Crowdfunding Drupal Education
Drupal is a Free Open Source Software project and its usage statistics shows over 1 million reported installations. While the software is "free" it still costs money and time to maintain and improve both the software and the infrastructure that comprises the Drupal project. Here is a sample of ways that money is being provided:
- The Drupal Association has community cultivation grants as well as a Drupal 8 Acceleration grant.
- Many highly used contributed modules are sponsored by companies.
- Earl Miles created a chipin to gather funding to get Views into Drupal Core.
- Drupal Camps and Drupal Cons are subsidised by corporate and individual sponsors.
- Companies allow their employees to spend a certain amount of their paid time working on Drupal-related projects
So, it's clear that there is a certain level of support that the Drupal community provides. However, if you look closely you will see that it is not widely spread. A lot of money comes from a small number of "usual suspects." And it's not just the supply of money that comes from a small base. The number of contributors to Drupal 8 is approximately 2500, and that is a number that people are bragging about. But compare that number to the over 1 million reported installs and to the number of registered users on drupal.org and you see how tiny that number is. Finally, consider the statistic that the supply of Drupal talent falls short of the demand and the shortfall is projected to continue.
This session will discuss why both companies and individuals should contribute to funding Drupal education.
There are a lot of people who use and benefit from the Drupal project and many more who will be in the future. If we can get a large enough percentage of that base to contribute even a tiny amount, the project and the community will see huge gains.
"Many hands make light work" -- John Heywood