Drupal 8

Florida Drupalcamp 2017 is less than a week away, February 17-19, in vibrant Orlando. Not only is the camp schedule packed with great sessions and trainings, but there's also a contribution sprint that both helps Drupal 8 core maintainers, and gives you a chance to contribute and learn about Drupal 8.

To join the sprint, you should already be familiar with Drupal... and that's it! You don't need to be an expert. You don't need to be a coder. You don't even need to know much about Drupal 8, although a little knowledge helps. This particular sprint is a great fit for:

On April 20, five months after the launch of Drupal 8.0.0, we released Drupal 8.1.0, the first scheduled minor update. Drupal 8.1.0 comes with both new features and bug fixes that were not eligible for monthly patch releases. Now is a great time to try Drupal 8 if you haven't yet!

Drupal 8.1.0 is production-ready, but (like most software) still has known bugs that can cause issues for some modules or sites. Although we fixed hundreds of critical bugs during Drupal 8's development, and although only a handful of critical issues have been discovered since Drupal 8.0.0, there are still hundreds of less severe bug reports marked with "major" priority.

The DrupalCon Los Angeles extended sprints start this Saturday, May 9, and the main sprint day on Friday, May 15 is just a little over a week away. I'll be leading a Drupal 8 Critical Burndown sprint to help get D8 done, and kgoel and cilefen will be leading a sprint to triage Drupal 8 majors. And we need your help! Sign up for the sprints now, or read on for more information on what we'll be doing and why.

The most recent issue of Drupal Watchdog includes an article on software freedom and social change in Drupal. While this article raises a number of thoughtful questions about the social implications of the Drupal community's evolution, it includes some misinformation (both because it misrepresents the data that are easily available and because it lacks data that are not easily available). In the first part of this post, I look at the specific information presented in the article and provide some more depth, including some first-hand information about Acquia, since I work in Acquia's Office of the CTO. In the second part, I explore how we can mitigate some of the concerns the article raises.