We recently added PreviousNext's name to "A Manifesto for an Open Future," joining 15 other Drupal agency founders and leaders in a public declaration that open source, not closed platforms, is the foundation for the future. Since founding PreviousNext in 2009, we've built our business on that premise, so signing felt less like adopting a new position and more like putting our name to something we've already been doing for 17 years.
The manifesto's core conviction is: "we are here to help build a resilient civilisation, and to build it in the open." The nine statements that follow reinforce that open source code becomes a refuge as trust in proprietary technology erodes; that data sovereignty stops being optional; that structured content becomes the raw material machines reason best on; and that security earned through a quarter-century of public scrutiny counts for more than a security case a vendor simply asserts rather than proves.
We didn't need much convincing to sign. PreviousNext invests around 5% of our annual revenue by contributing to Drupal's codebase and community, we're Australia's only Top Tier Drupal Certified Partner, and we rank among the top five global contributors to the project despite our comparatively small team. From helping formalise the DrupalSouth Steering Committee through the 2010s and volunteering on the Drupal Association board from 2019 to 2025, the manifesto's language about supporting the wider community across competitive lines is the essence of the commitment we already have.
The manifesto asks signatories to commit to four things: contribute; support each other; tell the story of what open source makes possible; and meet the moment with courage instead of retreating into nostalgia. For us, our contributed time is a budget line, not a marketing spiel. The second means we'll keep sharing what we learn building on Drupal rather than treating it as a competitive advantage to hoard. The third and fourth are more about attitude: talking about Drupal in public more, like we just did with other Drupal Certified Partners at a major government conference, and being ambitious about Drupal's future evolution, rather than assuming 25 years of Drupal's legacy settles all arguments.
That last point matters more for our clients. While most of the industry conversation around AI has been about which platform is the newest and shiniest, the manifesto explains that machines reason best on content that's modelled, labelled and meaningful, which is what Drupal has spent two and ahlf decades getting right. As more of our clients start integrating AI into their platforms, that structure stops being a technical detail and starts being the difference between AI that actually understands content and AI that's guessing at it. Sovereignty works the same way: Drupal carries no licensing cost, we can modify and enhance every line of code we build on, and clients own their platform outright, something PreviousNext's clients already benefit from. From a security perspective, Drupal's codebase is available for any security researcher to inspect and is overseen by a global security team that PreviousNext team members are an active part of.
If you're a Drupal agency, hosting provider or product team that shares this view, the manifesto is still open for signatories at https://drupal-open-future-manifesto.com/. If you're a client wondering what our commitment to open source principles means for your own projects, please get in touch.
