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I am a big fan of Zen stories. Those are little labyrinths of concealed wisdom. Once you enter the maze, you should find the way out. There is a way, and there is no way. You are trapped and free as well. It all depends on how you perceive things.
Let me quote a Zen story. Kindly excuse me if you have already heard this one. A young man visited a Zen master who lived in the middle of a chaotic city. The man wanted to know whether he would be happy if he relocated there as already, the master lived there.
The master asked: “How is your current place like?”
“It is terrible. Everyone is mean. I hate being there, and I need change,”
answered the seeker.
“It will be terrible here. Everyone would be mean. You would hate being here, and you won’t experience any change,”
said the master.
A few hours went by. Another young man came to the master with the same question, and the master raised the same query.
“It is good. Wonderful. I have nothing to complain about. Everybody is so friendly and supportive. I just need a change,”
the man answered.
“It will be good here. Wonderful. You will have nothing to complain about. Everybody would be friendly and supportive. But you won’t experience any change,”
the master cautioned.
You will find what you seek. But if you desire something that you already have, you won’t even realize you have reaped it anew. If you are privileged, you won’t appreciate how far the privilege has taken you. It might blind you from the paths tread by the underprivileged too. To develop a balanced view is the Zen.
I am very much elated as the community is with the news that Drupal is now a Digital Public Good. But in hindsight, wasn’t Drupal a digital public good from its initiation? Wasn’t Drupal inherently a public good? What is there in some agency specifically designating Drupal as a digital public good?
The answers might be in the specifics. Yes, governments were using Drupal to serve their people better. Yes, Drupal was helping achieve the 17 SDGs put forward by the United Nations. Yes, Drupal is non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
But with all that, Drupal grows because of commercial interest, and it serves the hunger for profits of the businesses and agencies that use it. It is no crime, as with every other public good, like rail, roads, waterways, playgrounds, public education system, etc. Those will not have been this good this far without enough commercial interest.
Let me quote from a press release cum article put out by Zyxware Technologies.
“This recognition is a significant milestone for Drupal and the Drupal Community. Being listed as a DPG will make it easier for companies to justify using Drupal and potentially direct funding for specific feature sets. It is a testament to the community’s hard work and dedication to creating software that adheres to the highest standards and helps achieve the UN’s SDGs.”
Let me move toward other news and events.
John Doyle, founder and president of Digital Polygon, speaks to Alethia Braganza about Owning It, Giving Back, and Building It Better. In this interview, he says that he genuinely believes that Drupal has become this successful because of the community members that drive it forward and advocate for its use.
Our second blog post on the ‘build in public’ initiative discusses How We Built a Newsletter System on Drupal with Mailchimp Integration. Emily Mathew, the lead developer of TDT, writes about the workflow.
Drupal Decoupled Days, scheduled for August 16-17 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has released a call for papers. The last date to submit a session proposal is May 05, 2023. DrupalJam 2023, set to take place on June 01 at DeFabrique in Utrecht, Netherlands, has announced its sponsor packages. DrupalSouth released the schedule and agenda for the 2023 conference set for May 17 to 19 in Wellington, New Zealand. MidCamp, scheduled for April 26 to 29 in Chicago, Illinois, is still seeking more sponsors, according to their newsletter. MidCamp attendees can also attend an evening match of Baseball at Wrigley Stadium. You could also purchase regular tickets to the camp until April 21. Drupal Developer Days happening in Vienna, Austria, from July 19 to 22, have sold out early bird tickets quickly; but regular tickets are still available. TDT is a media partner for DrupalCamp Finland, scheduled for April 28.
Drupal Association has announced the onboarding of Fran Garcia-Linares. Stichting Drupal Nederland, or the Dutch Drupal Foundation, has onboarded three new members to its director board.
Those joining this year’s DrupalCon Pittsburgh can avail of accommodation facilities at a discounted rate if they choose from hotels within the official hotel block. Also, check out 7 best places to visit while you are at Pittsburgh for DrupalCon North America. Meanwhile, the deadline to submit sessions for DrupalCon Lille is April 24.
NERD Summit has published session videos of the 2023 camp on its official YouTube channel.
Two international PHP conferences are coming. The first is from May 22 to 26 in Berlin, and the second is from October 23 to 27 in Munich. You may submit session proposals for the October event.
Third and Grove has published a blog post explaining the new features and improvements coming to Drupal 10.1 and beyond. Franz Glauber Vanderlinde has written a blog post in Evolving Web‘s portal explaining Claro, Drupal’s default admin user interface. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has announced an upgrade of its web platform to Drupal 10 in 18 months. Tomato Elephant Studio (TES) will conduct a Drupal training session on April 24, 2023. The 3-hour event will focus on Building Data Reports in Drupal. Srijan, recently acquired by Material+, has published a blog post about the key factors to improve SEO and performance for a Drupal Website. TDT published a listicle on why Drupal is the best for travel agency websites. Neeraj Kumar, founder and CEO of Valuebound published a blog post on opensource.com about Drupal Modules to Improve Accessibility.
Acquia has opened a new partnership with KPMG to advance DXP roll-out across industries. Acquia certifications in Japan have crossed the 200 mark. Acquia employees can apply to the headless developer advisory board.
There was a critical security alert on the protected pages module.
The number of stories selected from the past week is more extensive than we used to pack. Some of the stories linked in the written part might not repeat in the list beneath. Before winding up this newsletter issue, let me apologize for postponing the publication for almost a day. We are bound to rectify this procedural lapse linked to human error. We will return the following Monday with a new issue of Editor’s Pick.
Sincerely,
Sebin A. Jacob
Editor-in-chief, TheDropTimes
