’t clear away the dark clouds created by the Closed Web advocates. As the dark clouds creep closer and obscure the village, Drupal seeks help from three powerful sorcerers.” — Dries…
Now let’s talk.
What the f**k is that?
I find it hard to believe that the Drupal community needs fairy tales at this moment. Drupal’s momentum is faltering and requires significant and immediate reforms. Otherwise, it risks a gradual decline (due to its gigantic footprint on the web we’ll be seeing Drupal here and there for at least a decade)
Does this make me a harbinger of misfortune or, as some might say, a creator of dark clouds? (sic!)
“[…] the Drupal character returns home to discover Drupal Village shrouded in dark clouds. These ominous clouds are the work of the Closed Web advocates, sinister figures in the story.”
I am! But, for the sake of clarity, it’s for Drupal’s benefit!
I shorted Drupal in 2018 when sold Adyax, a 350 pax agency that did a few big Drupal projects during its 10 years of operations.
Ask Drupal shops all around the world. Ask them what their bookings look like now. Face it. Fight it, but
— No Fairy Tales, Dries.
I think Drupal needs to deeply reinvent itself as a new product addressing developers and complex projects. Stop chasing the SMB mass. And…
Drop The Front End!
Dries, you praise Project Browser, as a strategic initiative, because, as you identified yourself, “Drupal is relatively hard to use, especially for newer users.”
It is not.
…If you’re a senior developer building complex projects, enough even to require Drupal! There are a lot of senior Drupal developers, who have been gaining expertise, in an ever-growing market for years. What do you want them to do? 10K$ page-builder projects?
This market stopped growing. Why? Drupal, is a swiss-knife and faces competition from knives, forks, spoons, and saws…
Low-hanging fruits are all occupied by cheap all-in-one SaaS CMSes that get better and better (Hubspot, Wix, Shopify, Unicorn Platform, etc…)
In the enterprise and mid-market, you can't beat the competition in the front-end space against Webflow, Builder.io, AEM, Framer, FlutterFlow, Bubble, Retool, and tons of other solutions.
AND
…your back-end capabilities as a structured content repository face fierce competition from younger back-end players, Strapi, Directus (both open-source btw), Hygraph (natively supporting GraphQL and graphs), Content Stack (ideal for larger content creators), Arc XP (for publishers and broadcasters), Xano, Supabase, Retool….
Another “strategic” initiative is automated updates. While important is not strategic. Time spent only on updates of Drupal modules in a support & maintenance contract is negligible compared to the time we spend on bugs and changes. Not strategic. But useful, for small / freelancer projects. This is NOT the right direction. Drupal is not an SMB product. Drupal is for enterprises.
And your final closing Top 3 things for Drupal are:
- Enhance page building (Okay…), but useless for large headless instances
- Advocate for Open Web (Is THAT THE priority for Drupal, all other problems are solved?)
- Amplify marketing… (product is your marketing, agencies are your sales)
What do I suggest instead?
I’ve been out of the Drupal scene for five years, so my views might be overlooked. But with code.store, I’ve worked with many tools and over ten headless SaaS CMSes. It’s given me a broader market perspective, like stepping out of Plato’s Drupal Cave! 😂
Dries, You need to create a new product.
Small team, core contributors, no more than 10–15 pax. Work until done. Talk to Fred Plais or Fred de Gombert about their latest projects.
You could create an extremely powerful, modular, open-source back-end-as-a-service builder with API gateway capabilities and user-friendly admin interfaces.
This would be a low-code open-source platform. With custom modules and a composable API-first back-end that leverages modules (which are outstanding in Drupal).
Forget the front end; today’s market is already saturated.
Headless solutions are ubiquitous, and there are numerous powerful, affordable, and polished tools available. Drupal stands no chance in this battle.
Funny thing, YOU were talking about the importance of an API-first Drupal more than 10 years ago ⤵ ️
What happened since then?
Why are you focusing on anything other than a streamlined, adaptable API builder? In 2023, there’s no demand for another page builder. Brands now prioritize platforms over web traffic. However, for necessities like a robust booking system, social community interfaces, or an intranet with commenting or voting features, Drupal’s previous modularity and flexibility remain unmatched.
But it needs to be designed API-first.
You need to be able to build a beautiful, self-documented, secured API by installing and configuring modules. I want Hasura-like GraphQL on-the-fly features, I want Xano-like CRUD API builders, and I want Hygraph-like data-model design features.
Drupal has the best possible go-to-market to launch virtually any developer product!
Dries, you have the power to mobilize an immense community. Consider a streamlined, low-code back-end service. It would grab the attention of heavyweights like Google and Amazon, who, let’s face it, aren’t nailing the no/low-code realm (even with Firebase and Amplify). With this, APIfied-Drupal could take on and potentially overshadow market leaders like OutSystems, Mendix, or Bubble
Dries, please tell me all the reasons why am I wrong. I will publish your answer just below this article.
