We just released Drupal 8.0.0! Today really marks the beginning of a new era for Drupal. Over the course of almost five years, we've brought the work of more than 3,000 contributors together to make something that is more flexible, more innovative, more easy to use, and more scalable.

Drupal 8 has been a big transformation for our community. This particular reboot has taken one-third of Drupal's lifespan to complete. In the process we've learned that reinvention doesn't come easily or quickly. There are huge market forces happening around us, and we can't exactly look away. Mobile is moving our society to near-universal, global internet access. Most companies have begun to transform themselves digitally, leaving established business models and old business processes in the dust. Digital experience builders are turning to platforms that give them greater flexibility, better usability, better integrations, and faster innovation. The pace of change in the digital world has become dizzying. If we were to ignore these market forces, Drupal would be caught flat-footed and quickly become irrelevant.

But we didn't. I'm proud to see that we've responded to these market forces with Drupal 8, and delivered a robust, solid product that can be used to build next-generation websites, web applications and digital experiences. We've implemented a more modern development framework, reimagined the usability and authoring experience, and made technical improvements that will help us build for the multilingual, mobile and highly personalized experiences of the future. From how we model content and get content in and out the system, to how we build and assemble experiences on various devices, to how we scale that to millions and millions of pageviews -- it all got much better with Drupal 8.

I'm personally incredibly proud of this release. Drupal 8 is the result of years of hard work and innovation by thousands of people, with lots of attention to detail at every level. Congratulations to everyone who stepped up to contribute; this was only possible thanks to your persistence and tireless hard work. It took a lot of learning, our best thinking and our best people to create Drupal 8, and I'm very, very proud of what we have accomplished together.

For 15 years, I have believed that Open Source offers significant advantages to proprietary solutions through superior innovation. Today, I believe that more than ever. Drupal 8 is another key milestone in helping us win and doing what is best for an open web. Of course, our job is not done but now is the time to have fun and celebrate this monumental milestone. Tonight, we'll be hosting more than 200 parties around the world! (It's also my 37th birthday today and the release of Drupal 8 along with all those parties is pretty much the best present ever!)

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