Drupal.org aggregatorWritten by guest blogger María Fernanda Silva
Something is shifting in how organizations think about AI. The early excitement around what it could do is giving way to a harder, more important question: how do you build AI that actually holds up - at scale, under pressure, and over time?
On 14 May 2026, New York City becomes the place where that question gets answered. The Drupal AI Summit brings together enterprise leaders, digital decision-makers, and senior practitioners from across the US and Europe - not to explore AI in theory, but to share what responsible, durable AI looks like in practice.
Thirteen focused sessions. Real case studies. The Summit is built around the strategic and organizational questions that determine whether AI delivers real value or stays stuck in pilot mode: governance, investment, long-term architecture, and what it actually takes to scale. If you are responsible for those decisions, this is where you belong.
Most AI implementations fail quietly - locked into black boxes, disconnected from the workflows where real work happens, impossible to adjust without starting over.
There is a different path. When AI is embedded directly into content, data, and workflow systems (where enterprise work actually happens), teams maintain transparency, organisations retain control, and the architecture evolves alongside the business without the cost of replatforming. This is not a niche concern. It speaks to every enterprise leader navigating AI in environments where trust, regulation, and scale are not optional considerations - they are the entire challenge.
The Summit explores what this looks like in practice, with sessions grounded in the architectural and organizational choices that make responsible AI adoption real, not just possible.
From 9:00 am to 5:45 pm at 360 Madison Avenue in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, you will have access to thirteen sessions built entirely around case studies from peers who are applying AI in production environments. No theoretical frameworks. No technical deep-dives. Just honest, grounded conversations about what works, what doesn't, and what it takes to build AI your organization can trust for the long term.
Practitioners and leaders are flying in from across the US and Europe to share first-hand experience and to learn from each other. Your pass also grants access to the wider apidays New York event running across both days, connecting you with communities exploring APIs, AI agents, cybersecurity, and modern digital infrastructure - all under the same roof.
Secure your place at the Drupal AI Summit NYC for $150 USD before 13 April 2026. After that, tickets are $200 USD.
The Paris edition sold out. If you're planning to join us in New York, early is the right call.
The foundations for enterprise-grade AI already exist. Come and see how they're being built - openly, responsibly, and together.
Secure your Early Bird ticket today!
Photos by Paul Johnson
09 Mar 2026 8:11pm GMT
Open Source software is free to download. But the infrastructure that makes it usable is not.
When developers install or update dependencies through npm, Composer, pip, or Cargo, those tools rely on package registries that host and distribute millions of software packages. When maintainers collaborate, they depend on hosted services: Git repositories, CI pipelines, and other tools to build, test, and release software.
Most of this infrastructure is invisible to end users, and almost no one thinks about what it costs to run.
But it is not free. Someone has to operate the servers, pay for bandwidth, respond to support questions, patch security issues, and keep everything reliable.
Much of the modern software ecosystem depends on these services working reliably. And yet the organizations operating them are almost always scrambling to fund them.
Every large Open Source project has found some way to keep its infrastructure running. Usually that means a mix of donated services, sponsorships, fundraising, cross-subsidy, or patronage from a single company.
The table below highlights the primary funding mechanisms various Open Source projects depend on, even though most projects combine several.
| Donated infrastructure | Multi-company sponsorship | Community funding | Single-company patronage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | ☑ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Packagist | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☑ |
| npm | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☑ |
| WordPress | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☑ |
| RubyGems | ☐ | ☑ | ☑ | ☐ |
| Drupal | ☑ | ☑ | ☑ | ☐ |
The mix differs across ecosystems, and some rely on several mechanisms at once. But one thing stands out: none of these approaches tie funding directly to how much the infrastructure is used.
PyPI, the Python Package Index, illustrates the sponsorship model. It handles billions of downloads a day on infrastructure donated by Fastly, AWS, and Google Cloud. The Python Software Foundation described this arrangement's fragility in a post last October: if a single sponsor decides not to renew, it would cost them tens of thousands of dollars a month to replace the lost infrastructure.
Packagist, the main PHP package repository, follows a different approach. It is run by a private company that also sells a commercial product called Private Packagist. Revenue from the paid product subsidizes the free public registry. It's one of the more sustainable models out there, though it means a public good depends on one company's continued success.
npm tried to operate as an independent company, ran into serious financial trouble, and was eventually acquired by GitHub in 2020. The end result is that critical JavaScript infrastructure is now owned by Microsoft.
WordPress.org runs on a different version of the same dynamic: corporate patronage. Automattic, by far the ecosystem's largest commercial beneficiary, subsidizes most of the infrastructure. It works, but it also means that whoever funds the infrastructure controls it.
The FAIR project, a federated package manager backed by the Linux Foundation, was designed to give the WordPress ecosystem an independent alternative. The software works but its organizers recently stepped back after failing to secure long-term funding commitments.
RubyGems took the community fundraising route, launching a program last year asking businesses for $2,500 to $5,000 annually, with about 110 supporters needed to cover the registry's operations.
Drupal, the Open Source CMS I help lead, depends on the Drupal Association to run much of the infrastructure behind the project: Composer endpoints, GitLab repositories, CI pipelines, automatic update notifications, and more. Running all of this costs roughly $3 million a year. Funding comes from a mix of donated infrastructure, community funding, DrupalCon revenue, and sponsorship.
When the economics break, the consequences become visible. In February 2026, GNOME began redirecting Git traffic from its own GitLab to GitHub mirrors to reduce bandwidth costs. As a result, GitHub and its owner Microsoft now absorb some of GNOME's bandwidth cost.
Taken together, these examples point to the same underlying problem. Most Open Source infrastructure does not have a real business model. It survives through donations, corporate sponsorship, and community fundraising, rather than revenue tied to the value it delivers.
One direction that makes sense to me is a simple value exchange: keep core infrastructure free for individuals and small projects, while organizations using it at scale help pay for what they consume. Not as a donation, but as payment for the infrastructure their software depends on.
Some people will instinctively resist the idea of charging for the infrastructure behind an Open Source project. That reaction may feel familiar to anyone who remembers the early debates about paid contributors. At the time, many feared corporate money would drive volunteers away. In practice, the opposite happened. Projects grew, contributor bases expanded, and paid engineers became some of their most active contributors.
That does not mean every new funding idea is a good one. But instinctive discomfort alone is not a reason to reject it.
In Open Source, what looks like fairness often is not. Free for everyone sounds equitable, but the cost does not disappear. It is absorbed by those who can least afford it, while the organizations that benefit most often pay the least. When a Fortune 500 company consumes Open Source infrastructure for free, that is not a neutral outcome. It is a subsidy flowing in the wrong direction.
If the problem is that costs are disconnected from usage, the obvious place to start is linking them. Exactly how that would work in practice is a separate design question, and the answer will likely differ from one Open Source project to another. One possible approach is usage-based fees, tiered by download volume or API consumption. Questions about measurement, thresholds, and enforcement would need careful community discussion.
If infrastructure funding models need to change, the obvious question is who decides. In Open Source, questions like this ultimately belong to the community.
But communities do not decide these things in a vacuum. In practice, governance tends to follow funding.
Discussions about Open Source infrastructure often focus on governance: who should control it and who gets to make the decisions. In reality, those questions are often settled by something simpler: who pays for it.
FAIR is a recent example. The project didn't fail because federation was the wrong idea. It failed because nobody built a business case compelling enough to fund it as an alternative.
When one organization pays for the infrastructure, it ultimately controls it. When a broader set of stakeholders funds it, governance broadens with it.
That is why Open Source infrastructure needs more than better fundraising. It needs a business model that connects the cost of operating shared infrastructure to the organizations that rely on it most.
Infrastructure that entire ecosystems depend on cannot rely indefinitely on goodwill alone. It deserves a business model.
Solving the funding problem is a prerequisite to solving the governance problem.
Thanks to Tiffany Farriss, Tim Lehnen, Gábor Hojtsy and Lauri Timmanee for reviewing my draft.
09 Mar 2026 6:36pm GMT
09 Mar 2026 6:00pm GMT
Across the Drupal ecosystem, much of the work that keeps the project moving forward happens through sustained community effort. Developers maintain modules and review patches, accessibility specialists improve inclusive design practices, documentation writers clarify complex workflows, and organisers run DrupalCamps, DrupalCons, and local meetups that bring contributors together.
Women across the Drupal community play visible roles in many of these areas. They lead accessibility initiatives, maintain projects, organise community events, and guide product and platform discussions that influence how Drupal evolves. In recent years, these contributions have shaped areas ranging from documentation and mentoring to platform initiatives such as Drupal CMS and accessibility-driven improvements across the ecosystem.
International Women's Day offers a moment to acknowledge that work without separating it from the technical core of the project. The stories in this week's issue highlight the broader ecosystem in motion-from new developer tools and experimental modules to DrupalCon Chicago announcements and community initiatives reported over the past week.
With that context, here are the major stories from last week.
We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now. To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. You can also join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.
Thank you.
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor
The DropTimes
09 Mar 2026 4:42pm GMT
Staging-server bottlenecks often slow releases, compress QA into the final days of a sprint, and leave stakeholders reviewing work too late to give meaningful feedback. In this DrupalCon North America 2026 session, Jasmyne Epps of Digital Services Georgia and James Sansbury of Tugboat explain how the State of Georgia redesigned QA and UAT for GovHub by moving testing and stakeholder review directly into pull requests. The result is a workflow that helps teams catch issues earlier, collaborate continuously, and scale delivery across more than 80 state agency websites.
09 Mar 2026 3:31pm GMT
Dreaming about Claude Code
I lost sleep last night, dreaming about Claude Code. The night before, I was working too late and too hard on a coding problem, and I ended up dreaming about it and circling the solution. I was ruminating on how Claude Code fits into my development workflow. In my dream, I kept circling back to the question of how to code Drupal using AI.
I want to emphasize that I had a dream, not a nightmare. The dream was triggered by spending an entire day clauding at Symfony, more generally using Claude Code to improve my understanding of Symfony and how it is used in Drupal.
Improving my understanding of Symfony within Drupal
First and foremost, I see AI as a powerful tool, not a replacement for developers. AI is a disruptor affecting both junior and senior developers, requiring them to learn to use AI to develop and maintain software applications. An AI tidal wave is underway, and we need to get ahead of it rather than ignore it.
My long-term goal is to bring AI into my Drupal development workflow, yet I like circling around big challenges and seeking a learning task that is somewhat Drupal-adjacent. There are two Symfony-related issues/tasks on Drupal.org that I want to understand and maybe help resolve.
The first one is really simple. The latest version of Drupal CMS and, in turn, the AI Agents module can't generate content types. i.e., "create an Event content type" because the AI agent throws a passing generic $value parameter triggers an error. This is a minor bug, but I honestly don't understand Drupal's integration with Symfony's validation component well enough to contribute a patch.
A much larger second discussion I have been following for several years is the addition of integration...Read More
09 Mar 2026 2:32pm GMT
Drupal.org aggregatorThe weekend of 28th February to the 1st March saw the second DrupalCamp England event with around 100 people attending the University of Salford, not far from Manchester, for the two day event.
I had submitted a talk and the camp organisers had accepted it and also decided to make me a featured speaker, which was an incredible honour. As such I was part of the communications being sent out in the weeks before the event.
Since this is more or less a local event for me I decided to travel in on both days rather than get a hotel or anything. The rain and wind of the previous week had abated and the Saturday morning saw some of the warmest (and driest) weather we had seen in the north west for a few months.
The keynote on Saturday morning was The Augmented Future: Winning with AI with Dr. Phininder Balaghan, founder of Traversally. This was an look through the current state of AI, which Dr. Balaghan said changes every time he gives the talk.
Most companies these days have adopted an agile methodology, which has taken about 20 years to become widespread. Since the introduction of LLM AI systems a few years ago we have seen massive adoption across all industries.
Dr. Balaghan joked that we have reached the age of AI-gile, the new agile methodology.
At the moment we are using a collection of LLM agents that work together in a so-called "agentic" system to provide a coherent service. The next true advancement in AI systems will be thinking AI systems that are able to properly think about the input and respond. I think we are quite a long way from that yet and no amount of processing power or RAM is going to solve the problem that LLMs are just statistical word engines.
08 Mar 2026 6:57pm GMT
Drupal.org aggregatorMy experiment in bringing Drupal Module Upgrader back from the dead in less than 24 hours
Drupal Module Upgrader (DMU) was created by Angie Byron and Adam Hoenich way back in 2014 at Acquia to help folks upgrade custom Drupal 7 modules to modern Drupal. It was magic. Cameron Zemek at PreviousNext built the crucial underlying library, Pharborist, which abstracted PHP manipulation into a generic dependency. Many relied on DMU to upgrade custom code, and it was even updated for Drupal 9; however, keeping it current over time proved challenging.
07 Mar 2026 7:13am GMT
Drupal.org aggregatorManaging multiple Drupal sites from a single codebase can deliver significant efficiencies, but configuration management quickly becomes complex as sites, features, and environments diverge. In his upcoming DrupalCon Chicago 2026 session, Jordan Thompson will demonstrate how Config Split can be used to structure multisite configuration in a predictable and maintainable way. The talk presents practical patterns, reusable templates, and workflow techniques designed to simplify configuration management across large Drupal multisite deployments.
06 Mar 2026 5:35pm GMT
The full programme for Drupal Developer Days 2026 shows how the Drupal ecosystem is responding to major shifts in modern web development. Artificial intelligence features prominently across multiple sessions, alongside discussions about Drupal CMS architecture, developer tooling, and evolving community practices. Together, the sessions suggest a community exploring how Drupal adapts to AI-assisted development while continuing to modernise its technical foundations.
06 Mar 2026 3:21pm GMT
Hot on the heels of beta 2, we are happy to announce the release of Display Builder 1.0.0-beta3! This new release focuses on stability, with a solid round of bug fixes, but also ships meaningful new features.
06 Mar 2026 1:00pm GMT
Join Us for Drupal Mountain Camp 2027
admin
We are happy to announce that Drupal Mountain Camp is coming back for its 6th edition on March 2-4, 2027, in Davos, Switzerland.
Since 2017, we have been gathering at Davos Congress in the Swiss Alps for sessions, workshops, and contribution sprints that bring the Drupal community together. Developers, designers, project managers, agency leaders, and anyone passionate about open source - everyone has a place here.
The venue offers professional conference infrastructure, reliable connectivity, and an inspiring alpine setting. Davos is a 2-hour scenic train ride from Zurich airport through the Swiss Alps.
As with every edition, Drupal Mountain Camp is more than a conference. Expect skiing, snowboarding, fondue in the mountains, and social activities that bring the community closer together.
Calls for speakers and sponsors will be announced as planning progresses.
Stay up to date and plan ahead:
We look forward to seeing you in Davos.
06 Mar 2026 12:09pm GMT
When people face urgent legal questions, finding trustworthy information quickly matters.
Recently, Electric Citizen partnered with LawHelpMN.org to help launch a new landing page that gathers key immigration resources in one place: www.lawhelpmn.org/immigration-legal-help
The page was created in response to Operation Metro Surge, a controversial immigration enforcement effort that has created significant disruption and uncertainty for many Minnesota communities. The goal was to provide a clear starting point where people can quickly understand their rights and find trusted legal help.
06 Mar 2026 9:03am GMT
Drupal.org aggregatorAccelerating Drupal Core development
A LinkedIn post (by Jay Callicott) made the case that Drupal core development needs to accelerate to meet modern (AI-driven) expectations, and adopting AI-DLC is the way to get there.
"Hot take [..] Drupal Core team needs to adopt AI-DLC [..] (as defined by AWS). AI does the code writing you are doing the orchestration. Who is with me??"
Increasing the velocity of evolving Drupal is a valid and worthwhile goal. The community had already identified the speed of Drupal Core development as an issue. Their solution was to move more quickly outside of Drupal core, in a (non-core) version of Drupal named "Drupal CMS".
ashrafabed
05 Mar 2026 3:37pm GMT
DrupalCon Chicago is going to be huge for Dripyard! We have one training, three presentations, one site template session, 400 stickers, and a very limited supply of beanies to give away!
05 Mar 2026 2:57pm GMT
The DropTimes contacted Drupal contributor Mike Herchel ahead of DrupalCon Chicago to discuss the sessions he will present during the conference week. His responses outline a full-day training on modern Drupal theming, a session on contributing to Drupal projects with Matt Glaman, and participation in a keynote highlighting ongoing work around Drupal CMS and the ecosystem emerging around it.
05 Mar 2026 2:42pm GMT