Just Say Drupal‽

Matt Kleve: For March 29th, 2024. It's the Lullabot podcast.

Matt Kleve: Hello everybody! It's the Lullabot podcast episode 271. I'm Matt Cleave, a senior developer at Lullabot. With me, co-host to the show, front end developer Morgan Eck. Hi Morgan.

Morgan Eck: Hey, Matt, how's it going?

Matt Kleve: I'm doing great. You know, Morgan, I love words. I thank you for hearing my words.

Morgan Eck: I love your words.

Matt Kleve: I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, my play, my passion. Words are all we have, really.

Morgan Eck: Great. Tell me your words then.

Matt Kleve: Bonus points to somebody who can name the comedian that I'm ripping off. We're talking about naming things and how we talk about things today in the Drupal world, right?

Morgan Eck: Yes. And today we have got Ivan Stegic with us, today. Ivan is the CEO of Ten7, coming at us from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And Ivan started out as a physicist and then eventually followed his passion to found Ten7. So that's an interesting journey from physicist to founder of an agency. And it looks like you have two miniature dachshunds, and I'm a big miniature dachshund person myself, so that's very exciting. Welcome, Ivan.

Ivan Stegic: Thank you. Morgan. Yes, you will not be hearing the doxies on this show because they are safely far away, not barking. 

Matt Kleve: Boo.

Morgan Eck: Wise choice.

Ivan Stegic: Or barking. They're very loud. I love my dogs.

Matt Kleve: That's one of my favorite things on, you know, working remotely with, with other Lullabots is we might be having a deep conversation about something and then a cat jumps in someone's lap or something. It's it's fun how we're all welcomed into each other's worlds in that way sometimes. Also joining us, we have Lullabot's, director of Technology from Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Andrew is deviant, deviant, integral on Dru- I can't even say it. Deviantintegral on Drupal.org and has made many contributions to Drupal core and many other modules. Please welcome my favorite Canadian, Andrew Berry. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew Berry: Hey, thanks, Matt, for having me. And we'll have to make sure none of the other Canadians at Lullabot hear this podcast.

Matt Kleve: I've made that joke for years. It's okay.

Morgan Eck: I'm glad that you said his drupal.org name. I did not want to have to say that one out loud, so thank you for that one. And we also have got Helena McCabe with us today. Helena is our technical account executive here at Lullabot who is coming from Orlando, Florida. And she started out as a senior front end developer before joining the sales and marketing team. Also a fascinating journey. Welcome, Helena.

Helena McCabe: Hi.

Matt Kleve: So I guess Ivan, I think this is kind of an idea. What we're here talking about is how we talk about Drupal and Drupal over the years has changed and evolved. And you were on a on Talking Drupal recently and kind of this idea sprouted that maybe you've kind of worked on and fleshed out a little bit further. Right?

Ivan Stegic: Right.

Matt Kleve: I'll let you I'll let you introduce it however you want.

Ivan Stegic: Sure. I've actually been thinking about this for, gosh, a number of years at least two. I was on the Agile Drop podcast a while ago, and I, I talked about version-less Drupal, which has some bad connotations because it means or people interpret it to mean we're going to stop versioning Drupal and doing releases, and that's not what I mean at all. And so I try to stop saying version-less Drupal, just to say Drupal. And the idea here is that. How many other CMS's even pieces of software do you know that have the version of the product in the marketing name of the product? You don't go around listening to the folk at WordPress, at WordCamp, say WordPress six or WordPress seven. It's just WordPress. And I feel like we're doing ourselves a disservice by saying Drupal 10.2 and having that front and center on the Drupal.org website, or in any of the major marketing that we have where we refer to that version. It's important to us, I think, because it distinguishes this amazing thing that we've built as a community compared to what we used to have, what we still have in Drupal seven. So it's important to us to distinguish between the two. But I honestly think that the market and our clients and the humans we serve don't really care. They just really want to use Drupal. And if it's 10 or 10.1 or 10.2, just give me the latest and greatest. And so I decided to write it down after I talked about it with the good folk at Talking Drupal. And here we are on the Lullabot podcast.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, I listened to that one. I listened to a handful of different podcasts. I pick up Talking Drupal every once in a while. I had to listen to that one because former Lullabot, I guess, former, one of Lullabot's co-founders who's no longer with the company, but he was on there. I was like, hey, I gotta I gotta listen in and see what Jeff has to say. So that that was a that was a good conversation and a fun one with him. But I kind of liked the idea that came out of it and wanted to hear a little bit more. So I was glad to see your blog post, and you did make a post in the issue queue too, right, the Drupal.org issue queue.

Ivan Stegic: I did, I absolutely did. It's there. And we, it actually started out as titled version-less Drupal towards version-less Drupal. And someone was very smart, not me, to change the title to have a better name. But yes, there is an issue. There's been some discussion about it. There's been some discussion on LinkedIn about it as well. So yeah.

Matt Kleve: We'll link to some of that on our podcast node on the Lullabot website. If people want to take a look at that. So why do you, why do you think it's important? I mean, what's the big deal if somebody calls it Drupal 11 or doesn't call it Drupal 11?

Ivan Stegic: I don't think it's accurate anymore, to start. And I think it, it introduces confusion. And I also think it does us a disservice because it, it firmly plants us comparing ourselves to a previous version that is no longer true. And I think we can acknowledge the fact that we might have made some mistakes in previous versions of Drupal, but we've done, done our darndest to fix them. We still support a version of Drupal that I like to refer to as Legacy Drupal. Drupal seven.

Matt Kleve: For now.

Ivan Stegic: And.

Matt Kleve: Right.

Ivan Stegic: For now. For now, for now. And and we should we should talk about that as well. And I think that we will be free to just talk about our product and the service we have if we don't have to think about the version that we are currently on and introducing confusion with our clients by doing that. I think that we're at a point in the evolution of our product where major version upgrades aren't going to be as as troubling, as difficult as they have been in the past. And I think that that is one of the key things I've personally been waiting for to be able to say, you know what? These are just transparent upgrades that our clients shouldn't have to worry about. You know, like we've been, if you're building a site and you're providing a service to a client and you're doing best practices in how you're implementing the code, then the version of symphony that's powering Drupal underneath should be able to deprecate, and no one should ever have to notice. Like we should just continue to provide that service to our clients. And I think that would free us in a way, in the marketing.

Matt Kleve: Now, I love that Andrew and Helena were willing to come on the podcast today because I think they can think about it from two different, very different perspectives. Helena's talking with clients and selling Lullabot on a daily basis. And Andrew is, is the propeller head right? He's he's he's building stuff and and, you know, making making Drupal all it can be for clients along the way. So we'll start, Helena does does our client care if it's Drupal 10 or Drupal 11 or Drupal?

Helena McCabe: I think incoming clients care less. I mean, they want the latest and greatest. So they come in and they say, you know, we want to be migrated to Drupal ten. I think it's more that like as a salesperson, I care about the information of what version of Drupal are you on now? Because I want to know what we're walking into before we start offering services, especially support services. Like if you're walking in the door with Drupal seven or Drupal eight, or you're walking in the door with Drupal ten, that means a very different amount of work for us to get you to where you need to be. So that's still information I need. But yeah, you bring up an interesting point. Like, does it need to be appended to the name of the product, or could we just keep a running tally in our head of, okay, what version of Drupal am I using? But yeah, I do think that the version number carries a lot of information at this point.

Andrew Berry: I also think, Helena, you brought up a good point there about like how much work it is for us because it's not just the basics of like, oh, we have more work to do to get you up to modern Drupal, depending on what version you're on. It's a signal for how important their web presence is to the organization. And Drupal seven, because it's been around for so long, is a little bit different because you can have these ginormous code bases where it's very important to them, but they haven't been able to prioritize managing that. You often get customers coming in where like they might be on Drupal 9.4, which is like something we've seen. But it's kind of weird when you think about it, because it's like you're not getting security updates, but you're on a modern version of Drupal. Like, that's a signal to us that something beyond just technology needs to be worked on, which I think is really important in, you know, identifying that that level of work.

Helena McCabe: Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: I want to call out, you said modern Drupal when you were speaking, you could just say Drupal.

Andrew Berry: I could, but I think it's really important. With the number of sites still on Drupal seven to like the the working day to day differences between Drupal seven and everything past it. I feel like for at least the next year or two till we can really put Drupal seven behind us, we've got to like, make sure we, we clarify which version of Drupal we're talking about when we say Drupal.

Ivan Stegic: Okay, so I am trying to get us as a community to put that behind us because what both of you have talked about are really logistical things, right? Client comes to us, we have to know what version they're on so we can do the due diligence and be empathetic and get them to the right place to the latest version, to modern Drupal. I'm saying as a community, this is a much bigger idea because a year or two from now, it's really not going to matter. Most clients, if not all, are going to be on the latest version of Drupal, just Drupal. And I would like to push back and say as a community, Drupal seven is not going anywhere. It's going to, it will be EOL by the Drupal Association in January, but Hero Devs is going to provide never ending support from a licensing perspective. And those organizations that need FedRAMP certification are going to buy those licenses, those organizations that need more time. I think as a community, we have to accept that Drupal seven is going to be along for more than just another year or two, and that's why I think we should just refer to it as legacy Drupal, because there are nuanced connotations around that word as well. And not using the the version number, because when you say legacy, you mean old, you mean unsupported. You mean you mean a whole bunch of stuff. And it's I feel like that's an encouragement to be on modern Drupal on the latest version, right?

Matt Kleve: Sidebar real quick. Never ending is terrifying to say, isn't it?

Ivan Stegic: Yeah, it is.

Matt Kleve: Right.

Ivan Stegic: I think. I think we should accept it, though.

Matt Kleve: Never? Come on.

Helena McCabe: I mean, I think people will accept what is acceptable. But I, I am very cautious to advise people when they, they come to us asking for D7 extended support, because at one point we were considering offering that and they say like, oh, we want that. Well, Hero Devs has it, so why won't you do it? And there's, there's always kind of a pause where I'm like, well, if none of the agencies who specialize in Drupal have and have a lot of Drupal expertise are willing to offer this, and another agency is, maybe the agencies that specialize in Drupal know something that they don't. If we are all saying it's unsafe and declining to do it.

Ivan Stegic: Okay, I would like to just clarify something Hero Devs is not an agency and they are not providing support. Like they they. Yeah. 

Helena McCabe: Okay.

Ivan Stegic: You see, I it took me a while to figure that out as well. Like because I thought like what is this black magic. How can they be doing this. So they're, they are selling the license to a secured version of Drupal. They're, all of the bugs that will show up after EOL by the Drupal Association will get filtered to them. They will fix those bugs and release secure versions. They will continue their security scanning of the code base, and what you get from them is a drop in replacement with another endpoint, another composer endpoint that looks like Drupal seven, but is their version of it.

Helena McCabe: Hmm.

Ivan Stegic: Plus, plus, I believe 100 of the most used contrib modules as well. So they're not actually going to patch your site. They're not going to make those updates happen, but they will supply that license to a client that'll buy it and an agency that will implement it.

Andrew Berry: There's two interesting aspects of that. One is that model actually existed for Drupal six. There were organizations doing that. You know, one of the interesting wrinkles is that, you know, they can charge customers for access to the code and so on, but they can't prevent any of their customers from sharing that code. I don't know what's been done in the past, but or sorry, I don't know what they're planning to do in the future, but I know in the past, the Drupal Association had agreements that was basically like, if you are going to get advance notice of security releases that you need to look for, then you need to also make the code public one way or another. But I actually think this is, to bring back to the question of like versioning, this is where I think versioning actually really matters. And it comes down to like one of the aspects of open source, which is essentially the freedom to fork. Right. And I think if everyone's just talking about Drupal, you have organizations like Hero Devs offering extended support for a specific version, and maybe, you know, the community is wrong and that really takes off, then not clarifying versions or having some way to distinguish between them also makes the marketplace more confusing.

Ivan Stegic: I'd say you don't have to use a number to distinguish between them. I think it's absolutely necessary when we do releases, but I don't think you have to call it Drupal seven.

Matt Kleve: I've noted when I've started writing something or, you know, saying, you know, this is different than it used to be. It was like, yeah, this is how it is for Drupal eight or better. So it doesn't make any difference to to the words you use. So calling, I am kind of following where you come down, saying that this is the way Drupal is and hopefully everybody is on the same page. There have been changes since then. If you told me that I had an early Drupal eight site that I wanted you to work on and get upgraded I know that there are a bunch of changes from early Drupal eight, and that might not be a very straightforward migration. One of the things that I read in the issue queue, and I haven't perused it, I just kind of glanced over and caught some of the high points from different people, was that there were there was concern of someone who's been burned by Drupal in the past, someone who isn't necessarily up on the way Drupal is or the way Drupal used to be. They just know that at one point, maybe 15 years ago, they were using this Drupal website. That was just a terrible experience for them. Now is better. And if you differentiate that with a number, maybe that's better than no differentiation.

Andrew Berry: Something I'm curious about is like, and this is a bigger philosophical question, but is Drupal closer to a Software as a Service platform or closer to being an operating system. And where that comes to your question is like, if you think about the biggest software in the world, iOS and Android, they push version numbers in all of their big marketing, partially because to solve that question, you asked me like someone who had an iPhone and remembers, oh, I hated iOS seven. Well, hey, we're on 17 now. Maybe things are better or different, right? And I like in the in the Software as a Service world, if I look at something like slack, there's no version number. The app auto updates without you. Sometimes it updates and you don't have any control over it, and it makes things worse. Right? So like there are these two different models and you know, I feel like the answer to your question of like, how do you deal with someone who's had a bad experience is very different in each of those. And Ivan, as the person who's promoting dropping the version number, i'd be curious, like what you think would be the way in a hypothetical, no marketing version number future to bring those people along.

Ivan Stegic: If this if you're responsible for the software, then you care about the version number. If you're not, then you don't. And what I mean by that is you care about your phone and the version of iOS on it, because you're responsible for actually upgrading it and you're responsible for maintaining it, but for slack, you're just using it. Someone else is, someone else is maintaining it and worrying about it. And so my argument is that those of us who are responsible for Drupal, that are DIYing it, that are installing it, that are providing that service to a client is akin to the Android/iOS argument of downloads and caring about the version number because I care. Like you can't use Composer on Drupal seven. I can use it on Drupal eight plus. But I know that because I care and I'm responsible for it. But for people who are using Drupal from a service perspective, even if it isn't SaaS, even if it's Ten7 or Lullabot providing that service to a client, our clients don't really care like it's a service to them. They just want the most secure with the latest features, with the most amazing editor experience, and they want their users to have the best as well. So that's where I come down between the two. It's whether or not you care about the version number.

Helena McCabe: I wonder if it's good to encourage people to care though, even people where maybe they might be a little tech less technically savvy. It might be a little out of sight, out of mind for what version they're running. If we have the active version number as part of the name, does it encourage them? If they don't have a service plan to garden their Drupal and stay current and update and look like, oh I'm running Drupal 8.5 and Drupal 10 is out. I'm behind on my updates. Versus if we kind of drop that that, you know, extra number will they know like, oh, I need to be running my updates every now and again. I'm out of date.

Ivan Stegic: Is the client actually running the updates?

Helena McCabe: Some do.

Ivan Stegic: Okay. Then they care about the version number. Then they're then they're on the iOS/Android side.

Helena McCabe: The problem is that we do see clients come to us for support and they say like, hey, we don't really know how maintained our site has been. And we look at it and go ahh, nobody's run an update on this in three years. Because, you know they care, but they're not aware.

Ivan Stegic: I would argue they don't care because if they cared about the version number, they'd be doing those updates if they came to you and they said, I don't know what version I'm on, like that means they literally said to you, we don't care about the version number.

Helena McCabe: But if if they're looking at it and realizing that something's wrong and they're coming to us saying, hey, I'm out of date, that version number is giving them a cue to go seek help once they're, you know, they're out of their depth.

Ivan Stegic: I get that, that means they logged in and they saw the version number, and they saw the red update messages that said, Holy cow, you have not applied updates in 5 million years. Yeah.

Andrew Berry: We need to get that as the new version of that message.

Helena McCabe: From like the incident sign you haven't updated in...

Ivan Stegic: 5 million years. I don't think I'm saying take that safety stop away. I think I'm saying Drupal is a thing. Let's stop confusing our clients. Let's give them the assurance and the peace of mind to know we got their backs and they're on the latest version. Oh, I also think that this is a temporary state. We're in a, like we're in a transitional state now, and it's going to be hard getting to the other end where it actually doesn't matter. And I think we're getting there. So a year from now, two years from now, it'll just be Drupal and we'll be like, why did we ever call it 10.2 in the marketing? Because think about it like we couldn't have done this with Drupal eight. We could not have, I could not have confidently sold continued upgrades and upgrades to my clients, and no capital expenditure to go from 8 to 9. I could have not have done that confidently. I could not have done that 9 to 10 even. Maybe. But no. But like now, I'm quite confident that, like, if I build a new site in 10.2, I follow best practices, I launch the site, I continue to give it updates, my clients are happy, like why would I have to ask the client for... four figures, five figures to go up to Drupal 11. Like I'm not going to. It's not going to be hard, right?

Helena McCabe: So you truly believe that, like the future of Drupal...

Ivan Stegic: Oh yeah!

Helena McCabe: Like new versions are going to be...

Ivan Stegic: 100%

Helena McCabe: ... easy peasy. There's never going to be another like big. Yeah?

Matt Kleve: I think...

Andrew Berry: I don't think there will be either.

Matt Kleve: I think we're sliding that direction. It's certainly easier than it used to be. And that promise was kind of made from 8 to 9 and it was almost accurate. I think it's been better since then, and I'm willing to be optimistic. And that probably says something that it should be easier, like Drupal should just be Drupal. And the the fact that we're, the drop continues to move is a whole lot better than leaving people on ten year old technology.

Helena McCabe: Yeah. It's important.

Matt Kleve: Ten is probably not even new enough. I'm trying to remember my timelines here. I think I built Drupal six sites early in my days at Lullabot. That's 13 years, something. It's probably. Yeah, it's been a little longer than that. Yeah. Okay.

Andrew Berry: I feel like we could do well by, like, we've we've talked about defining our audiences, like we've talked about the audience. We've actually, like, gone through it comprehensively. And from what I'm hearing, I feel like there is the audience of people who are involved in essentially signing off or okaying decisions like, we're going to rebuild our website in Drupal, and they may be responsible for the decision making or the budget, but they may not use their website beyond looking at it. They may never log in. They may, you know, they're consumers of the information on the site and that's it. And then you've got people sort of like halfway between there and day to day developer where they're responsible for, you know, working with vendors, making sure that features they're asking are getting implemented in the timelines. They're looking at making sure that, you know, project plans look good, maintenance plans look good, all those things. And then you got people like, I'll say, all of us on this podcast right now who have a development background and, you know, can look at a composer file and know what we're talking about. And I almost think, like the that first group, you could probably just talk about Drupal. They don't really care what version it is like. They're thinking much more as like, is it Drupal or AEM or WordPress, you know, at the technology layer. And it's like this middle group that is the hardest part to figure out. Like someone who is a project manager at a client who does log in as admin in the website and look at certain things, or maybe is you know, doing testing of features that are coming up or is aware that, hey, when you go to Drupal ten, you're going to get Ckeditor five unless you do something special. And that's going to change the editorial experience. And like to me, like figuring out what the best message is for that group of people is like, is the crux of this.

Ivan Stegic: I think audiences are very important, but I don't think we can have multiple messages. I think we have to decide on the message that is the clearest and the simplest. And my firm belief is that the people that are paying the bills, and the people that are keeping us all in business need to be the ones that understand our product as clearly as possible. We can always add qualifiers and versions for that middle group that you described. I think that's important because there's valid information there for them to consume. We shouldn't lose that. But remember five years ago, eight years ago, the first group of people that you described, the ones that were signing the checks, they didn't really believe that there wouldn't be another major capital expense to go to the next version of Drupal, because there was from 5 to 6 and 6 to 7 and 7 to 8 less so 8 to 9, much less so 9 to 10. And they have sticker shock when that comes to when that when that happens. And so they are afraid, in my opinion, that this is going to happen again. And if we continue to have version numbers when we talk to them and when they see our product, that is always going to be in the back of their minds. I think we've done I think we've done such a great job though, like we've done a really good job of our product. Like I don't see giant capital expenditures now that are seven, you know, 8 to 9, 9 to 10. Like we we kind of did so well. It's like we have to figure out a different way to, to bring those dollars into our agencies. And like that was planned. We planned that. I think we planned to become modern.

Matt Kleve: 9 to 10 was an epic inside of a project I was on, I mean, there was there was some work involved and...

Ivan Stegic: Same here.

Matt Kleve: And but but it wasn't it wasn't the project.

Morgan Eck: Right.

Helena McCabe: Yeah, exactly. That's a big difference. Yeah. You know, you have a point because like, you know, when you buy, like the new cell phone that comes out, I'm like, oh, should I buy the pixel eight? Or is the pixel nine going to be released in a week? And I'm going to be mad that I bought it.

Matt Kleve: That was a conversation that kind of kicked this off on the on the other podcast, which was, you know, back in the day when it was when it was Drupal seven and Drupal eight was not released or almost released or, you know, in the era of it will be released and tagged when it's ready. Which is no longer the messaging, thankfully. Yeah. Boy, that was kind of frustrating when I started in the Drupal community. When will Drupal seven be released? When it's ready?

Ivan Stegic: When we feel like it.

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Wait. Really? Like so. So is that how the. Yep. When it's ready. Okay, I guess. And there were people who were paying the bills who said, well, maybe we'll just hold out for this next version because I hear it's better. And they put off the project because they're waiting for the latest, greatest. And then when the other modules aren't ready yet that's a problem too. And I think we've solved a lot of those problems. That's that's a that's a pretty solid point, I think.

Andrew Berry: I think the other thing, though, is also about like, figuring out how to communicate that the project isn't stagnant. Right. And you know.

Helena McCabe: Yeah.

Andrew Berry: To to say, for example, like, you know, with our essentially calendar based release schedule, you know, it's coming out every two years, there's like, no one's going to remember that it came out in June 2021 or whatever it was for, you know, some release then. But they, you know, if they get that tickler from the from whoever, right, saying like, hey, we upgraded to the latest version of Drupal and you didn't notice, right? Like there is something around showing progress as a community. Because I do think, you know, again, this comes back to a lot of the SaaS products that are out there. I think there's actually a strategy of hiding version numbers so that when they get to a certain amount of recurring revenue, they can essentially pause feature investment and just sort of keep things coasting. Like every one of us can name a piece of software that has fallen victim to that, right? And so like, you know, there's probably again, like, I don't, I think when I think about this, I think we have to have multiple messages. And then the question that I see is, what is the message that goes on the Drupal.org homepage, right. Like to me that is like it's like the first message that you get. And maybe if we can decide that as a community and do better at that, you know, if we were, that, that seems like a much stronger place to start saying, well, maybe can we get away with not having multiple messages?

Matt Kleve: I, I think that the Drupal.org homepage could be, you know, this is where you download Drupal. I don't think we want to direct people to Drupal seven still, right? I think Drupal is Drupal at this point.

Ivan Stegic: Right. I don't know that you need to put in 10.2 though.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: That's my argument. Like it's Drupal, you get the latest. And oh, by the way, last month we did a release and here are some amazing features that that we released. And by the way, we'll have one in 5 months time because that's how often we release things. And in five months time, your site will have all those releases and all those features that that we released, right? This is not easy.

Morgan Eck: The numbering hasn't always been on the Drupal homepage. Correct? So, you know, when did this come about? Why did this come about? You know, why does it why is it even there now?

Ivan Stegic: I think I wrote in my post that I think the reason for that is Drupal seven. Like, we had to put a line in the sand and say, oh yeah, we're now in Drupal eight and everything before this. Like these are fundamentally different.

Matt Kleve: I think 7 to 8 was definitely a big jump, but if we go back from 4.6 to 4.7, that was also a big jump because modules were not, could not be back, or could not come forward. That's where 4.7 is, and I'm doing this off the top of my head which is dangerous because this is old knowledge I'm having to recall, what I think 4.7 was the version that had Forms API, Form API existed, anything prior did not. So building modules was a completely different experience. And that was a big upgrade too. Big in terms of, well, what was actually built on Drupal at that point? Nothing to the scale that it was that it is today. But I think version numbers have been indicators of big jumps of technology and not necessarily easy updates historically, and definitely 7 to 8 for sure. More recently.

Helena McCabe: What about giving the Drupal versions names?

Matt Kleve: You know, it's funny, I'm thinking about, you know, a week ago I got an update to Android 14. Whatever happened to the fun candy names? They did that.

Helena McCabe: The like ice creams!

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Exactly right. Did they quit doing honeycomb and ice cream sandwich? And, I don't know...

Ivan Stegic: Jelly Bean.

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Helena McCabe: Yeah, I might have. I don't know.

Andrew Berry: I think the challenge from a marketing perspective over time is imagine someone is looking at different materials published at different ages. You have no idea what the relation between those names are. And even in the Ubuntu community they do the next letter in the alphabet. They name it after an animal. And there's good reasons for that because they have to have a alphanumeric. Actually, I think might just be letters string in certain parts of the system. Right. But you get to Z and then they go back to A, right. So you, you know, after 26 releases, you're going back to the beginning again.

Matt Kleve: That's how I learned what animals are. It's like, what is an ibex?

Helena McCabe: Animal after the hippopotamus.

Andrew Berry: A pangolin looking at the Drupal.org homepage. Like, I would certainly agree. I can't see any reason beyond other than like, a latest news type block somewhere on the page to call it a point release. To me, like, you know, major releases of Drupal come out every two years, right? And if that's what was getting updated, like, hey, the current version, you know, Drupal ten is, you know, has all these great features like that also feels like a step towards what you're talking about. And like, maybe we could get in that habit and then think about dropping the major version when, you know, as you said, like the two year state for now is actually here.

Matt Kleve: I think we are past the era of holding funerals for software versions.

Andrew Berry: Do you remember that for Mac OS nine? Aw man!

Matt Kleve: Drupal, Drupal did it. Andrew.

Morgan Eck: What?

Helena McCabe: Yeah, the thing in New Orleans.

Matt Kleve: Drupal con New Orleans, there was a funeral...

Ivan Stegic: I remember that.

Matt Kleve: ...for the end of life of Drupal six.

Helena McCabe: Yeah. Like the big parade.

Matt Kleve: And they had the the jazz band

Ivan Stegic: The giant parade, yeah. That's right.

Matt Kleve: Doing it New Orleans style.

Helena McCabe: There's a name for them and I can't remember what it is. But there's like a name for the New Orleans funeral parades.

Matt Kleve: I remember thinking, this is fun and we are very nerdy. I but I can't foresee us... there, there was no funeral for for Drupal 8 or 9, right? We just.

Morgan Eck: What about 7? There should have been for that one.

Matt Kleve: It's not dead yet. That's the problem. It's on life support.

Morgan Eck: It was supposed to be, but.

Matt Kleve: But we're trying. We're trying. There's a DNR sign, though, so we'll see how it goes. We're talking...

Ivan Stegic: Guys, Drupal seven is sticking around. It's not going away.

Helena McCabe: Yeah.

Morgan Eck: There's a lot on it.

Helena McCabe: Yeah, but every time someone asks and they're like, should we, you know, do you have like forever Drupal seven support? I'm like, please don't, don't, don't, don't do that, is always my advice.

Ivan Stegic: I will say that in my experience with Hero Devs, they have been really cordial and really kind about consulting with their clients that migrating is their first option. They are really not trying to sell Drupal seven never ending support as a license they are giving them, from my experience, I've seen them give counsel to say, you know, you really should consider not continuing this. And then like if there are some regulations or reasons why you have to stick around with it, then like maybe it's just going to take too much time to rebuild it and we need another five months after January of next year. You know, like that's a good reason.

Helena McCabe: So they're offering more of a harm reduction option than an alternative. 

Ivan Stegic: Ah, yeah. Because when you think about it, it's still a cost to the license every year. It's not $0. There's still like so at some point there's a calculus of like, okay, I could probably continue this for two years, but at that point I should have just rebuilt it.

Andrew Berry: You know, there's a one of the, you know, wonderful things about building your website on open source software is you have that choice, right? Like you as an organization can decide what to do and something that we have recommended to our clients who were both built on Drupal six and Drupal seven sites, is where we got some customers with the amount of custom code that they have built is so massive it dwarfs even what's in Drupal seven plus a, you know, a good set of contributed modules, right? Like the open source contributed part of their projects is actually in the minority. And, you know, what's the worst case? The worst case for an organization is that you hire maybe you hire additional developers to keep maintaining the parts that you got to bootstrap your project, but you're essentially using Drupal as a starting point. And then, you know, over time it's just going to get different and different. Like, hey, you need to hack core. Hack core, like you are responsible for the entire thing, right? And it's pretty rare that, you know, that's like a 1 in 100 recommendation. But you know, I think in some ways, you know, as much as we want to see clients and customers upgrade as well, we should celebrate the fact that as agencies and developers and members of the Drupal community, that people get to choose whether they want to come with us to modern Drupal and no one's forcing them into it.

Ivan Stegic: Did you just recommend Hacking Core? Is that what you said?

Andrew Berry: If you have the organizational and technical expertise to manage that.

Matt Kleve: I think you want to patch core though, right? You want to patch core?

[Laughter]

Andrew Berry: Well, yes. I mean, you know what I would never recommend someone starts a new project on Drupal ten and then just be like take Drupal 10.2.1 and never, you know, fork it and build your own website with it and never look back. Right? But there's a difference when you were at the end of like the Drupal six or Drupal seven life cycle, when there isn't a community behind it, right?

Ivan Stegic: I agree with that.

Matt Kleve: We're talking about the words we use when we're marketing and talking about Drupal. Just say Drupal. Maybe taking a page from Nancy Reagan. More coming up right after this. I don't know.

Andrew Berry: Boo!

Helena McCabe: Nancy Reagan, Reagan into Drupal. No, she's strong opinion.

Matt Kleve: She says, just say no.

Helena McCabe: Oh.

Morgan Eck: Oh, okay. [Intro music] Welcome back to the Lullabot podcast. We are here with Ivan Stegic, Helena McCabe and Andrew Berry talking about what is in a name? Do we need to have the numbering as a part of Drupal name in Drupal marketing? Welcome back.

Matt Kleve: So so many illusions a rose by any other name smell is sweet. Anyway, Ivan. So since we're talking about numbers and Drupal version numbers, you have to tell me about Ten7, because that's a couple of numbers that are important to you, right?

Ivan Stegic: Also, I just realized we were talking about Drupal 10, Ten7 and Drupal 7, Ten7, and that is completely by coincidence. So...

Matt Kleve: So that's not what, Ten7 the agency is about, right? Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: It's not. What?

Matt Kleve: Okay.

Ivan Stegic: Well no. Haha, no, no, no, we're we're a digital agency, just like Lullabot that builds, rescues and cares for Drupal sites and their teams. Our mission is to make things that matter. And our name comes from my birthday, and that's about it. That's where the name comes from. When we started the company, when I started the company I thought it would be cool to have numbers in the name. And I was talking to my wife about it, and I just blurted out Ten7 and she said, yes, that sounds cool. You should stick with that. And and I did, and that's it.

Helena McCabe: Now you're South African, though, so does that make your birthday July 10th or October 7th?

Morgan Eck: Ooh, good question.

Ivan Stegic: Good question. October 7th.

Matt Kleve: Okay.

Morgan Eck: Gotcha.

Ivan Stegic: Seven ten didn't sound quite as cool as Ten7, I thought.

Matt Kleve: I thought it was a police ten code. So.

Ivan Stegic: I, I only found that out later after I'd already named the company. I think it's in Australia. Right.

Matt Kleve: I, I'm familiar with them in America. So when I was a journalist, I would listen to police scanners because you got to know what's going on. Right. And so you kind of learn to listen and understand their codes and different departments do it differently. But it's it's pretty common to have ten codes where it's ten, seven is usually indicating that they're out of service or on lunch break or something. Oh yeah.

Ivan Stegic: Some people ask me if it's ten hours a day, seven days a week.

Matt Kleve: Ooh.

Ivan Stegic: And it's not that.

Matt Kleve: I'm glad to hear it, because that would be. That would be sad. Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: That would be horrible. Yeah.

Matt Kleve: That would be sad. So Ivan, you mentioned that we're going to be talking about this at some point in the future, right at Drupal con?

Ivan Stegic: Yes, we will be talking about this at the community summit.

Matt Kleve: We? Meaning who? I don't think it's anyone else on this call but you. Right. Are we everyone? How does it work? So sorry to interrupt.

Ivan Stegic: No, not at all. I'm actually not sure exactly how it works either. All I know is that there's a community summit. It's on Thursday, on the Thursday of Drupal Con. That's the I think it's the 9th of May, if I'm not mistaken. And I was asked if we would like to have a session that was called Just Say, Drupal, and I agreed to it. And that's about as much as I know right now. It's still a little early. Maybe I'm, you know, seven weeks away. How how far is it? Maybe less than that.

Matt Kleve: Little over a month.

Ivan Stegic: Six weeks?

Matt Kleve: Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: Yeah, yeah. Maybe not. And I guess there's a desire to talk about it as an idea, so I will be there and we'll see who else is there.

Matt Kleve: Very good.

Andrew Berry: That's exciting.

Helena McCabe: Yeah.

Morgan Eck: Yeah, it seems like the community is, you know, taking nicely to this based on the responses in your Drupal.org post. So.

Ivan Stegic: Yeah, I'm hoping there's, I'm hoping there's some good discussion we can have. It'll be nice to see people in person and have a healthy discussion about it.

Matt Kleve: So one of the arguments that I've seen is, okay, so if we're going to call it legacy Drupal, is that kind of negative? Should we not call it Legacy Drupal? What about Drupal Classic or other names that might be be a little bit different? Why? Why do we want to call Drupal seven legacy Drupal?

Ivan Stegic: Well, I have thoughts. Words matter. And I think that making the conscious shift of taking the word and and that we're referring to this object, not the number, and moving it from after the word to before the word is a conscious decision. So instead of saying Drupal seven, we say legacy Drupal, it disconnects the word Drupal ten and Drupal seven. Like there's this connection when you say those things. So that's one reason why I think Legacy Drupal is better than classic, Drupal classic. Also, I think the choice of word legacy means that it's something we shouldn't really be using. And calling it classic kind of gives you permission to continue using it, because everybody still uses classic cars. And there's Coke classic. Is there Coke classic?

Matt Kleve: Oh yeah.

Helena McCabe: Yeah. And Coke cold classic's known for being better than being better.

Ivan Stegic: It's known for being better, there you go! 

Morgan Eck: Ooo. 

Ivan Stegic: So let's not have that argument.

Matt Kleve: Can't beat the real thing. Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: But there is, there is like these, these nuances to using these words. And I think by combining the idea that you're moving the version from the end to the beginning, and also using a word that kind of doesn't really make you want to use that version, it encourages us not to use Drupal seven and to build things on Drupal seven to start. And so legacy Drupal and Drupal.

Morgan Eck: Okay, so you wouldn't propose modern Drupal for just Drupal. Got it.

Ivan Stegic: Just say Drupal.

Morgan Eck: Just say Drupal.

Ivan Stegic: Just say Drupal.org.

Matt Kleve: Is that your website? Is it there?

Ivan Stegic: I have the domain, yes. It's it's redirecting to the blog post, but it's easy to. I figured you might...

Andrew Berry: Drupal classic sounds like a product name. Right. Like I could imagine having Drupal classic eight. Drupal classic nine. Whereas if it's before, it's like it's a descriptor and it actually could change over time. Like if I refer to classic Drupal, depending on the context, that could mean Drupal seven. It could also mean Drupal 4.7, right? Like.

Matt Kleve: Well, legacy refers to them both too right.

Andrew Berry: And legacy does the same thing, right? Like what legacy is, you know, if Drupal continues to evolve and you get, you know, we get to Drupal 20, even though there may have been very straightforward upgrades between all those intervening versions, we might, you know, might say legacy Drupal is referring to Drupal ten.

Helena McCabe: Even legacy, I think, does that sound too good? Is that, oh, we're leaving a legacy by building it in this, like, do we?

Matt Kleve: I don't think so.

Helena McCabe: I think legacy maybe a little too positive.

Matt Kleve: I think when a, when a website person or anyone in the IT world talks about their legacy system. That's not a good thing. That's that's the one they want to get rid of, but they can't yet. Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: So if I was predicting stuff, I would say that 2 to 3 years from now, we're no longer using a version number to destroy to describe Drupal, we're just saying Drupal. And five years from now, legacy Drupal isn't a thing anymore. It's just Drupal. It's the latest. It's the head of the main branch. That's all we really care about. We do continuous releases every six months. Maybe we have some cool names for them in the marketing. Maybe. And Drupal seven is a small part of the world. Maybe not even a thing.

Helena McCabe: Let's get you to bed, Drupal seven.

Matt Kleve: So never ending might actually end.

Morgan Eck: We can have that [muffled]. Okay.

Ivan Stegic: I think it's I think it's going to be around for a while, but not forever.

Helena McCabe: There will yeah. I mean, because there's always going to be situations where people are going to do things against advice, either because they have to or because they're, you know, very stubbornly attached to it, because people don't love change. And like, we have to accept that.

Matt Kleve: It also might not be in the budget. Like, that's not a that's not.

Helena McCabe: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: That's not an easy hurdle. I mean, I know that 12 or so years ago, Drupal in the nonprofit space was a big deal because you could think and you think of those folks, and not all nonprofits mean no revenue, but they're redirecting that revenue to their mission. And that's kind of their goal, not their software, because that's not what they do. So there's probably some Drupal seven in that type of world that needs to exist because their mission needs to continue. And the internet's important. But they got they got to do something at some point, I don't know. It's a challenge.

Andrew Berry: I think a lot of these organizations like the longer like, let's imagine you built your site with Drupal 7 in 2012, 2013, right? It used to be that we had major changes on the web, kind of one after the other for a period of time, whether it was new web browsers like you think back in the old like Netscape Internet Explorer days. And it was like, hey, we've got CSS now, right? This lets them do vastly different things on the web or HTML5 video.

Matt Kleve: I was thinking about HTML5 around the time of Drupal con Denver when everybody had HTML HTML5 stickers on their laptop. Right? Right. Because it's the coolest.

Andrew Berry: You know, mobile design, responsive design, all of that happening. And we might be on the cusp of a big shift with generative AI. But, you know, no one knows for sure, right? But I do think the combination of changes in how people access websites and accessibility requirements, especially for, you know, the nonprofit and education space, eventually you get to a point where you have to do a redesign, right? And usually when you get to that point, if you're doing a major rearchitecting of your content, you know, maybe you're updating your content to make your mission and you are rewriting three quarters of your website anyways. Why would you do that in your Drupal seven site? Right? You know, there comes a point when all of a sudden the technology upgrade is the cheaper part of what you're doing and the, the, the resources you're putting in are around design and content. And I think when that happens, even those nonprofits will, you know, get to, you know off of classic Drupal or Drupal seven or whatever we want?

Matt Kleve: Legacy legacy legacy.

Ivan Stegic: Legacy Drupal.

Matt Kleve: It's not Drupal classic.

Helena McCabe: I'll make it cool. Drupal Busted.

Morgan Eck: Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: Drupal Busted.

Helena McCabe: Drupal Busted. Then no one would use it!

Ivan Stegic: Nobody would use that.

Matt Kleve: Old broken Drupal.

Helena McCabe: New hotness. Old and busted.

Morgan Eck: Great

Ivan Stegic: Drupal Hotness. Now that's what the name should be. Drupal New Hotness. Sorry.

Helena McCabe: Drupal New hotness. Drupal Old and Busted.

Andrew Berry: So, speaking of the new hotness, if we're not using version numbers to teach people that there's new things to be looking for in Drupal or in their website. How should we be doing that?

Ivan Stegic: Don't we already do that with existing clients, like when we do an upgrade?

Andrew Berry: Yeah.

Ivan Stegic: We tell our clients, hey, this is the newest stuff that that you're going to get. Look at this upgrade to Drupal to Ckeditor five that we were forced to do. But that look how much better it makes, it makes it look and look how much better this theme is that, that we're using. Like, aren't we already doing that?

Helena McCabe: For people who are working with an agency and having that luxury? Yes. They have like us, as a tour guide, but what about people who are using Drupal independently?

Ivan Stegic: Your question is a valid one. What about the freelancers or the users that don't have agency support? How do we communicate that to them? That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. I think the freelancer, if he if he or she is caring about the site and knows that there is an upgrade that needs to happen, hopefully they're communicating that to the to the client. But it still doesn't solve the problem of how do we actually from, a in a beautiful, considerate, empathetic way on the user admin side, how do we tell those new administrators that we've added something new? That we've released something that it was so transparent they didn't even know that it happened? And by the way, here's some here's some training information. Here's some here's here's a time frame that you get to use the new hotness, to use the new release, that we don't have a good solution to communicating the newest changes to our users and that we that I don't have an answer how to do that, that that's something we need to think about.

Matt Kleve: We're kind of bringing up the same question that has been kicked around Drupal for many years, which is, you know, who is who is Drupal targeting? Is Drupal targeting the people at the agencies building the websites? Is people, is Drupal targeting the hobbyist that wants to build a website for their cat? Is Drupal targeting, you know, the the big companies that that need a framework? And they all kind of need separate things. So software will continue to have a version, and each version will have, you know, new new releases and new editions. So that gets that gets communicated through a changelog by somebody who sees that but we have to figure out who we're marketing to and market to them. And they all kind of need slightly different things.

Morgan Eck: Yeah, that's where Drupal is kind of unique. You know, it's it's not quite so plug and play like you're like Wix or Squarespace, but you could if you wanted to. And you know, those don't handle the big government agencies like Drupal does. So it's it's kind of in its own little world.

Matt Kleve: If Drupal advertised on a podcast of, hey, come get your Drupal website. So many people would be confused.

Morgan Eck: Right.

Matt Kleve: Right? That was like, you know, come to Squarespace and get your website like on every other podcast you're listening to. So.

Andrew Berry: On the flip side, like, we've got the Announcements module now in core, which is like kind of trying to like like you look at the content in there and it's literally like Drupal 10.2 just came out like that's what's in the feed right now. And, you know, I don't think it'll show up to everyone by default, but.

Matt Kleve: I should hope not, right?

Andrew Berry: For someone building a site. Well, no, no, I mean, in terms of people who are logged in as content editors.

Matt Kleve: Even then, like, I mean.

Helena McCabe: Like an editor whose logged in.

Matt Kleve: A logged in user. Yeah. An editor would be a different like role. So yeah, sorry I distracted.

Andrew Berry: But no, like it's a it's an interesting question of like I feel like there's goals around like the whole a lot of the point of that is like letting people know what the Drupal Association is up to, which maybe speaks to, I'll say, purely non-technical site owners, but who are still, you know, editing content and so on. But then there's, you know, currently mixing in with that developer kind of focused releases like, hey, Drupal 10.2 is out. Like when we get back to like the idea of, like, how do we communicate these sorts of things? Like, maybe inside announcements, but for different roles is something that would be helpful, like a way to say like, hey, this is, you know, we're going to get the Drupal.org feed and we're only going to give those to people who are like site administrators who can do things like see the site overview report, and then we're going to have the Ten7 feed for, you know, this is the update from us for our clients and what we've what, you know, what we've seen is useful. Or if you're, you know, a government or an agent, you know, a university or some large organization like, hey, here's the updates on the features we've rolled out.

Helena McCabe: Yeah!

Matt Kleve: Ivan, you keep bringing up the idea of the update, update to CKeditor module that happened with the recent version of Drupal. And all of the great things that came with that. To my perspective, that was the great thorn in the side of that Drupal upgrade, because we had a website that had a lot of CKeditor plugins, and those did not migrate gracefully. That that required a decent amount of development. So...

Ivan Stegic: Was that Drupal core?

Matt Kleve: It was. Well, I mean, it was built on top of Drupal core. Yes. The old version of CKeditor plugins looked very different than the new version of CKeditor plugins.

Ivan Stegic: That is a problem.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, and I think we're going to come across those things along the way. I mean.

Ivan Stegic: I agree.

Matt Kleve: Especially when you rely on other software, as Drupal is doing pretty well these days and more than they ever did before.

Ivan Stegic: I would guess it was I would guess it was an epic and not a project like you described earlier, right?

Matt Kleve: Yeah. Well, that was that was probably most of the epic was crap, there's all these CKeditor plugins that do really great things for our editors, but we got to figure out how we can do that. So we, we I think we upgraded to the version of Drupal, the newer version of Drupal, but we did not upgrade the CK we were able to use the old CK editor module, in the meantime, until we made it work.

Ivan Stegic: I'm by no means saying we are there yet, we're almost there and it's going to take time to relabel and rename. And for us as a community to come to an agreement that, yeah, this actually makes sense. We don't need to to do that, to to put a version in our marketing anymore. I think we can do it though. Like, we we have a vastly empathetic, smart, inclusive, and progressive community that if we decide to do this, we can do it.

Helena McCabe: So you think we're like, at the next we're at like the cusp of the next phase of, like Drupal evolution as a creature.

Ivan Stegic: I think so.

Matt Kleve: What do we need to do it in your eyes? What actually needs to happen for this to actually happen? Is this something that people listening to this podcast can just start doing and it becomes a thing? Do you need buy in at the Drupal Association level? What needs to happen?

Ivan Stegic: I think a number of things need to happen. I think people like me and people who are selling Drupal can just not use the version number. Just just say Drupal. Just don't worry about the version number. Talk to clients in plain speak and just refer to it in that way. I think there does need to be a groundswell of community advocates and community agreement that like, yes, a number of people in the community are saying this is a good idea. We should we should start doing this and then actually start doing it. But I also think it needs to come from the top, because I think if there isn't, if there isn't direction and vision and leadership from the very top, then it's not going to it's going to be hard to get everyone to actually adopt this. So if Dries says, yeah, we're just going to keep talking about it as Drupal, like that would be a really big thing if the Drupal Association said, yeah, we believe in what Dries is saying. Or we also think that this should be that we don't really need to be using the version in our names anymore when we talk about Drupal. Like that would be a big thing. I think all of those things need to happen together. But I but it has to be carefully done. It has to be empathetic, and it has to be clear about the idea that this is how we talk about it as a community. And we're and we also have to make sure we say that this is not the end of doing versioning in the code that we're very clear about saying this is how we talk about it as a community. This doesn't change the release process. It doesn't change the semantic versioning we have. It doesn't change the six month release schedule that we have. We're going to continue to embrace what a major version is, what a minor version is, what a patch version is, and that those two messages are concurrent and clear. And I think if we can do that as a community, I think it's going to take some time. But I think then that's the next thing like probably there's a Drupal 11. Maybe not.

Helena McCabe: It's ambitious because slowly, like, like a deliberate culture shift is that's a big bite to take.

Ivan Stegic: It's a it's a paradigm shift. Like it's a big thing.

Morgan Eck: Will we have to change how we contribute in the community as well, in the sense of making sure that those big updates are not, you know, a replay of Drupal seven where it then became like a rebuild entirely. You know, we have to be a little bit more intentional with how we're contributing or anything like that.

Ivan Stegic: I think that's a question for someone who's more technical than I am. I think that maybe one of the things that that would cause us to be more intentional would be a major underlying technology change. And I think, I don't think we're planning on rewriting it on a different PHP framework. We're not. Right? No, but...

Morgan Eck: Hopefully not.

Helena McCabe: We have like a.

Ivan Stegic: So that would be a big thing. Like if we were going to do something major like that, then we'd have to be real careful about how we talk about it and, and and in the contributions and so on. But it feels like Drupal stability has become so good and so high that clients are relying on it, and we're relying on it, and it just feels like this is the next step.

Andrew Berry: I think it would have to be something like decoupling the entire admin frontend or ditching rendering the site in twig on the front end. Right? Like that's the sort of thing that I, I mean, but like that's the sort of like technological change that would be so big that it would matter. You know and even then you would probably have a period of time where you would support both. So, like, it wouldn't be so much the, like Drupal 7 to 8 where your code is not easily like you can't sort of transition slowly. Right.

Morgan Eck: Yeah.

Andrew Berry: But you know, even something like, you know, the changes on the web with generative AI, I don't see that causing us to, like, break compatibility on all our Drupal sites to somehow support that.

Helena McCabe: Yeah. I mean, I think we have an obligation to the community, like to all the adopters and companies who have invested heavily in migrating from Drupal 7 to 8, like, not to surprise them with another thing like this. Like, we should be doing everything we can do as a community to not do that again.

Morgan Eck: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Is there a point when we can break it again?

Helena McCabe: I hope not, but I mean, you know, we shouldn't do it flippantly, like we should only do it if truly there is enough reward at the other end to actually be worth this major expenditure for all of these organizations. You know.

Andrew Berry: I think the most successful software has had one or more major compatibility breaks in its history. And the trick is to make sure they're somewhere between 10 and 20 years apart so that you're not feeling them too frequently. Right. Like, whether it's windows going from the classical architecture running on top of DOS to in many cases, what was a pretty hard break going to, you know, the windows NT architecture or PHP having major changes to the object oriented class based structure from was it 3 to 4 or 4 to 5? To, you know, processors changing from 32 to 64 bit code. Like, I don't think anyone can predict technology enough to say we're never going to change it again. I think, you know, as you said, though, it's about the value on the other side of it and being really tactical about it. I mean, you look at Drupal seven like that was, you know, came out, I'll say, 12 years or so after the original version of Drupal. Right. Like, you know, and then you go to Drupal eight, like, you know, Drupal. That code base had been around with some major changes, but not, you know, is really like the biggest single change was 7 to 8. And if we can get 20 years out of this code base without having to do major changes, like that's really good. And I think, you know, that's something the community could be really proud of if we achieve it.

Helena McCabe: Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Ivan, is this how important is this idea? Is this just a bike shed issue that somebody can have an easy opinion on? And we can disagree and discuss and just talk this to death. But really, we should be putting our efforts into making Drupal better?

Ivan Stegic: I think I think this is an important issue. I think it's it's a it's an important enough issue that we are not eeping up with the latest way that our competitors are talking about their products. And we have missed the boat on this. If you look at our competitors and you look at the the organizations that run the CMS, that isn't Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, em, all of that. None of them are using version numbers, and they're all talking about their product and their service. And we're not doing that. And it's because we had this giant schism and upgrade from Drupal seven. And I think it's time we got back to just talking about Drupal. And I don't think it's a bike shed moment, I don't. I think this is, I think we have to ask ourselves, are we providing clarity or confusion to our users? And if we are providing more confusion than we are providing clarity, then we're not doing our job. Is going and saying just Drupal clarifying or confusing? I would argue it's clarifying, and if we can answer that, then that might be a good way to decide how to continue to move forward.

Matt Kleve: Very good. Helena, do you have any final thoughts as we kind of point toward wrapping things up?

Helena McCabe: I think I like the optimistic view of the future, where we could get to a point where we don't need that version number. I think right now, not having it would be confusing, but I love being able to look forward and say one day it will be clear without it.

Matt Kleve: What needs to happen for for us to breach that barrier for you.

Helena McCabe: I think we need to get there where, you know, we're not still so far apart on versions with so many people still using Drupal seven, with people still kind of crafting around on eight and nine, we need to be there. But once we're there, I, you know, I that's a very optimistic thing to look forward to that I would really love to see happen in the future.

Matt Kleve: Do people call you who are on Drupal nine?

Helena McCabe: Yeah, all the time.

Matt Kleve: Andrew, do you have any final thoughts? Any?

Andrew Berry: Yeah. I to maybe answer the question of like, what do we need to get there. I do think it's probably a little sooner than we could, but I think the when Drupal.org essentially drops all support for Drupal seven, right, like you can't download it easily, you know, unless you're going to git and checking it out, you know, the contributed projects have been marked as you know, not supported anymore, all of that. I do think that is kind of a good inflection point to say, like, how should we be representing Drupal? Because until we get to that point, Drupal.org still needs to serve both audiences somehow. And if you I don't think we have anything better than a version number at this point to to do that. So I guess it's what, January 2025 that that happens? So maybe that's something that can happen in Q1 of 2025. And I do, you know, I think just as like we try not to break compatibility and software, maybe this is a change that we try not to break compatibility in people. And we sort of, you know, we have step one of not talking about Drupal seven. We have step two about not talking about minors, you know, the dot releases and then step three about not talking about majors. And maybe that's a way that we can like, gradually get into this without it having to feel, you know, jarring at one point.

Ivan Stegic: I love that iterative approach, Andrew. I think that's a really good way of implementing it.

Helena McCabe: Yeah, because culture changes are hard. Like shift is hard. So yeah, having like little steps toward it. And, you know, maybe this is a good time to be talking about it before it's time to do it so that we can start easing in to the idea.

Andrew Berry: Or we go the other way around and we only talk about Drupal in full version numbers, and we must prefix every conversation with a full reading of Semver.org to make sure everyone understands exactly what we're talking about.

Ivan Stegic: I would say no to that Andrew. No.

[Laughter]

Andrew Berry: Oh, darn.

Ivan Stegic: No. I will note that that legacy.drupal.org redirects to drupal.org and it doesn't have to.

Matt Kleve: Legacy.drupal.org. Where do you, where do you think it should go?

Ivan Stegic: Maybe some information about Drupal seven. Maybe that's a first step at separating the discussion and separating the the documentation, something we haven't talked about at all, and maybe this will come up at the community summit is, what does this do to documentation? Like, you talk about Drupal then that's the latest version of Drupal, right. Well or is there documentation out there that is for version nine that actually applies to applies to version ten and doesn't need to be updated. Does that stuff is that the latest. Do we how do we tag it. Like there's a so there's another can of opportunity to talk about there as well.

Helena McCabe: Quick, someone get the content strategists.

Andrew Berry: I'll point out that the legacy subdomain is not like I don't think it's an intentional redirect that's been set up. 

Ivan Stegic: No.

Andrew Berry: I think it's like anything like, you know, asdf.drupal.org.

Ivan Stegic: Come on, Andrew. Come on. Come on.

Andrew Berry: I know, I know, but think of how much fun now you could have putting subdomains out in links that are just things you came up with. They're probably going to have to turn off the wildcard redirect now.

Ivan Stegic: Just-say-drupal.drupal.org just.

Matt Kleve: Other-software-name-is-terrible.drupal.org. Anyway. Ivan, any final thoughts for you that.

Ivan Stegic: No, I'm just so grateful and appreciative that you would have me on the podcast. I had a ton of fun talking about it. I I look forward to going to Drupal Con and seeing you all there. Maybe seeing you at the community summit. I'm glad that people have had a positive reaction to my post, and I hope that we can continue talking about this. I think there's a value to it. I don't think it's a bikeshedding moment like we talked about earlier. Yeah. And. Yeah, look forward to having these conversations in in person soon.

Matt Kleve: Very good. Let's all get together in Portland. Is that where we're going? Portland.

Helena McCabe: Yeah!

Ivan Stegic: Why not? Yeah.

Matt Kleve: Yeah, that'll be fun. Morgan!

Morgan Eck: So excited.

Matt Kleve: Just say Drupal.

Morgan Eck: Just say Drupal. Come on.

Matt Kleve: Thanks, everyone.

Helena McCabe: Yeah, thanks.

Ivan Stegic: Thank you.

Ivan Stegic: Was that Nancy Reagan? Was that, I didn't know that. No, seriously, I grew up in South Africa. There's, like, no way I could have really known that.

Helena McCabe: It's okay. I grew up in the US, and I didn't know that either.

Morgan Eck: Same.