Drupal—an open source CMS—has grown from a small student hobby project to an enterprise-grade digital experience platform running ~3% of the Internet. This talk will explore the many lessons learned (most of them the hard way ;)) in navigating an international open source developer community through various scalability challenges. Topics covered will include: * Contributor On-Boarding: Some clever and participatory ways to help new folks bootstrap quickly and feel included * Community Health: How to account for—and encourage—contributors stepping away? How to develop new leadership to take their place? * Project Sustainability: How to incentivize commercial sponsorship of open source contributions without selling your soul * Governance: What pain points emerge as you scale, what strategies help solve them, and how to “right size” your solutions at the right time? * When Sh*t Hits The Fan: How do you handle a project fork? What if you need to remove a high profile contributor? Been there, done that; let my trauma be your guide. ;) * Community Bootstrapping: What if you’re *not* a project with 100K+ contributors and 2M+ users? How do you build your first 100 / 1,000 / 100K?

1. Lessons Learned From
Scaling An Open Source
Community By 10,000%
Angie “@webchick” Byron
Director of Community @ Aiven
FOSSY 2023
Non-FOSS Alert: Google Slides, macOS

2. - Student
- Mentor
- Org Admin
- Core Committer
- Product Manager
- Chief Cat Herder
- Director of Community
- “The trusted open
source data platform
for everyone” :-)

3. The free, open source content
management system that’s
secure, performant, heavily
customizable, future-ready, and
powered by community.
About Drupal

4. 22 years of open
source history in 22
minutes… let’s go!
😎

5. The year is 2001…

6. This stuff was new and cool

7. Drupal 1.0 was released!

8. Flash-forward to 2023…

9. Millions
of websites
118k
Active Contributors
Developers
46K+
1.4M
Users on Drupal.org 12%
Market Share
Growth in Q1 ‘18
51%
Growth
Year over year

11. …but how?

12. Drupal’s Pillars Of
Community
Awesomeness™

13. Drupal’s Pillars Of Community
Awesomeness™
● Make Diversity and Inclusion a Foundational Principle
● Craft A Delightful Contributor Onboarding Experience
● Take Community Ownership to Extremes
● Invest in Thoughtful Project Governance to Reduce Burnout
● Never Miss A Chance To Celebrate Your Community
● Be Robin Hood: Funnel Corporate $ Into Project Sustainability
● Have a Plan for When Sh*t Hits The Fan

14. Make Diversity and Inclusion a
Foundational Principle

15. Step 0: Provide A Code of Conduct (that’s enforced)
https://www.drupal.org/dcoc /
https://www.drupal.org/community/blog/introducing-the-updated-drupal-community-code-of-conduct

16. Value ALL contributions!
accessibility
mentorship
event planning
support
documentation
https://www.drupal.org/contribute
translation
usability and
design

17. Provide dedicated spaces for underrepresented
voices to support one another and be heard

18. Provide a home for DEI-interested folks to
collaborate and educate
https://www.drupaldiversity.com/

19. Ensure underrepresented folks are in positions
empowered to affect real change
Technical
Leadership
(Maintainer,
Comitter)
Governance
Leadership
(Working Group
Member, Initiative
Coordinator)
Non-Profit
Leadership
(Board Member,
Association Staff)

20. Ensure EVERYONE can use your stuff!
https://www.drupal.org/about/features/accessibility

21. Craft A Delightful Contributor
Onboarding Experience

22. Your goal: Get new folks over the “suck”
threshold ASAP :)
https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/getting_users_p.html

23. Mentors / First-Time Contributor Workshop

24. Tooling: Get people going in a couple of clicks.
https://github.com/shaal/DrupalPod / https://www.gitpod.io/

25. Facilitate Peer-to-Peer Learning

26. Take Community Ownership to
Extremes

28. Slap an edit / create button on *everything*

29. …including the ability to flag a problem. ;)

30. Provide ways for the *community* to build
community
https://www.drupal.org/community/events
https://groups.drupal.org/

31. Invest in Thoughtful Project
Governance to Reduce Burnout

32. Determine the Minimum Viable Trust™ needed,
then share responsibility as much as possible.
Less Trust
Required
More Trust
Required
Documentation Maintain themes
Maintaining Core
Handling Security
Issues
Code reviews
Mentoring Handling Money
Accessibility
reviews
Usability
reviews
Maintain modules
Case Studies
User Support
Translations
Infrastructure
Mainteinance
Organizing
camps/events
Community
moderator
Organizing meetups
Propose code
changes
Legal Stuff

33. ● $$$
● Legal
● Sponsorship
● Brand /
Marketing
● Community
● Development
Initiatives
● Events
● Subsystems
● Popular
projects
“Right-size” governance for level of trust
needed
Less Trust
Required
More Trust
Required
Individual
Contributors
Formal
Working
Groups
Informal
Teams
Formal
Governing
Bodies
● Reviews
● Patches
● Docs
● Support
● Modules
● Themes
● Translations
● Core
● Technical
● Security

34. ● ~15 Committers
● Future features
distributed within
Drupal core
● “Use at your own
risk”
● ~15 Committers
● Required “Gates,”
e.g. automated
testing
● Predictable
release cycle
Leave ample room for innovation.
Drupal Core
Drupal Contrib
● 50K+ modules /
themes
● 30K+ committers
● “Use at your own
risk”
“Golden” Contrib
● ~50 Top
community-vetted
projects
● ~100 committers
● Usually higher-quality:
release management,
coding standards, etc.
Experimental
Core Modules

35. Teams, with well-scoped roles, over individuals.
Drupal
(BDFL)
Drupal 5 Drupal 6
Drupal 7 Drupal 8
Product Managers
Backend Framework Managers
Frontend Framework Managers
Release Managers
https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal/-/blob/11.x/core/MAINTAINERS.txt
https://www.drupal.org/governance
Core JS Committer Team
Facilitators

36. Renewable Term
Limits
(Graceful
Retirement)
“Provisional”
Maintainers
(Role Shadowing)
Plan for the future as well
Emeritus
Recognition
(Remembering
Those Who Got Us
Here)

37. Never Miss A Chance To
Celebrate Your Community

38. Community Spotlight
https://www.drupal.org/forum/general/community-spotlight

39. Live Core Commit

40. Leaderboards?

41. Be Robin Hood: Funnel
Corporate $ Into Project
Sustainability

42. Create opportunities for a Commercial
Ecosystem around your project.
- Professional Services
- Hosting
- Enterprise Support
- Migrations
- Custom Development
- Formal Training /
Certification
- Architecture Reviews
- Consulting

43. Incentivize giving back.
https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/a-guide-to-issue-credits-and-the-drupal.org-marketplace

44. Incentivize giving back.

45. The result? The *majority* of Drupal
contributions are sponsored.

46. Next: GitLab Feature?
https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/8399

47. Have a Plan for when Sh*t Hits
The Fan

49. 4. Create
spaces for
healing
Community Crisis Management
1. Get folks to
as rich a
medium as
possible
2. Ensure all
sides are
heard (via
neutral third
party if
possible)
3. Identify
underlying
problems,
publicly
acknowledge
and address
them

50. Recap: Drupal’s Pillars Of Community
Awesomeness™
● Make Diversity and Inclusion a Foundational Principle
● Craft A Delightful Contributor Onboarding Experience
● Take Community Ownership to Extremes
● Invest in Thoughtful Project Governance to Reduce Burnout
● Never Miss A Chance To Celebrate Your Community
● Be Robin Hood: Funnel Corporate $ Into Project Sustainability
● Have a Plan for When Sh*t Hits The Fan

51. Ok, but… what if I’m
just starting out?

52. 1. Code of Conduct — https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
2. Community Metrics — https://chaoss.community/
3. Project Governance — https://github.com/cncf/project-template
4. Places To Talk — https://www.discourse.org/ / https://discord.com/
5. Places to Meet — http://meetup.com/ / https://www.bevy.com/
6. Proactive Engagement: Really get to know your initial community
members, and help them however you can.
Community Starter Kit™

53. https://www.meetup.com/pro/open-source-data-infrastructure-community/

54. Thank you! :D
Slides @ https://aiven.io/angie
OSDI
Meetups @