Feature

Recently I found myself musing about two Drupal-related posts from back in 2007 that projected very different futures for the software project.

The first was by Jeff Robbins of Lullabot: “How Drupal Will Save the World.”

Robbins took as his reference case a community in Nigeria facing exploitation by a multinational oil company. Drupal, he suggested, could empower the community and “give a voice to those who might not otherwise be heard,” driving an internet that was “a powerful force for social change.” To achieve that vision, Robbins laid out technical challenges, centered on making the software easier to learn and use.[1]

A few months after Robbins’ post, Drupal contributor Fergus Geraghty initiated a Drupal.org discussion, “7 million reasons to consider democratising Drupal?” Drupal project lead Dries Buytaert had recently co-founded the company Acquia, and Buytaert’s start-up had just announced its first round of $7 million in venture capital financing. Geraghty expressed concern that the new commercial demands of Acquia could come to shape the overall direction of Drupal, pushing the project in the direction of profit maximization. Against this future, Geraghty proposed the creation of a co-operative to serve as the owner of the Drupal project.[2]

Seven years later, which of these futures are we living? Is Drupal empowering the marginalized and saving the world?

Or is it serving “the man”?

Software Freedom and Social Change

The idea that Drupal and free software could have a role in revolutionizing society might not be as off-the-wall as it sounds.

In Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, the 19th century anarchist Peter Kropotkin countered the social Darwinist “survival of the fittest” thesis by arguing that cooperation was a driving force of evolution and a basis for free human societies.[3]